Extending software architecture views with an energy consumption perspective

Abstract

The rising energy consumption of the ICT industry has triggered a quest for more sustainable, i.e. energy efficient, ICT solutions. Software plays an essential role in finding these solutions, as software is identified as the true consumer of power. However, in this context, software is often treated as a single, complex entity instead of the interrelated elements that it actually consists of. Although useful results can be gained, this approach fails to provide detailed insight in the elements that invoke specific energy consumption behavior. As a result, software vendors are not able to address energy consumption on software level. In this paper, we propose an energy consumption perspective on software architecture as a means to provide this insight and enable analysis on the architectural elements that are the actual drivers behind the energy consumption. In support of this perspective, we also position sustainability as a potential quality attribute thereby provide a means to quantify energy consumption aspects related to software. In a case study using a commercial software product the perspective and quality attribute are applied, demonstrating the potential by achieving an energy consumption saving of 67.1 %.

Energy efficiency on the product roadmap: An empirical study across releases of a software product

“…These studies show the need for a separate EC perspective on software architecture. We envision an EC perspective for software architects to analyze and evaluate the EC of a software product. Applying a separate EC perspective enables practitioners to structurally consider aspects that concern the design of a system.…”

“…Software architecture (SA) also allows a stakeholder to explore design trade-offs for the software. 3 Increased performance, a quality attribute for the software, does not always have a direct relation with EC. 38 A different design trade-off is to exchange modules or services for more energy efficient sustainable variants, eg, cloud federation.…”

“…The sustainability of software is still in its infancy as a research topic. Previous works define sustainability as a multidimensional concept that identifies requirements for multiple software Quality Attributes (QAs). In particular, environmental sustainability identifies EC requirements for EE.…”

“…However, although much can also be derived from performance measurements, EC and performance are not always positively correlated [15][16][17][18][19] ; contradicting goals could require a trade-off to be made. 3 Hence, a deeper understanding of the matter is required to properly address the EC of the software itself.…”

Self-Adaptive Energy-Efficent Applications: The HADAS Developing Approach

“…Therefore, although software energy efficiency is becoming increasingly important, development processes of self-greening systems supported by tools are still in their infancy. There are plenty of approaches that present experimental results about how to optimize energy consumption at design time [5,6,7], but little effort has been made to explore reusable solutions of runtime energy optimizations.…”