Green Computing as an Engineering Discipline
2017 S
While in the previous century computer users were mainly looking for fast computer software, this is nowadays changing with the advent of powerful mobile devices, like laptops, tablets and smartphones. In our mobile-device age, one of the main computing bottlenecks is energy consumption. This growing concern on energy efficiency may also be associated with the perspective of software developers. Unfortunately, developing energy-aware software is still a difficult task. While programming languages provide several compiler optimizations, memory profiler tools, benchmark and time execution monitoring frameworks, there are no equivalent tools/frameworks to profile/optimize energy consumption.
In the context of the Green Software Laboratory project we are developing techniques and tools to support programmers in analyzing, optimizing and, thus, developing greener software. We will present a technique to improve the energy consumption of Java programs by defining a "green ranking" of the Java Collection Framework. We will also present SPELL - Spectrum-based Energy Leak Localization: a language independent technique and tool to locate "energy leaks" (ie. abnormal energy consumption) in the software's source code.
The course focuses on students of the doctoral study programmes of the Faculty of Informatics, especially on students of the Vienna PhD School of Informatics, and on advanced students of the master programs of the Faculty of Informatics.
The research talk on Green Software Laboratory: Towards an Engineering Discipline for Green Software on Wednesday, April 26, 2017, 2pm-3pm, in the Library E185.1, Argentinierstr. 8, 4th floor (centre), opens the course and introduces into its topic.
The course takes places after the research talk in a block-style fashion from April 26 through April 28, 2017, including in addition to lectures a lab part offering hands-on-experience. The exact lecture and lab times will be agreed on with the attendees of the course immediately after the research talk. Registration for the course takes place at the first course meeting.