Spec Development Proposal and Focus Areas

[seanmcilroy29]

Spec Development Proposal and focus areas

Software energy consumption ratings.

• Concern about software ratings being affected by hardware variations.
• Inconsistency in energy efficiency across different hardware manufacturers should be addressed in the spec.
• Importance of standardising test environments for software ratings, including a baseline hardware setup.

Standardizing software testing environments.

• Standardizing the test environment to remove variability in energy consumption and carbon emissions.
• Feasibility of the GSF standardisation efforts and the potential for other organisations to duplicate their testing environment.
• Oracle and Microsoft adopt similar testing standards for machine learning performance despite wide variations in software capabilities.

Software categorization and commonality.

• Standardizing standard components of education to create domain-specific software specifications.
• Standard software categorization and its relationship to performance.
• Process for defining commonalities in software categorization, using examples from different industries.

Benchmark certification for software.

• Define benchmark certification as a standardized workload or test on software, with consistent test environment specifications for comparison.
• Standardized certification process for music streaming services.
• Potential concerns with the rating system, with a standard platform for measuring hardware performance.

Standardizing GPU performance measurement.

• Proposed baseline for measuring GPU performance
• Creating an open-source product for crowd-sourced testing and rating of software, potentially leading to a governing body for GSF. The idea is to provide an intuitive, non-numerical way for people to evaluate software based on their experiences and opinions.

Standardizing and certifying software performance metrics.

• Potential approaches for rating and approving energy-efficient products, including a community-based approach and a more formalised body to govern ratings.
• Identifying standard components in upcoming events to improve efficiency while comparing the situation to the SCI specification for measurement, noting that it's complex and requires expertise.
• The need for a conformance program to validate scores in the context of a hypothetical "go cup" for the computing community.
• Two approaches to getting a trustworthy number for a product's performance: official testing by a highway authority and customer-generated data using a benchmarking tool.