On 26/06/21 2:10 pm, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
There has been some work underway for some time to look at resource and
energy efficiency of KDE applications. I would like to give some more
insight into what is happening there and invite you to join, where this
is interesting for you.
The first part is FEEP, the FOSS energy efficiency project[1]. The goal
of the project is to measure energy consumption of Free Software
applications, starting with some KDE applications. There is a
methodology developed by the Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld[2], which provides
a standardized way to get data about energy and other resource usage of
desktop applications. This is a good starting point.
The impact of information technology on the overall usage of electricity
and other resources is significant. Getting awareness and some actual
data will help us to find ways how we can contribute to a responsible
and sustainable usage of resources.
Energy efficiency is one aspect of sustainability, but there are more.
Resource usage for manufacturing devices and how long they can be used
is another one. And a big part also is user autonomy, so that people can
decide how they use software.
Since last year there is a set of criteria for resource and
energy-efficient software products as part of the German ecolabel Blue
Angel[3]. They try to capture these aspects in the form of a list of
requirements, covering energy-efficiency, potential hardware operating
life, and user autonomy.
KDE is in a very good position to fulfill these requirements, because
our vision and values are very much in line with the goals which are
behind these requirements. Transparency, privacy, freedom, giving people
control, responsible usage of resources, this is all very much ingrained
in our community.
So we are documenting how KDE applications meet the criteria for
resource and energy-efficient software products[4], and we are trying to
get the official certification of the Blue Angel by applying for the
label through KDE e.V.
I gave a presentation at this year's Akademy with the title "Towards
sustainable computing" which goes into more detail. You can find the
recording in KDE's YouTube channel[5].
There is a lot which we can do in this area to show how KDE already
contributes to sustainable computing and improve what we are doing. So
if you are interested in this topic and would like to do something there
are many opportunities. These often are small things which don't take
too much time. Every contribution counts. Some examples are:
* Defining typical usage scenarios which can be used as a base for
measuring energy efficiency of applications
* Automating usage scenarios so measurements can be done in an automated
and repeatable way
* Evaluation of energy measurements to find out what impacts energy
efficiency and how this can be optimized
* Documentation of the user autonomy aspects, for example making our
commitments to transparency and privacy visible on websites or user manuals
We have a mailing list[6] and a Matrix channel[7] to talk about these
topics. You are very welcome to join us there.
We have the chance to make a difference here. Let's do it :-).
[1]: https://invent.kde.org/cschumac/feep
[2]:
https://www.umwelt-campus.de/en/research/projekte/green-software-engineering/projects/ufoplan-ssd-2015
[3]:
https://www.blauer-engel.de/en/products/electric-devices/resources-and-energy-efficient-software-products
[4]: https://invent.kde.org/cschumac/blue-angel-application
[5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCFWTtSMbMs&t=13067s
[6]: https://mail.kde.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/energy-efficiency
[7]: https://webchat.kde.org/#/room/#energy-efficiency:kde.org
Hi
I don't think measuring current on a Desktop is the right way to do
this. Your desktop is going to be too "noisy" when it comes to power
measurements. Activity from components like hard disk, WiFi/BT, Ethernet
or other software during the testing would end up affecting the
measurements. It would be better off doing this on a SBC (maybe a PI2?),
with as much hardware turned off as possible and running a minimum set
of software. Measurements could be done with a multimeter[1] or maybe
even a INA219[2].
[1] https://sigrok.org/wiki/Supported_hardware#Multimeters
[2] https://www.adafruit.com/product/904
-
Arjun
