A Green Programming Model for Cloud Software Efficiency

Cloud computing aims to deliver more energy efficient computing provision. The potential advantages are primarily based on the opportunities to achieve economies of scale through resource sharing: in particular, by concentrating data storage and processing within data centres, where energy efficiency and measurement are well-established activities. However, this addresses only a part of the overall energy cost of the totality of the cloud because energy is also required to power the networking connections and the end user systems through which access to the data centre is provided. The impact of application software behaviour on the overall system’s energy use within a cloud is less understood. This is of particular concern when one considers the current trend towards “off the shelf” applications accessed from application stores. This mass market for complete applications, or code segments which are included within other applications, creates a very real need for that code to be as efficient as possible, since even small inefficiencies when massively duplicated will result in significant energy loss. This position paper identifies this problem and proposes a supporting tool which will indicate to software developers the energy efficiency of their software as it is developed. Fundamental to the delivery of any workable solution is the measurement and selection of suitable metrics, we propose appropriate metrics and indicate how they may be derived and applied within our proposed system. Addressing the potential cost of application development is fundamental to achieving energy saving within the cloud – particularly as the application store model gains acceptance.

@article{Kor2018,
  title     = {A Green Programming Model for Cloud Software Efficiency},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {9},
  number    = {1},
  year      = {2018},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Ah-Lian Kor and Colin Pattinson},
  doi       = {10.14569/SpecialIssue.2018.090176},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/SpecialIssue.2018.090176}
}