#1319 Sustainability – Software Engineering change request pending

As the number of battery powered, wireless (via electromagnetic induction) and low power devices increase, software engineers are increasingly responsible for ensuring effective energy consumption. Reduction in energy consumption results in more green, sustainable impact of systems and contributes to the environment.

Software Engineers creating applications for mobile phones have been required to be cognisant of this issue for a number of years now. As additional form factors and devices come to the market, including tablets, smart watches, wearables and other lower powered processors, the need for awareness of these issues is increasing.

At all levels, software engineers targeting these platforms need to consider issues such as:

• Architecture definitions including quantity of physical targets for installation, use of multiple processors or dedicated ICs
• The need for continuously running background services, applications or threads versus those that run at scheduled intervals
• Responding to events from a the host platform to suspend, resume or otherwise react to system wide events
• Techniques to deal with unexpected power failures
• Configurable attributes of the hardware driven by the software – for example screen brightness, colour palette, audio volume

Engineers will also need skills in associated tools, such as measurement of energy consumption and emerging tools that identify expected energy usage via static analysis.

Reference: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3154384

Proposed change applies to Sustainability

Current status of this request: pending

What we decided

Retain this CR so we can monitor developments to see whether this justifies a separate SFIA skill or additional guidance notes.