GreenFaaS: Maximizing Energy Efficiency of HPC Workloads with FaaS

TL;DR

GreenFaaS is an open source framework that enhances energy efficiency in HPC workloads by enabling energy-aware task placement within FaaS platforms, reducing energy use and improving performance.

Contribution

It introduces GreenFaaS, a novel system that allows energy-aware scheduling and monitoring in FaaS environments, bridging the gap between energy efficiency and serverless computing.

Findings

Reduces energy-delay product by 45% in synthetic workloads.

Decreases energy consumption by 21% and runtime by 63% in molecular design applications.

Enables energy-efficient task placement and monitoring in FaaS platforms.

Abstract

Application energy efficiency can be improved by executing each application component on the compute element that consumes the least energy while also satisfying time constraints. In principle, the function as a service (FaaS) paradigm should simplify such optimizations by abstracting away compute location, but existing FaaS systems do not provide for user transparency over application energy consumption or task placement. Here we present GreenFaaS, a novel open source framework that bridges this gap between energy-efficient applications and FaaS platforms. GreenFaaS can be deployed by end users or providers across systems to monitor energy use, provide task-specific feedback, and schedule tasks in an energy-aware manner. We demonstrate that intelligent placement of tasks can both reduce energy consumption and improve performance. For a synthetic workload, GreenFaaS reduces the energy-delay product by 45% compared to alternatives. Furthermore, running a molecular design application through GreenFaaS can reduce energy consumption by 21% and runtime by 63% by better matching tasks with machines.