Tracking the energy efficiency of software

David Bicknell

3 months ago 0 Comments

One of the areas that is going to be interesting in coming years is the energy efficiency of software, because the quality of your software could have implications for your energy costs. This week I visited a company in Amsterdam to speak with a Dutch company about its work examining the energy efficiency of software.

The Software Improvement Group (SIG) has partnered with the local Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) to create the Software Energy Footprint Lab (SEFL), which will enable researchers to ask such questions as:

How do different database management systems compare with each other in terms of energy consumption?

How do different programing languages/compilers compare in terms of energy consumption?

How do asynchronous requests compare to synchronous requests in terms of energy consumption?

How do unsigned integer arithmetic operations compare with signed arithmetic operations in terms of energy consumption?

How accurate are software energy profiling tools?

The laboratory will have computers rigged with sensors to measure the flow of electric current into each of the computer's components. Specially crafted programs or generic benchmarks are then run with the sensors reporting on where the current is flowing to and how much of it is flowing to each component.

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