Phoeni6: a Systematic Approach for Evaluating the Energy Consumption of Neural Networks

This paper presents Phoeni6, a systematic approach for assessing the energy consumption of neural networks while upholding the principles of fair comparison and reproducibility. The methodology automates energy evaluations through containerized tools, robust database management, and versatile data models. In the first case study, the energy consumption of AlexNet and MobileNet was compared using raw and resized images. Results showed that MobileNet is up to 6.25% more energy-e fficient for raw images and 2.32% for resized datasets, while maintaining competitive accuracy levels. In the second study, the impact of image file formats on energy consumption was evaluated. BMP images reduced energy usage by up to 30% compared to PNG, highlighting the influence of file formats on energy e fficiency. These findings emphasize the importance of Phoeni6 in optimizing energy consumption for diverse neural network applications and establishing sustainable artificial intelligence practices. Introduction Deep Neural Networks (DNN) are being used with relative success in fields such as computer vision and natural language processing) [1, 2]. A growing number of initiatives have been promoting the development of these networks to solve everyday problems, including optimizing resource allocation in energy-constrained environments like wireless sensor networks [3]. There are repositories [4, 5] with hundreds of networks created and made available in lists ordered by accuracy, which is the primary metric used to assess the quality of each network. Their results emphasize that the search for energy efficiency can significantly benefit mobile devices' autonomy and positively a ff ect the financial costs and carbon footprints of large data centers distributed worldwide. These works measure energy to evaluate their technique. There is an evident global concern for the energy consumption of software products that a ffect people's daily lives--neural networks are becoming one of them. This fact has important implications on the criteria used to choose these products. It is reasonable to say that energy consumption is becoming part of the criteria for selecting neural networks, just as accuracy is. However, unlike the accuracy calculation, which fundamentally depends on the dataset and the procedures used during the training phase, the energy calculation depends on the devices involved. This aspect adds extra challenges to reproducing the results (RR) and making fair comparisons (FC) between di ff er-ent networks [24]. Evaluating the energy consumption of neural networks while adhering to the principles of Fair Comparison (FC) and Result Reproducibility (RR) presents significant challenges.