Our News

Paper accepted at International Conference on Cluster Computing (Cluster)

A new paper (authored by Pierre Jacquet, Thomas Ledoux, Romain Rouvoy) has been recently accepted in Cluster 2024 (International Conference on Cluster Computing). SlackVM: Packing Virtual Machines in Oversubscribed Cloud Infrastructure Summary: Cloud providers generally expose a large catalog of Virtual Machines (VMs) offers, some being categorized as premium—guaranteeing dedicated resources—and others being hosted in oversubscribed environments, where virtual resources can exceed the physical capabilities of Physical Machines (PMs). The latter strategy is often employed to increase platform utilization, as hosted VMs are unlikely to fully utilize all their allocated resources simultaneously [1].

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Paper accepted at Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS)

A new article (authored by Daniel Romero, Guillaume Fieni, Pierre Rust, Romain Rouvoy) has been recently accepted by the Journal Open Source Software (JOSS). PowerAPI: A Python framework for building software-defined power meters Summary: Software that we use daily for accessing digital services from connected devices has a negative impact on the environment as it consumes energy. These digital services, hosted by physical machines around the world, also contribute to planetary pollution.

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Paper accepted at EASE conference

A new paper (authored by Tristan, Clément and Romain) has been recently accepted in EASE 2024 (International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering). A Performance Study of LLM-Generated Code on Leetcode Summary: This study evaluates the efficiency of code generation by Large Language Models (LLMs) and measures their performance against human-crafted solutions using a dataset from Leetcode. We compare 18 LLMs, considering factors such as model temperature and success rate, and their impact on code performance.

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Paper accepted at International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing

A new paper (authored by Pierre Jacquet, Thomas Ledoux, Romain Rouvoy) has been recently accepted in CCGRID 2024 (International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing). SweetspotVM: Oversubscribing CPU without Sacrificing VM Performance Summary: The adoption of computing resources oversubscription in cloud environments is conventionally limited to a restricted subset of Virtual Machines (VMs) within the providers’ offerings, primarily driven by performance considerations. So far, VMs schedulers mostly implement all-or-nothing oversubscription strategies, wherein all VM resources are either oversubscribed or remain unaltered.

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Paper accepted at ICT4S conference

A new paper (authored by Edouard, Thibault, Alban and Romain) has been recently accepted in ICT4S 2024 (International Conference on Information and Communications Technology for Sustainability). Uncovering the Envronmental Impact of Software Life Cycle Summary: The deluge of new software services we are facing is associated with an expansion of supporting infrastructures, including networks and data centers, and a rapid renewal of end-user devices. However, this surge is accompanied by significant environmental impacts and encompassing factors, such as CO2e emissions or the depletion of rare metals and minerals.

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Paper accepted at SANER conference

A new paper (authored by Alexandre Bonvoisin, Clément Quinton and Romain Rouvoy) has been recently accepted in SANER'24 (International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering). Understanding the Performance-Energy Tradeoffs of Object-Relational Mapping Frameworks Summary: Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) frameworks are the cornerstone of online services. To reply to incoming requests, these services often rely on these frameworks as a convenient data access layer. However, such frameworks might also be the source of performance inefficiency when configured and used inappropriately.

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Paper accepted at IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing

A new paper (authored by Pierre Jacquet, Thomas Ledoux, Romain Rouvoy) has been recently accepted by the journal Transactions on Sustainable Computing. ScroogeVM: Boosting Cloud Resource Utilization with Dynamic Oversubscription Summary: Despite continuous improvements, cloud physical resources remain underused, hence severely impacting the efficiency of these infrastructures at large. To overcome this inefficiency, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers usually compensate for oversized Virtual Machines (VMs) by offering more virtual resources than are physically available on a host.

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The ANR Distiller will contribute to the GreenTech forum program

Distiller members will contribute to the upcoming edition of the GreenTech forum to be organized in Paris, on 21 and 22 november 2023. Feel free to attend the following events and discuss with us. La recherche en numérique : écoresponsabilité, défis scientifiques, environnementaux et sociétaux Tuesday 21 november 2023 | 13h00-16h15 | Salle de commission 2.4 | Accès libre et gratuit 13h00-13h05 : Introduction 13h05-13h45 : Keynote 1 | Rôle de l’innovation numérique à l’ère de l’Anthropocène (présentée par David BOL, Université Catholique de Louvain)

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Paper accepted in Empirical Software Engineering

A new article (authored by Benjamin, Romain and Jean-Rémy Falleri) has been recently accepted in the Empirical Software Engineering journal (EMSE). Can We Spot Energy Regressions using Developers Tests? Summary: Background Software Energy Consumption (SEC) is gaining more and more attention. In this paper, we tackle the problem of warning developers about the increase of SEC of their programs during Continuous Integration (CI). Objective In this study, we investigate if the CI can leverage developers’ tests to perform energy regression testing.

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Paper accepted at IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering

A new paper (authored by Pierre Jacquet, Thomas Ledoux, Romain Rouvoy) has been recently accepted in IC2E 2023 (International Conference on Cloud Engineering). CloudFactory: An Open Toolkit to Generate Production-like Workloads for Cloud Infrastructures Summary: Cloud infrastructures are large-scale and complex platforms designed to host a wide diversity of applications and workloads. Given these complexity and scale factors, simulators and benchmarks are broadly adopted in vitro to study their behaviors, prototype new software components and heuristics, and evaluate their effective performances.

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Press - "L'empreinte carbone, face cachée de l'IA" - Sciences et Avenir

L’empreinte carbone, face cachée de l’IA A special issue of Sciences et Avenir on the sustainability of Artificial Intelligence has been published (in French). You can find out more here: https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/high-tech/intelligence-artificielle/l-empreinte-carbone-face-cachee-de-l-ia_173966

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Thesis defense - Édouard Guégain

Édouard Guégain has defended his thesis today (29th september 2023). Congratulations doctor! 🎉 Thesis title Configuration-driven software optimization Summary The field of software engineering is rapidly evolving, exposing practitioners to a growing collection of tools, languages, frameworks, and paradigms. Thus, designing a new software system consists in selecting components from this collection, which is akin to creating a configuration. Currently, the criterion to configure such systems often revolves around ease of development, which leads to oversized, power-hungry bloatware.

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OVHcloud launches carbon calculator

OVHcloud now provides its IaaS customers with a carbon calculator aimed at giving them monthly reports on their cloud-related carbon emission. A fully transparent carbon report The methodology behind the carbon calculator required more than eight months of development, and aims to be exhaustive, by considering factors such as manufacturing down to the component level. Accessible on demand from the OVHcloud customer panel, the tool takes into account the estimated electrical consumption of servers from OVHcloud datacenter monitoring and map them to their carbon equivalent, taking into account the cooling and networking equipment, as well as freight, manufacturing, end of life and waste management, to provide a complete picture of the actual carbon footprint.

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Dissemination - "ICT and the ecological transition - scientific challenges and solutions"

On June 16th, 2023, Romain Rouvoy and Pierre Rust, together with Anne Varet (Ademe), Paul Benoit (Qarnot), Jean-Marc Steffann (Groupe La Poste), and Jacques Sainte-Marie (Inria) have participated to a Vivatech'23 session on ICT and the ecological transition: scientific challenges and solutions.

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3rd consortium meeting in Lille!

For over a year now, Inria, OVHcloud, Orange and Davidson consulting have been working together to study how to measure and reduce the environmental impact of cloud-native applications. Now supported by ANR, the above contributors met on April 11th and 12th at Inria, in Lille. Scientific presentations and dynamic exchanges around the experiments and deliverables of the project were on the agenda. After a first year rich in research and studies on native cloud applications, their variability and existing environmental indexes, the first experiments defined by the members of the consortium are underway with the objective of being able to qualify the impact of an application and propose areas of improvement to reduce the footprint, in terms of choice of architecture, technical stack, deployment …

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Paper accepted at ICT4S conference

A new paper (authored by Thibault, Pierre, Romain and Joel) has been recently accepted in ICT4S 2023 (International Conference on Information and Communications Technology for Sustainability). Uncovering the Envronmental Impact of Software Life Cycle Summary: The environmental footprint of a software service development may be impacted by several factors, spanning human factors to infrastructure choices. To the best of our knowledge, the state of the art in the domain of environmental footprint fails i) to address the full spectrum of software services life cycle, from design to operation and maintenance and ii) to cover different categories of impacts.

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Press - "Le numérique est-il un progrès durable ?" Pour la Science

A special issue of Pour la Science on the sustainability of the Digital sector has been published. You can find out more here: https://www.inria.fr/fr/numerique-progres-durable-environnement-pour-la-science The frugal digital factory Daniel Romero and Romain Rouvoy (Inria) has co-authored an article on measuring the energy-efficiency of software. This article present PowerAPI, a virtual Wattmeter that can be used to evaluate a software energy-efficiency. Daniel and Romain then present current initiatives on reducing software environmental footprint (e.

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Press - "La chasse au gaspillage dans le cloud et les data centers"

Romain Rouvoy and Pierre Jacquet have co-authored, with Thomas Ledoux, an online article entitled La chasse au gaspillage dans le cloud et les data centers in the online media The conversation. This article details methods and approches to reduce resource wastes (i.e., overbooking or overcommitment) in data centers.

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Thesis defense - Guillaume Fieni

Guillaume Fieni has defended his thesis today (15th december 2022). Congratulations doctor! 🎉 Thesis title Towards Modeling the Power Usage Efficiency of Software-Defined Computing Infrastructures Summary Energy is one of the biggest expenses for a data center, most of which is attributed to the cooling system, as well as the many underlying parts, such as network equipment and the large number of machines used. These infrastructures are very energy-intensive, and their number is constantly increasing around the world, especially due to the growing popularity of the Cloud Computing.

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Thesis defense - Mohammed Chakib Belgaid

Mohammed Chakib Belgaid has defended his thesis today (14th december 2022, funded by Davidson consulting). Congratulations doctor! 🎉 Thesis title Green Coding : an Empirical Approach to Harness the Energy Consumption of Software Services Summary The ICT sector is claimed to account for 2% of global emissions. Even though this might seem like a small number, the success of ICT technologies will always lead to more greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, the number of data centers worldwide was 1.

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2nd Distiller consortium meeting in Rennes!

For the last two days, our consortium had the pleasure to meet in Rennes, in Davidson’s office. During these two days, Distiller partners had the opportunity to share current progress and upcoming scientific and technical activities.

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Press - "Des usages et services numériques durables grâce à l’écoconception"

The Distiller project has been featured in the following article published by Orange: Des usages et services numériques durables grâce à l’écoconception. This article presents how Orange aims to build more sustainable software and infrastructures.

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Press - "Making applications more energy-efficient"

The ANR Distiller project has been featured in the following CNRS article: Making applications more energy-efficient. This online article reports on insights about the growing environmental footprint of the IT sector, often due to the growing energy appetite of software. To better measure the energy usage of your software, solutions like PowerAPI has been developed.

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