sleep mode (redirected from Standby (electricity))

sleep mode

Also called "standby mode," it is an inactive state of a computer or electronic device that is quickly brought back into action by touching any keyboard key or pressing the on/off switch. It is widely used in laptops and portable devices to save battery power, but it is also used with desktop computers to save energy.

In sleep mode, the hard disk and screen are turned off, and the CPU is throttled down to its lowest power state. However, all instructions and data in memory still reside in memory, and dynamic RAM memory chips require power to hold their content. In a portable device, the battery is still being drained but at a slower rate. A portable system in sleep mode will often switch to hibernation mode when it senses that the battery is about to run out.

Hybrid Sleep
Hybrid sleep mode saves memory to disk (hibernation mode) and then switches to sleep mode. If a power outage occurs, or the battery runs out in hybrid sleep mode, the contents of memory is not lost, and memory can be restored from the hard disk when power is returned. See hibernation mode.