Basically every laptop I've owned I've had to disable sleep when the lid is closed as I often leave them plugged in and want background tasks like downloads or updates to be able to run while I'm not using the machine. However, I don't think PC laptops have a way to switch to a super low power state and just run background tasks like downloads, alarms and notifications or running scheduled tasks without just being left on in regular power mode. Why is this not just a default feature of laptops, given that phones and tablets have been doing this kind of thing for the last decade or more?
Does anyone know if there are plans to make power management for laptops allow for running certain tasks in Windows or Linux in the future? My smug Apple using friend tells me his Macbook already does this, but is the lack of this feature on PCs software related or something innate to x86 vs ARM architecture?
Thanks for the excellent response.
I wonder if Valve will try to implement it in Steam OS for the Steam Deck’s successor, as a lot of people complained about the lack of downloading while asleep after the Deck was launched. It would still need cooperation in hardware I assume, but they were able to get resuming games working, so it doesn’t seem like an insurmountable problem if there is enough desire from both gamers and Valve.
I don’t think this would need to wait for a successor. The problems are software, not hardware. They would need to have games and SteamUI get suspended but leave other processes running, might be tricky and prone to bugs.
Of course hardware is part of the problem too.
PC architecture does not allow, for example, that the network interface may feed any data directly to the harddisk. Every bit and byte must be input to the CPU and then output from there.
Otherwise we could allow the CPU some real good sleep while other devices remain a little active.
Isn’t this the idea of having a chipset (Northbridge/Southbridge) on the board, to handle some of these IO tasks?
Also, I recently saw the Cathode Ray Dude video on Dell’s Brain Slug, where down basically hijacked the system with a low-power ARM SBC. I almost wonder if something like this would be possible, it would obviously require a revision but it would theoretically allow for suspended downloads, invite notifications, etc. It would also be fairly expensive and complex though
Well, not in the way we are talking here. The bridges work under the CPU’s direct commands. When the CPU goes to sleep, they have nothing to do either.
Maybe a PC’s CPU can do some short time limited sleep like microcontrollers do, and maybe that would be useful for such scenario’s. But even then the main problem remains that the CPU wants to be in control of everything.