betaEE

betaEE is an open-source framework and benchmarking standard intended to evaluate the energy efficiency of software running on embedded and edge devices. The project aims to provide a reproducible, cross-platform methodology for measuring power usage alongside performance, enabling developers and researchers to compare algorithms and implementations on different hardware.

The framework comprises several components. An energy model specification describes device power behavior, including both static and dynamic power factors. A portable benchmarking harness runs reference workloads under controlled conditions, while a runtime collects telemetry from hardware power meters and software estimators. betaEE supports calibration against actual power measurements and can compute metrics such as energy consumption, execution time, and energy-delay product to facilitate trade-off analysis.

Typical workflow involves selecting baseline implementations, applying optimizations, and using betaEE to compare energy-performance outcomes. The emphasis is on repeatability, with standardized test environments, seed data, and configuration files that allow results to be reproduced by others. Output tools generate graphs and reports that summarize energy usage across multiple scenarios and hardware platforms.

History and governance: betaEE originated from a collaborative effort among researchers and practitioners in the late 2010s and was released as an open standard in the early 2020s. It is maintained by a community-driven core team with governance by periodically elected maintainers. Contributions are facilitated through a public repository, documentation, and contribution guidelines.

Adoption and impact: The framework has been used in research on energy-aware scheduling, compiler optimizations, and device-level power management. It has seen uptake in university laboratories and industry R&D groups aiming to benchmark and improve energy efficiency across CPUs, GPUs, and microcontrollers.

See also: energy efficiency benchmarking, power profiling, embedded systems.