Hi Everyone,
The exploration of how compilation optimizations affect energy
consumption of embedded devices has been written up and published. Full
paper (open access) can be viewed here:
http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/11/11/comjnl.bxt129.abstract
Thanks,
James
ABSTRACT
===========
This paper presents an analysis of the energy consumption of an
extensive number of the optimizations a modern compiler can perform.
Using GCC as a test case, we evaluate a set of 10 carefully selected
benchmarks for 5 different embedded platforms. A fractional factorial
design is used to systematically explore the large optimization space
(2^82 possible combinations), while still accurately determining the
effects of optimizations and optimization combinations. Hardware power
measurements on each platform are taken to ensure all architectural
effects on the energy consumption are captured. We show that fractional
factorial design can find more optimal combinations than relying on
built-in compiler settings. We explore the relationship between run-time
and energy consumption, and identify scenarios where they are and are
not correlated. A further conclusion of this study is the structure of
the benchmark has a larger effect than the hardware architecture on
whether the optimization will be effective, and that no single
optimization is universally beneficial for execution time or energy
consumption.
