Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Software

Abstract

With the increasing role played by software in supporting our society, its sustainability and environmental impact have become major factors in the development and operation of software-intensive systems. Myths and beliefs hide the real truth behind Green IT: IT is energy-inefficient because software is developed to make it so -intentionally or not. But how far are we from being able to control software energy-efficiency? What makes software greener? How can we transform measuring software energy consumption in a general practice? What architectural design decisions will result in more sustainable systems? How can we ensure that new-generation software will be both cloud-ready and environmental-friendly? and How can we make evident the economic and social impact of developing software with 'energy in mind'? These are a few of the challenges ahead for a more sustainable digital society. This talk will discuss them, hence drawing directions for exciting challenges, promising opportunities, and ultimately inspiring research.WHERE ARE WE, REALLY? It is impossible to imagine society without software and the IT resources to run it. While we can measure the impact of IT resources on energy consumption, we still have to understand the impact of software and its properties.What we know for sure is that software is being developed without taking energy into consideration. This is evident if we think of the incredible energy optimizations of hardware over the years, which have been continuously negated by software products 1 . We notice this every day. For example, playing media on our mobile devices drains battery in no time. Or, if we look at the various generations of operating systems, they offer very similar sets of features to end-users while they demand much heavier IT resources.In following explores a few of the many related challenges and opportunities. I. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIESGreen Software Labels are farther than we think. In spite of the many publications in the field of green software, most provide only partial (if any) information about e.g. how to develop software that is energy efficient; what metrics, tools or contextual configurations should be considered when measuring or estimating the energy consumption of (certain types of) software systems or applications; and ultimately what is the real impact of software applications on the energy efficiency of the computing resources they need for execution. As a result we are witnessing a paradox. From afar, researchers and practitioners have started believing that much has been done already, and the lack of significant adoption in practice would suggest that the impact of software is negligible. This further feeds the myth that major gains are to be searched in hardware optimization, or in using renewable energy resources instead. We are forgetting that computing resources and infrastructures are there because software needs them, and if software is bloat and inefficient any optimization will be just wasted. To be able to recognize the level of...

Helping Programmers Improve the Energy Efficiency of Source Code

“…In fact, software developments are keen on developing energy-efficient software [2], and a long list of (mostly recent) efforts that include [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15] has tried to provide developers with the libraries, tools, techniques and data to support energy-aware development. Even considering these efforts, the green computing research area is still at an early stage where research issues, challenges and opportunities abound [16], [17], [18]. This paper introduces an in development technique and tool, named SPELL -SPectrum-based Energy Leak Localization, to determine red (energy inefficient) areas in software.…”

Investigating Students’ Sustainability Awareness and the Curriculum of Technology Education in Pakistan

“…Energy-efficient coding scheme optimized code and resource optimization are some of the important aspects of sustainability in software. Ignoring the sustainability aspects in software development can cause technology failure [7]. Such failure can become a cause of emerging sustainability issues regarding social, economic, and environmental aspects [19].…”

“…Software sustainability is generally reported as 'sustainable software', 'software sustainability', and 'sustainable development' [5]. Sustainable software refers to the capacity of software to be long-lasting and environment-friendly [7]. Sustainable software is defined as "software, whose impacts on the economy, society, human beings, and environment that result from development, deployment, and usage of the software are minimal and/or which have a positive effect on sustainable development" [8].…”

“…Consequently, design and development of software by sustainable development practices are crucial [1]. In this decisive and competitive technological era, focus on sustainable development practices to achieve sustainable software has utmost importance [7].…”

Locating Energy Hotspots in Source Code

“…As a matter of fact, software developers have shown to be eager to develop energy-efficient software [6], with recent efforts including [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19] to provide libraries, measurement tools, techniques and data to help energy-aware development. Even so, the green computing research area is still in initial stages with continuous issues, challenges, and opportunities to tackle [20], [21], [22].…”