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SEFLab: A Lab for Measuring Software Energy FootprintsMiguel Ferreira, Eric Hoekstra, Bo Merkus, Bram Visser, Joost Visser

2013/05/20

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GREENS 2013 – San Francisco © Software Improvement Group

Help developers build energy efficient softwareMessage

Developers manage computer resources to implement some functionality.To help developers chose for energy efficiency we need to know the “cost” of using each resource.

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GREENS 2013 – San Francisco © Software Improvement Group

Accurate measurement is hardIssues we dealt with

Isolating components is not always easy

Reduce frequency of signals to a measurable value

Shield out noise from environment

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GREENS 2013 – San Francisco © Software Improvement Group

Classify software activityOpen issues

Need to identify what is the software doing• low-level technical activity: IO, processing, waiting times

…• high-level technical activity: DB request, file/memory access,

(R/W), drawing, …• functional activity: add to cart, checkout,

update user data, …

Need to isolate each type of activity while keeping interference to a minimum

• Source code instrumentation• Profiling techniques• Run unit tests• What if the source code is not available?

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GREENS 2013 – San Francisco © Software Improvement Group

Experimental designQuestions for the workshop

Comparative studies• How to select/create a representative load?

How to design experiments to achieve…• architecture-level recommendations?• coding-level recommendations?