Zeus: Understanding and Optimizing GPU Energy Consumption of DNN Training
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Abstract (arXiv)
Training deep neural networks (DNNs) is becoming increasingly more resource- and energy-intensive every year. Unfortunately, existing works primarily focus on optimizing DNN training for faster completion, often without considering the impact on energy efficiency. In this paper, we observe that common practices to improve training performance can often lead to inefficient energy usage. More importantly, we demonstrate that there is a tradeoff between energy consumption and performance optimization. To this end, we propose Zeus, an optimization framework to navigate this tradeoff by automatically finding optimal job- and GPU-level configurations for recurring DNN training jobs. Zeus uses an online exploration-exploitation approach in conjunction with just-in-time energy profiling, averting the need for expensive offline measurements, while adapting to data drifts over time. Our evaluation shows that Zeus can improve the energy efficiency of DNN training by 15.3%-75.8% for diverse workloads.
Key facts. Cited by 78 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 47 of its 103 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Aug 2022.
Builds on
47 of 103 references.
References · 47
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 1; 2023: 13; 2024: 9; 2025: 25; 2026: 30.
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- 2026Efficient Resource Optimization for Split Federated Learning18 Aug 2026
- 2026Energy-Efficient GPU DVFS for Fine-Tuning of SLMs on Resource-constrained Embedded Devices7 Jul 2026
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- 2026The Language-Energy Divide: Measuring Energy Costs of Multilingual LLM Inference20 Jun 2026
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- 2026The Energy Blind Spot: NVIDIA's Flagship Edge AI Hardware Cannot Support Process-Level Energy Attribution26 May 2026
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