The European Union is helping to create energy-efficient software Bashny.Net

Two years ago, the European Commission has allocated a grant for a three-year research project ENTRA to create tools that help programmers to write more energy-efficient programs. The challenge is to reduce energy consumption in data centers by 50% and increase operation time of mobile devices.

This is a very original initiative. So far, all efforts to save energy have focused solely on equipment manufacturers. And in this field achieved considerable success: energy consumption consumer electronics снижается from year to year , despite the increase in the number of devices, increasing the diagonal TV screens and better CPUs.




The annual electricity consumption by category of consumer electronics (TWh), USA, 2013 i>

Now decided to optimize not only equipment, but also the program code.

The project ENTRA, which ends in September 2015, a prototype experimental software, a kind of "simulation" of energy. It is still in the development phase predicts what the load is in the program when run on a particular processor. "Simulator" gives tips on optimizing the design of the program.

"Compare this to the fuel efficiency of the car, - says the project coordinator ENTRA, Professor John Gallagher (John Gallagher) from the University of Roskilde (Denmark). - We see it as a characteristic of the car. You buy a car and suspect that it consumes 8 liters per 100 km or so, but it depends on the method of driving. It's the same with computers. You are accustomed to associate power with the hardware, but it seems that more energy can be saved at the program level with the same equipment. Here are working on what project ENTRA ».



Designed simulation shows exemplary power consumption in watts of the program, depending on the processor speed (GHz), and also shows the total energy required to complete the task. Importantly, this occurs at an early stage when it is possible to optimize. Experiments have shown that due to this optimization manages programs to reduce energy consumption by 20-50%.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/243323/