Energy efficiency across programming languages: how do energy, time, and memory relate?

From AcaWiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Citation: Rui Pereira, Marco Couto, Francisco Ribeiro, Rui Rua, Jácome Cunha, João Paulo Fernandes, Joãa Saraiva (2017) Energy efficiency across programming languages: how do energy, time, and memory relate?.
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Energy efficiency across programming languages: how do energy, time, and memory relate?
Wikidata (metadata): Q62592605
Download: http://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sleFinal.pdf
Tagged:

Summary

Using languages in the Computer Language Benchmarks Game (CLBG), authors test four research questions.

RQ1: Can we compare the energy efficiency of software languages?

Authors claim yes, because they were able to use the CLBG and tools for measuring energy efficiency with little overhead.

RQ2: Is the faster language always the most energy efficient?

Energy (J) = Power (W) x Time(s)

Although the 5 fastest languages (C, Rust, C++, Ada, Java) also use the least energy, other languages time and energy rankings are highly variable, so the faster language is not always the most energy efficient.

RQ3: How does memory usage relate to energy consumption?

Authors expected possibility of little correlation but were surprised to find almost none, particularly for peak memory usage.

RQ4:Can we automatically decide what is the best programming language considering energy, time, and memory usage?

Languages are placed in Pareto optimal sets for the objectives of:

  • Time and Memory
  • Energy and Time
  • Energy and Memory
  • Energy and Time and Memory

If only execution time and energy consumption are of concern, it is almost always possible to decide which language is "best". If memory is also a concern, the developer has to decide which characteristic is most important.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

Author site https://sites.google.com/view/energy-efficiency-languages

Discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19519164

Retrieved from "https://acawiki.org/index.php?title=Energy_efficiency_across_programming_languages:_how_do_energy,_time,_and_memory_relate%3F&oldid=11478"