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Power measurement techniques for energy-efficient computing: reconciling scalability, resolution, and accuracy

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SICS Software-Intensive Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

The rising concern for power consumption of large-scale computer systems puts a research focus on the respective measurement methods. Varying workload patterns and energy efficiency optimizations cause highly dynamic power consumption on today’s compute nodes—a challenge for every measurement infrastructure. We identify five partly contradictory requirements that characterize such infrastructures: temporal granularity, spatial granularity, well-defined accuracy, scalability, and cost. In two projects we push the boundaries for these criteria: a scalable measurement solution for hundreds of nodes at millisecond granularity that is tightly integrated into the HPC system, and a sophisticated single-node instrumentation to measure the power consumption of application events in the microsecond range. Both measurement solutions are calibrated and their accuracy is carefully studied. We discuss scalable processing of the measurements for global monitoring in large-scale systems and use this data for energy efficiency analyses in combination with contextual information such as application performance trace data.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported in parts by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the Collaborative Research Center 912 “Highly Adaptive Energy-Efficient Computing”, the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung via the research project Score-E (BMBF 01IH13001), and Bull/Atos in the joint project “High Definition Energy Efficiency Monitoring” (HDEEM). The authors would like to thank Robin Geyer for his contribution on the HDEEM verification and Mario Bielert for improvements on the paper layout.

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Correspondence to Thomas Ilsche.

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Ilsche, T., Schöne, R., Schuchart, J. et al. Power measurement techniques for energy-efficient computing: reconciling scalability, resolution, and accuracy. SICS Softw.-Inensiv. Cyber-Phys. Syst. 34, 45–52 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00450-018-0392-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00450-018-0392-9

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