CAIN 2025
Sun 27 - Mon 28 April 2025 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
co-located with ICSE 2025
Sun 27 Apr 2025 14:30 - 14:45 at 208 - Architecting and Testing AI Systems Chair(s): Jan-Philipp Steghöfer

Context. While on-device LLMs offer higher privacy over their remotely-hosted counterparts and do not require Internet connectivity, their energy consumption on the client device still remains insufficiently investigated.

Goal. This study empirically evaluates the energy usage of client devices when fetching LLM-generated content on-device versus from a remote server. Our goal is to help software developers make informed decisions on the most energy-efficient method for fetching content in different scenarios, so as to optimize the client device’s energy consumption.

Method. We conduct a controlled experiment with seven LLMs with varying parameter sizes running on a MacBook Pro M2 and on a remote server. The experiment involves fetching content of different lengths from the LLMs deployed either on-device or remotely, while measuring the client device’s energy usage and performance metrics such as execution time, CPU, GPU, and memory usage.

Results. Fetching LLM-generated content from a remote server uses 4 to 9 times less energy compared to the on-device method, with a large effect size. We observe a consistent strong positive correlation between energy usage and execution time across all content lengths and fetch methods. For the on-device method, GPU and memory usage are positively correlated with energy usage.

Conclusions. We recommend offloading LLM-generated content to a remote server rather than generating it on-device to optimize energy efficiency on the client side. Developers should optimize on-device LLMs to decrease execution time, GPU usage, and memory usage.

Sun 27 Apr

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

14:00 - 15:30
Architecting and Testing AI SystemsResearch and Experience Papers at 208
Chair(s): Jan-Philipp Steghöfer XITASO GmbH IT & Software Solutions
14:00
15m
Talk
How Do Model Export Formats Impact the Development of ML-Enabled Systems? A Case Study on Model IntegrationDistinguished paper Award Candidate
Research and Experience Papers
Shreyas Kumar Parida ETH Zurich, Ilias Gerostathopoulos Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Justus Bogner Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Pre-print
14:15
15m
Talk
RAGProbe: Breaking RAG Pipelines with Evaluation ScenariosDistinguished paper Award Candidate
Research and Experience Papers
Shangeetha Sivasothy Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute, Deakin University, Scott Barnett Deakin University, Australia, Stefanus Kurniawan Deakin University, Zafaryab Rasool Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute, Deakin University, Rajesh Vasa Deakin University, Australia
14:30
15m
Talk
On-Device or Remote? On the Energy Efficiency of Fetching LLM-Generated Content
Research and Experience Papers
Vince Nguyen Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Hieu Huynh Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Vidya Dhopate Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Anusha Annengala Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Hiba Bouhlal Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Gian Luca Scoccia Gran Sasso Science Institute, Matias Martinez Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Vincenzo Stoico Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Ivano Malavolta Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Pre-print Media Attached
14:45
10m
Talk
LoCoML: A Framework for Real-World ML Inference Pipelines
Research and Experience Papers
Kritin Maddireddy IIIT Hyderabad, Santhosh Kotekal Methukula IIIT Hyderabad, Chandrasekar S IIIT Hyderabad, Karthik Vaidhyanathan IIIT Hyderabad
14:55
10m
Talk
Towards Continuous Experiment-driven MLOps
Research and Experience Papers
Keerthiga Rajenthiram Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Milad Abdullah Charles University, Ilias Gerostathopoulos Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Petr Hnětynka Charles University, Tomas Bures Charles University, Czech Republic, Gerard Pons Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, Besim Bilalli Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, Anna Queralt Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
15:05
25m
Other
Discussion
Research and Experience Papers