Does the compiler or interpreter version influence the energy consumption of programming languages?

IF 1.5 4区计算机科学 Q3 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Science of Computer Programming Pub Date : 2025-02-05 DOI:10.1016/j.scico.2025.103270

Elisa Jiménez, Alberto Gordillo, Coral Calero, Ma Ángeles Moraga, Félix García

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Software plays a crucial role in our daily activities. Virtually all the technology we use contains software components written in a particular programming language. In this context, compilers and interpreters play an important role, as they are needed to convert the software source code into a format that can be executed by a machine. The significant influence of the programming language on the energy consumption of the resulting programs has been highlighted in some research. However, there is almost no research on the impact of the programming language compiler/interpreter version of the programming language on the energy consumption. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the impact of the compiler/interpreter version on the energy consumption of programs written in C, Java and Python. To do that we have performed a study that uses a hardware-based energy measurement approach to obtain the energy consumed by eight algorithms written in the three languages and run with different compiler/interpreter versions. The results do not show a trend of improvement between versions within each language, especially in terms of energy consumption. These results suggest that energy efficiency does not seem to be a major factor when developing compilers/interpreters and should therefore be prioritized.

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来源期刊

Science of Computer Programming 工程技术-计算机：软件工程

CiteScore

3.80

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

67 days

期刊介绍： Science of Computer Programming is dedicated to the distribution of research results in the areas of software systems development, use and maintenance, including the software aspects of hardware design. The journal has a wide scope ranging from the many facets of methodological foundations to the details of technical issues andthe aspects of industrial practice. The subjects of interest to SCP cover the entire spectrum of methods for the entire life cycle of software systems, including • Requirements, specification, design, validation, verification, coding, testing, maintenance, metrics and renovation of software; • Design, implementation and evaluation of programming languages; • Programming environments, development tools, visualisation and animation; • Management of the development process; • Human factors in software, software for social interaction, software for social computing; • Cyber physical systems, and software for the interaction between the physical and the machine; • Software aspects of infrastructure services, system administration, and network management.