EQODEC — Energy-Quality Optimized Codec

EQODEC (Energy-Quality Optimized Codec) is a lightweight Python package that provides carbon-aware loss functions and energy-efficiency evaluation metrics for neural compression and representation learning systems.

It enables researchers and engineers to explicitly account for carbon cost during model training and evaluation, rather than treating emissions as a post-hoc reporting metric.

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Motivation

The rapid growth of neural compression, generative models, and large-scale inference has significantly increased the energy and carbon footprint of data storage and transmission systems. While existing codecs optimize for rate-distortion trade-offs, they do not account for environmental impact during training or inference.

EQODEC addresses this gap by:

• Integrating carbon awareness directly into the training objective
• Providing a standardized Energy-Efficiency Score (EES) for fair evaluation
• Remaining model-agnostic and framework-lightweight

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Key Features

• Carbon-Aware Loss Function

  • Drop-in replacement for standard rate-distortion losses
  • Supports reconstruction, bitrate, and carbon regularization terms

• Energy-Efficiency Score (EES)

  • Quantifies storage savings per unit carbon cost
  • Suitable for neural codecs, traditional codecs, and hybrid pipelines

• Framework-Agnostic Design

  • Works with any neural compression architecture
  • Minimal assumptions about latent representations

• CodeCarbon Integration

  • Uses real-world carbon intensity estimates
  • Graceful fallback when regional data is unavailable

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Installation

pip install eqodec

Requirements

• Python>=3.8
• PyTorch
• NumPy
• CodeCarbon

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Quick Start

1. Carbon-Aware Loss Function

import torch
from eqodec import CarbonAwareLoss, get_local_carbon_intensity

carbon_intensity = get_local_carbon_intensity()

criterion = CarbonAwareLoss(
    lambda_recon=5.0,
    lambda_rate=0.5,
    lambda_carbon=0.005,
    carbon_intensity=carbon_intensity
)

loss, metrics = criterion(x_hat, x, latent)

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2. Energy-Efficiency Score (EES)

from eqodec import energy_efficiency_score

ees = energy_efficiency_score(
    baseline_bytes=2.3e9,
    compressed_bytes=1.9e9,
    kg_co2=0.82
)

Higher values indicate more sustainable compression.

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Use Cases

• Neural image, video, and audio compression
• Learned entropy models and autoencoders
• Carbon-aware representation learning
• Sustainability benchmarking of codecs
• Research on green AI and efficient ML systems

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Design Philosophy

EQODEC is intentionally:

• Minimal - no datasets, no training loops
• Composable - integrates into existing pipelines
• Transparent - interpretable loss components
• Research-first - aligned with reproducible evaluation