One of the areas left incomplete in the Texas Instruments AM335x BSP when they ended Windows Embedded support was the whole power management and low power operation. TI turned over support to a third party, which will remain nameless, and from what I can gather not much work has been done since. This is a shame as the AM335x processor, as used on the Beaglebone, has some fantastic low power features. In general, ARM processors have always had superior low power characteristics over the x86 family. This is do, in part, to the fine granularity ARM gives you over clock and power domain control as distributed within the chip itself. You have the ability to shut down different sections of the chip, or even run them at a reduced voltage. You also have the ability to slow down or cut off clocks to different internal peripherals within the part. All these can have a cumulative effect on lowering the current draw and thus the power consumed by the chip. These things become very important if you are doing a battery op ...

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