Green My LLM: Studying the key factors affecting the energy consumption of code assistants

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Main Authors: Coignion, Tristan, Quinton, Clément, Rouvoy, Romain
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Coignion, Tristan
Quinton, Clément
Rouvoy, Romain
author_facet Coignion, Tristan
Quinton, Clément
Rouvoy, Romain
contents In recent years,Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly improved in generating high-quality code, enabling their integration into developers' Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) as code assistants. These assistants, such as GitHub Copilot, deliver real-time code suggestions and can greatly enhance developers' productivity. However, the environmental impact of these tools, in particular their energy consumption, remains a key concern. This paper investigates the energy consumption of LLM-based code assistants by simulating developer interactions with GitHub Copilot and analyzing various configuration factors. We collected a dataset of development traces from 20 developers and conducted extensive software project development simulations to measure energy usage under different scenarios. Our findings reveal that the energy consumption and performance of code assistants are influenced by various factors, such as the number of concurrent developers, model size, quantization methods, and the use of streaming. Notably, a substantial portion of generation requests made by GitHub Copilot is either canceled or rejected by developers, indicating a potential area for reducing wasted computations. Based on these findings, we share actionable insights into optimizing configurations for different use cases, demonstrating that careful adjustments can lead to significant energy savings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_11892
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Green My LLM: Studying the key factors affecting the energy consumption of code assistants
Coignion, Tristan
Quinton, Clément
Rouvoy, Romain
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
In recent years,Large Language Models (LLMs) have significantly improved in generating high-quality code, enabling their integration into developers' Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) as code assistants. These assistants, such as GitHub Copilot, deliver real-time code suggestions and can greatly enhance developers' productivity. However, the environmental impact of these tools, in particular their energy consumption, remains a key concern. This paper investigates the energy consumption of LLM-based code assistants by simulating developer interactions with GitHub Copilot and analyzing various configuration factors. We collected a dataset of development traces from 20 developers and conducted extensive software project development simulations to measure energy usage under different scenarios. Our findings reveal that the energy consumption and performance of code assistants are influenced by various factors, such as the number of concurrent developers, model size, quantization methods, and the use of streaming. Notably, a substantial portion of generation requests made by GitHub Copilot is either canceled or rejected by developers, indicating a potential area for reducing wasted computations. Based on these findings, we share actionable insights into optimizing configurations for different use cases, demonstrating that careful adjustments can lead to significant energy savings.
title Green My LLM: Studying the key factors affecting the energy consumption of code assistants
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11892