FSE 2025
Mon 23 - Fri 27 June 2025 Trondheim, Norway
Mon 23 Jun 2025 10:30 - 10:50 at Vega - Performance Chair(s): Philipp Leitner

To ease the expensive measurements during configuration tuning, it is natural to build a surrogate model as the replacement of the system, and thereby the configuration performance can be cheaply evaluated. Yet, a stereotype therein is that the higher the model accuracy, the better the tuning result would be, or vice versa. This "accuracy is all'' belief drives our research community to build more and more accurate models and criticize a tuner for the inaccuracy of the model used. However, this practice raises some previously unaddressed questions, e.g., are the model and its accuracy really that important for the tuning result? Do those somewhat small accuracy improvements reported (e.g., a few % error reduction) in existing work really matter much to the tuners? What role does model accuracy play in the impact of tuning quality? To answer those related questions, in this paper, we conduct one of the largest-scale empirical studies to date—running over the period of 13 months 24*7—that covers 10 models, 17 tuners, and 29 systems from the existing works while under four different commonly used metrics, leading to 13,612 cases of investigation. Surprisingly, our key findings reveal that the accuracy can lie: there are a considerable number of cases where higher accuracy actually leads to no improvement in the tuning outcomes (up to 58% cases under certain setting), or even worse, it can degrade the tuning quality (up to 24% cases under certain setting). We also discover that the chosen models in most proposed tuners are sub-optimal and that the required % of accuracy change to significantly improve tuning quality varies according to the range of model accuracy. From those, we provide in-depth discussions of the rationale behind, offering several lessons learned as well as insights for future opportunities. Most importantly, this work poses a clear message to the community: we should take one step back from the natural "accuracy is all'' belief for model-based configuration tuning.

Mon 23 Jun

Displayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change

10:30 - 12:30
PerformanceDemonstrations / Research Papers / Ideas, Visions and Reflections / Journal First / Industry Papers at Vega
Chair(s): Philipp Leitner Chalmers | University of Gothenburg
10:30
20m
Talk
Accuracy Can Lie: On the Impact of Surrogate Model in Configuration Tuning
Journal First
Pengzhou Chen University of electronic science and technology of China, Jingzhi Gong University of Leeds, Tao Chen University of Birmingham
10:50
20m
Talk
Understanding Debugging as Episodes: A Case Study on Performance Bugs in Configurable Software Systems
Research Papers
Max Weber Leipzig University, Alina Mailach Leipzig University, Sven Apel Saarland University, Janet Siegmund Chemnitz University of Technology, Raimund Dachselt Technical University of Dresden, Norbert Siegmund Leipzig University
DOI
11:10
20m
Talk
Towards Understanding Performance Bugs in Popular Data Science Libraries
Research Papers
Haowen Yang The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), Zhengda Li The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Zhiqing Zhong The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), Xiaoying Tang hinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Pinjia He Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
DOI
11:30
20m
Talk
When Should I Run My Application Benchmark?: Studying Cloud Performance Variability for the Case of Stream Processing Applications
Industry Papers
Sören Henning Dynatrace Research, Adriano Vogel , Esteban Pérez Wohlfeil Dynatrace Research, Otmar Ertl Dynatrace Research, Rick Rabiser LIT CPS, Johannes Kepler University Linz
DOI Pre-print
11:50
10m
Talk
LitmusKt: Concurrency Stress Testing for Kotlin
Demonstrations
Denis Lochmelis Constructor University Bremen, JetBrains Research, Evgenii Moiseenko JetBrains Research, Yaroslav Golubev JetBrains Research, Anton Podkopaev JetBrains Research, Constructor University
DOI Pre-print
12:00
10m
Talk
Breaking the Loop: AWARE is the New MAPE-K
Ideas, Visions and Reflections
Brell SANWOUO Univ. Lille / INRIA, Clément Quinton University of Lille, Paul Temple IRISA
12:10
20m
Talk
COFFE: A Code Efficiency Benchmark for Code Generation
Research Papers
Yun Peng The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Jun Wan Zhejiang University, Yichen LI The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Xiaoxue Ren Zhejiang University
DOI

Information for Participants
Mon 23 Jun 2025 10:30 - 12:30 at Vega - Performance Chair(s): Philipp Leitner
Info for room Vega:

Vega is close to the registration desk.

Facing the registration desk, its entrance is on the left, close to the hotel side entrance.