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I'm well aware of what "effective" clocks are. I am pointing out that streaming UVC camera video uses precious little processor time.
Let's use my Steamdeck, since it's the most mobile oriented device I have, and has good total system power reporting ability:
- Google Meet instant meeting running with camera off: 7.8w
- Google Meet instant meeting running with camera on: 8.3w
So that's 500mW extra to:
- Power up the USB camera and run all of its electronics
- Stream compressed video content from the camera to the Steamdeck
- Decompress the video and display it locally on the Steamdeck
- Re-encode the video stream and send it back to Google
Let's do another test to eliminate browser overhead and the whole streaming/re-encoding aspect
Steamdeck sitting with VLC Running, but idle: 5.3w
Steamdeck viewing UVC camera with VLC: 5.5w
We're talking 200mW here. It's a small amount of power. That's about 15 minute total loss of battery life across the 8 hours nominal the Steam Deck battery will last browsing the web.
I'm sure MIPI cameras shave a few mW by eliminating USB overhead and having the camera processing be done on the CPU, which is almost certainly on a more advanced semiconductor node than the camera electronics. That's important when you have a tiny phone battery, but becomes increasingly less important when you have the 40+ wH batteries that laptops have.
Using MIPI cameras in laptops is just a cost savings thing.
Let's use my Steamdeck, since it's the most mobile oriented device I have, and has good total system power reporting ability:
- Google Meet instant meeting running with camera off: 7.8w
- Google Meet instant meeting running with camera on: 8.3w
So that's 500mW extra to:
- Power up the USB camera and run all of its electronics
- Stream compressed video content from the camera to the Steamdeck
- Decompress the video and display it locally on the Steamdeck
- Re-encode the video stream and send it back to Google
Let's do another test to eliminate browser overhead and the whole streaming/re-encoding aspect
Steamdeck sitting with VLC Running, but idle: 5.3w
Steamdeck viewing UVC camera with VLC: 5.5w
We're talking 200mW here. It's a small amount of power. That's about 15 minute total loss of battery life across the 8 hours nominal the Steam Deck battery will last browsing the web.
I'm sure MIPI cameras shave a few mW by eliminating USB overhead and having the camera processing be done on the CPU, which is almost certainly on a more advanced semiconductor node than the camera electronics. That's important when you have a tiny phone battery, but becomes increasingly less important when you have the 40+ wH batteries that laptops have.
Using MIPI cameras in laptops is just a cost savings thing.
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