CPU / DRAM Energy Consumption

[ib31iat]

Do I see correctly that CarbonTracker only reads the the package RAPL file (/sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/energy_uj) if it is available? On most machines this does not include DRAM energy consumption (see: https://hubblo-org.github.io/scaphandre-documentation/explanations/rapl-domains.html).

Would that mean that CarbonTracker, contrary to what is written in the paper, only consider the Power of the CPU or do I miss something?

[Snailed]

Hello @ib31iat, thanks for bringing this to our attention.
It seems to me that you are correct - Carbontracker in its current state only reads package RAPL files /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/energy_uj whereas DRAM is located in a subdirectory to this (for example /sys/class/powercap/intel-rapl:0/intel-rapl:0:1/energy_uj).

The RAPL zone hierarchy, clarified in this issue on the powercap repository, specifies that the energy_uj for the package zone does not include DRAM even though it is a subdirectory to the package directory. The original authors of carbontracker believed otherwise at the time it seems. Luckily, DRAM does not contribute much to the total energy consumption of a system.

I have made a fix for this - now it should measure both the package and DRAM files. Am testing on different devices now to validate.

[Snailed]

This has now been fixed in version v2.1.2. Closing the issue.