Tutorials

The following tutorials will be presented at ICPE 2025:

Next Generation Energy-Efficiency Benchmarking - Reliable and Reproducible Efficiency Testing in a Diverse IT-Landscape

Authors:

Maximilian Meissner (University of Würzburg, Germany), Klaus-Dieter Lange (SPECpower Committee Chair, USA), Aaron Cragin (Microsoft, USA), and Diego Esteves (Dell, USA)

Timings & Location:

Tuesday (May 6) 09:00-12:30, Room C

Abstract:

Energy efficiency has become a critical quality criterion of IT systems. While hardware-designers have long worked on improving efficiency, researchers in other fields, such as software design and Artificial Intelligence, are increasingly focusing on this issue as well. Such combined efforts are essential to mitigate the significant energy demands of current and future hardware and software.

Compared to performance benchmarking, energy-efficiency benchmarking involves a variety of additional factors that must be carefully considered and controlled. Without proper setup and oversight, measurements can easily lead to misleading, inconclusive, or unreliable results. Because reproducibility of experiment results, or lack thereof, is a critical concern in the scientific community, knowing the intricacies of power and efficiency measurements is a crucial pre-requisite for carrying out meaningful experiments.

A major driver of efficiency in the industry are standardized benchmarks developed by the SPECpower Committee and the SPEC ISG Server Efficiency Committee. This tutorial, led by experts from these committees, offers a comprehensive guide to conducting energy-efficiency experiments based on best practices. It demonstrates the effects of subtle differences in experiment-setup and discusses current trends and challenges in efficiency benchmarking. It equips attendees with the knowledge needed to design and execute reliable experiments while avoiding common pitfalls.

Preparation/Teaching Method:

Intended audience skill level: beginner to intermediate

Prerequisite knowledge required: no special prerequisite knowledge required

Audio-visual and technical requirements: no special technical requirements for the participants

Short Bio:

Klaus-Dieter Lange is a Distinguished Technologist at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Houston, TX where he has worked since 1998. He began his professional career after receiving his bachelor degrees from the University of Applied Sciences, Lübeck, Germany and the Milwaukee School of Engineering, WI, USA in 1997. Klaus spent his career working on performance evaluation, workload characterization, benchmark development, and energy efficiency of computer systems. He has been active in several of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) committees since 2005 and serves as a Director of its Board. Klaus is the founding chair of the SPECpower Committee that developed the SPEC Power and Performance Methodology, the SPECpower_ssj 2008 benchmark, the SPEC PTDaemon Interface, and the SPEC SERT suite. Klaus received several SPEC’s SPECtacular Awards over the years, and the SPEC Presidential Award in 2013 and 2021. He has served on the program committees of many conferences and workshops and as the General co-chair for the ICPE’14 in Dublin, and the SPEC Symposium 2016 Asia Summit in Beijing. He co-founded the SPECpower Research Working Group in 2016 and co-presented the tutorials “Measuring and Benchmarking Power Consumption and Energy Efficiency” at ICPE 2018 and “SPEC Efficiency Benchmark Development: How to Contribute to the Future of Energy Conservation” at ICPE 2022.

Maximilian Meißner is a researcher at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany. He is currently working on his dissertation on the topic of benchmarking and improving energy efficiency in the context of servers, data centers, and cloud. Maximilian is a member of the SPECpower Committee since October 2021, member of the SPEC ISG Server Efficiency Committee, and chair of the SPECpower Research Working Group since early 2022. He received his master’s degree in Computer Science in September 2021 at the University of Wuerzburg. He is organizer and co-lecturer of the Master-level lecture “Systems Benchmarking” at the University of Wuerzburg. He organized/co-presented the tutorial “SPEC Efficiency Benchmark Development: How to Contribute to the Future of Energy Conservation” at ICPE 2022.

Aaron Cragin has worked in the IT industry for over 2 decades, spanning systems benchmarking, technical marketing, and end-to-end system development. Working for HPE from 2004 – 2012 and Microsoft since, Aaron joined Microsoft as part of the WCS program that developed Microsoft’s first, in-house servers. Currently, as a Principal Ecodesign Engineer, Aaron engages externally with Industry and Regulatory groups to impact regulations and tooling for compliance requirements. Internally he works across organizations to enable compliance tool support for our custom silicon, gather stakeholder feedback and forecast process changes. Within industry, Aaron serves on the Board of Directors at SPEC and engages various committees across Digital Europe, ITI, The Green Grid, and ETSI.

Diego Esteves has been involved with SPEC since 2001. He currently serves as Dell’s primary technical representative on the SPECpower Committee and the SPEC ISG Server Efficiency Committee. Diego has served as a technical representative on the SPEC CPU and SPEC Cloud Committees, and also chaired the SPEC Cloud Committee. Diego is a Principal Systems Development Engineer in Dell Technologies Solutions Performance Analysis team. His work is focused on performance engineering and analysis on Dell PowerEdge servers.

Serverless Orchestration on the Edge-Cloud Continuum: Challenges and Solutions

Authors:

Reza Farahani (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria) and Radu Prodan (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)

Timings & Location:

Monday (May 5) 09:00-12:30, Room B

Abstract:

Serverless computing simplifies application development by abstracting infrastructure management, allowing developers to focus on building application functionality while infrastructure providers handle tasks, such as resource scaling and provisioning. Orchestrating serverless applications across the edge-cloud continuum, however, poses challenges such as managing heterogeneous resources with varying computational capacities and energy constraints, ensuring low-latency execution, dynamically allocating workloads based on real-time metrics, and maintaining fault tolerance and scalability across multiple edge and cloud instances.

This tutorial first explores foundational serverless computing concepts, including Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), and their integration into distributed edge-cloud systems. It then introduces advancements in multi-cloud orchestration, edge-cloud integration strategies, and resource allocation techniques, focusing on their applicability in real-world scenarios. It addresses the challenges of orchestrating serverless applications across edge-cloud environments, mainly using dynamic workload distribution models, multi-objective scheduling algorithms, and energy-optimized orchestration. Practical demonstrations employ Kubernetes, serverless platforms such as GCP Functions, AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions, OpenFaaS, and OpenWhisk, along with monitoring tools like Prometheus and Grafana, to deploy and execute real-world application workflows, providing participants with hands-on experience and insights into evaluating and refining energy- and performance-aware serverless orchestration strategies.

Preparation/Teaching Method:

The tutorial delivers theoretical explanations, demonstrates practical scenarios, and facilitates interactive discussions. A structured slide deck with visual aids simplifies and presents complex concepts. State-of-the-art methods and findings from the literature, along with insights from our research papers and projects, provide participants with advanced knowledge. The tutorial demonstrates practical use cases using the tools and platforms introduced earlier and conducts experiments on public clouds and our computing continuum infrastructure, leveraging edge CPUs, GPUs, and TPUs.

Short Bio:

Dr. Reza Farahani is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Information Technology, University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Klagenfurt in 2023, following an M.Sc. in 2019 from the University of Tehran, Iran. From October 2019 to February 2023, Dr. Farahani contributed to the CDG ATHENA project, funded by the Christian Doppler Forschungsgesellschaft. He also was a Visiting Scholar at the 5G & 6G Innovation Centre, University of Surrey, U.K., from November 2022 to January 2023. Currently, Dr. Farahani teaches “Serverless Distributed Systems” and “Current Topics in Distributed Systems: Internet of Things and Cloud Computing” at the University of Klagenfurt and works as a tool leader and WP5 co-leader in the Horizon Europe Graph-Massivizer project. He has authored over 35 scientific publications and contributed to national and EU project proposals as a Scientific Coordinator and WP leader. He also has over six years of work experience in telecom. His research interests include distributed systems, network and service management, the edge-cloud continuum, serverless computing, multimedia communication, and edge AI.

Prof. Radu Prodan is a professor in distributed at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He received his PhD in 2003 from the Vienna University of Technology and his tenure in 2009 from the University of Innsbruck. He coordinated two Horizon European projects and participated in numerous other national and international projects. He has co-authored over 300 publications and received three IEEE best paper awards. From March 2025, he holds an endowed professorship on Edge artificial intelligence at the University of Innsbruck.

Hands-On Tutorial for Mastering Linux Performance Analysis Tools

Authors:

Adel Belkhiri (École Polytechnique de Montréal), Arnaud Fiorini (École Polytechnique de Montréal), Michel Dagenais (École Polytechnique de Montréal)

Timings & Location:

Monday (May 5) 14:00-17:30, Room B

Abstract:

In the era of high-performance computing and complex software ecosystems, the ability to quickly diagnose and address performance bugs is not just a skill but a necessity. Performance inefficiencies in software can significantly impact user experience, leading to decreased satisfaction, revenue loss, and damage to the company’s reputation. This tutorial offers a comprehensive, hands-on introduction to three important tools in the Linux performance analysis landscape: lttng, uftrace, and Trace Compass.

Participants will first learn how to properly install and configure each tool on their computers, ensuring they can harness their full potential. The session will delve into the key features and operational capabilities of lttng and uftrace, which are robust tracers, alongside Trace Compass, a production-level trace analyzer. These tools collectively offer a powerful suite for monitoring, profiling, and troubleshooting Linux system performances.

Guided exercises will give participants practical experience in tracing system calls, capturing call stacks, profiling application performance, and interpreting the data to isolate the root causes of performance bottlenecks. The session will emphasize real-world application, allowing attendees to apply these tools in simulated scenarios reflective of common performance issues encountered in professional settings.

By the end of this tutorial, attendees will possess the knowledge and skills to effectively utilize these tools to identify, analyze, and resolve performance problems. This hands-on tutorial will improve their diagnostic skills, and enhance their ability to maintain optimal software performance. This will positively impact their effectiveness as developers, engineers, and researchers within today’s challenging IT environments.

Preparation/Teaching Method:

In this tutorial, the following teaching method will be adopted. First, the presenters will give a theoretical overview of the performance diagnostics tools using slides and a projector. Then, they will illustrate the use of these tools in diagnosing and solving performance problems, through live demonstrations. Finally, they will ask attendees to perform guided tasks on their laptops and to use the tools in real-world scenarios. Therefore, attendees are expected to bring a Linux-capable laptop (directly or via Virtual Machine), preferably running Ubuntu, for software installation and exercises. Intended Audience Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate. Workshop Format: The workshop will combine theoretical presentations with real-time demonstrations. Participants will engage in interactive exercises to apply what they have learned, using the tools installed on their computers to diagnose predefined performance problems.

Short Bio:

Adel Belkhiri (adel.belkhiri@polymtl.ca) received his Ph.D. in computer engineering from Polytechnique Montréal in 2021. He is currently a research associate at the DORSAL laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal. His main research interests include developing software support to improve application performance, diagnosing faults, and enhancing observability in distributed systems. Adel focuses on addressing tracing and profiling challenges in computer networks and actively contributes to the open-source project Trace Compass, where he develops new analysis features.

Arnaud Fiorini (arnaud-2.fiorini@polymtl.ca) is a research associate at the Dorsal laboratory at Polytechnique Montreal who helps students with their research on many topics around tracing. He maintains Tracevizlab, a repository helping people get started with tracing tools such as Trace Compass and LTTng among others. Arnaud is developing technical solutions for tracing and profiling issues in the HPC domain, specifically on GPU programming. He also contributes to the open-source project Trace Compass to improve scalability and add additional analysis.

Michel Dagenais (michel.dagenais@polymtl.ca) is professor at Polytechnique Montreal in the department of Computer and Software Engineering. He authored or co-authored over one hundred scientific publications, as well as numerous free documents and free software packages in the fields of operating systems, distributed systems and multicore systems, in particular in the area of tracing and monitoring Linux systems for performance analysis. In 1995-1996, during a leave of absence, he was director of software development at Positron Industries. In 1997, he co-founded the Linux-Quebec user group. Most of his research projects are in collaboration with industry and generate free software tools among the outcomes. The Linux Trace Toolkit next generation, developed under his supervision, is now used throughout the world and is part of several specialized and general-purpose Linux distributions.