Weighted Metrics for the Development of Energy Efficient Software

Software metrics are measurable characteristics of software. They are commonly used to quantify qualitative aspects of software like internal quality and complexity. Energy-aware developers and researchers alike would benefit from the discovery of a static metric that correlates well with energy performance, as static metrics can be calculated at compile time rather than requiring run-time energy profiling. However, no static metric has been found that is a reliable indicator of energy performance to date. This work proposes a novel approach that employs run-time profiles to appropriately weight compile-time metrics in an effort to more accurately predict the energy performance of the software at run-time. Preliminary investigations using data from previous works highlight the potential for mean weighted coupling between objects (CBO) to be an indicator of energy performance. A subsequent experiment was conducted with a small application which was automatically refactored to reduce CBO, and consequently mean weighted CBO. Results are in line with the finding that increasing mean weighted CBO reduces energy consumption.CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering
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Software performance; Software design tradeoffs; Software design engineering.