„Foundational research with practical relevance“: Benedict Herzog receives dissertation award of the GI Operating Systems group
For his dissertation titled “System Software for Energy-Efficient Computing,” Benedict Herzog, supervised by Timo Hönig, has been awarded the annual dissertation award by the Operating Systems group of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (Society for Computer Science in the German-speaking world). This award recognizes not only his academic excellence but also the significant practical benefits of his work in an area of particular topicality and societal relevance: the energy efficiency of computer systems.
Sustainability is one of the central topics of our time, permeating all areas of society. With regard to the omnipresent topic of AI, for example, more and more focus is put on the required computing power and the enormous energy consumption resulting from that. Meanwhile, hardware development is starting to reach its limits in the pursuit of greater energy efficiency, considerably slowing down the steady improvement of the past decades. The demand for more performance however continues to grow. To address these developments, Benedict Herzog sees the greatest potential in a more efficient interaction of hardware and software — placing this at the center of his doctoral thesis. His research was supervised by Timo Hönig at the Bochum Operating Systems and System Software group.
While general-purpose operating systems like Linux and Windows have so far aimed for the broadest possible applicability and pass up energy efficiency optimization in favor of mainstream compatability, Benedict Herzog reverses these priorities in his research: “The operating system, hardware, and applications must be tailored to each for an energy-efficient system.” To this end, his dissertation presents three components that support energy optimization at different levels.
A fundamental prerequisite for greater energy efficiency is a system’s ability to be aware of and respond to its own energy demand. Therefore, the first component is a monitoring method that precisely tracks the energy demand of software and can thus support the optimization of both existing and newly developed software. Based on this monitoring, a second component then enables the automated adaptation of the running system to the currently executed software and hardware, thereby increasing energy efficiency. Finally, Benedict Herzog presents a component for software construction that aims to facilitate the consideration of energy efficiency early on during development, rather than optimizing software for this purpose only afterwards.
Read more in the dissertation abstract
The research was conducted at the Operating Systems and System Software group under the supervision of Timo Hönig. Associated research projects include:
- Energy-Efficient Memory Placement (Memento – DFG Priority Program “Disruptive Memory Technologies”)
- Dynamic Operating-System Specialisation (DOSS – joint DFG project with Uni Erlangen-Nürnberg)
- Automated Network Telecom Infrastructure with Intelligent Autonomous Systems (ANTILLAS – BMFTR project)
- Sustainable Technologies for Advanced Resilient and Energy-Efficient Networks (SUSTAINET-inNOvAte – BMFTR project)
Contact: cs-os-staff@lists.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
“Foundational research with practical impact and societal relevance”
For his research, Benedict Herzog has now been awarded the annual dissertation award of the Operating Systems group of the Gesellschaft für Informatik. The group’s spokesperson Peter Ulbrich praises the thesis as a technically and methodologically excellent contribution to the research field, “combining basic research with practical relevance and significance for society.” He also emphasizes that the dissertation manages to directly translate the new research approaches into effective system-level implementations.
In awarding the prize to Benedict Herzog, Ulbrich also sees an incentive for further research in this field: “This recognition is a great motivation to further advance basic research for energy-efficient system software and operating systems and to strengthen its transfer into practice.” Some promising starting points for future research arise directly from Benedict Herzog’s dissertation, such as specific tools for visualizing and optimizing CO2 emissions, automated application specialization of operating system components, or the interface between energy efficiency and IT security.
The Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI) is the largest professional association for computer science in the German-speaking world and represents the interests of computer scientists from various fields since its beginnings in 1969. The Operating Systems group, founded in 1993, currently has more than 500 members who exchange ideas on research, development, and application of operating systems. Each year, the group awards its dissertation award to outstanding doctoral theses that make a significant and innovative contribution to scientific progress in the field.