Santiago del Rey

Santiago del Rey, Luís Cruz, Xavier Franch et al.

To raise awareness of the environmental impact of deep learning (DL), many studies estimate the energy use of DL systems. However, energy estimates during DL training often rely on unverified assumptions. This work addresses that gap by investigating how model architecture and training environment affect energy consumption. We train a variety of computer vision models and collect energy consumption and accuracy metrics to analyze their trade-offs across configurations. Our results show that selecting the right model-training environment combination can reduce training energy consumption by up to 80.68% with less than 2% loss in $F_1$ score. We find a significant interaction effect between model and training environment: energy efficiency improves when GPU computational power scales with model complexity. Moreover, we demonstrate that common estimation practices, such as using FLOPs or GPU TDP, fail to capture these dynamics and can lead to substantial errors. To address these shortcomings, we propose the Stable Training Epoch Projection (STEP) and the Pre-training Regression-based Estimation (PRE) methods. Across evaluations, our methods outperform existing tools by a factor of two or more in estimation accuracy.

Santiago del Rey, Paulo Sérgio Medeiros dos Santos, Guilherme Horta Travassos et al.

Background: As empirical software engineering evolves, more studies adopt data strategies$-$approaches that investigate digital artifacts such as models, source code, or system logs rather than relying on human subjects. Synthesizing results from such studies introduces new methodological challenges. Aims: This study assesses the effects of model quantization on correctness and resource efficiency in deep learning (DL) systems. Additionally, it explores the methodological implications of aggregating evidence from empirical studies that adopt data strategies. Method: We conducted a research synthesis of six primary studies that empirically evaluate model quantization. We applied the Structured Synthesis Method (SSM) to aggregate the findings, which combines qualitative and quantitative evidence through diagrammatic modeling. A total of 19 evidence models were extracted and aggregated. Results: The aggregated evidence indicates that model quantization weakly negatively affects correctness metrics while consistently improving resource efficiency metrics, including storage size, inference latency, and GPU energy consumption$-$a manageable trade-off for many DL deployment contexts. Evidence across quantization techniques remains fragmented, underscoring the need for more focused empirical studies per technique. Conclusions: Model quantization offers substantial efficiency benefits with minor trade-offs in correctness, making it a suitable optimization strategy for resource-constrained environments. This study also demonstrates the feasibility of using SSM to synthesize findings from data strategy-based research.

Santiago del Rey, Adrià Medina, Xavier Franch et al.

Deep learning (DL) systems present unique challenges in software engineering, especially concerning quality attributes like correctness and resource efficiency. While DL models excel in specific tasks, engineering DL systems is still essential. The effort, cost, and potential diminishing returns of continual improvements must be carefully evaluated, as software engineers often face the critical decision of when to stop refining a system relative to its quality attributes. This experience paper explores the role of MLOps practices -- such as monitoring and experiment tracking -- in creating transparent and reproducible experimentation environments that enable teams to assess and justify the impact of design decisions on quality attributes. Furthermore, we report on experiences addressing the quality challenges by embedding domain knowledge into the design of a DL model and its integration within a larger system. The findings offer actionable insights into the benefits of domain knowledge and MLOps and the strategic consideration of when to limit further optimizations in DL projects to maximize overall system quality and reliability.