Communications of the ACM
Smaller, Faster, Greener
Every aspect of modern computing, from the smallest chip to the largest datacenter, comes with a carbon price tag.
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Researchers at Harvard University, Arizona State University, and Facebook have found that hardware manufacturing and infrastructure account for the most emissions associated with modern mobile and datacenter equipment.
The researchers studied the carbon price tag of modern computing, from chip architecture to data center design, and mapped out the entire lifetime of a device from manufacturing and recycling, to determine whether device complexity and manufacturing emissions could be reduced.
Harvard's Udit Gupta said, "We need to be asking what's greener, running applications on the device or in a datacenter. These decisions must optimize for global carbon emissions by taking into account application characteristics, efficiency of each hardware device, and varying power grids over the day."
In addition, Harvard's David Brooks has teamed up with the university's Embedded EthiCS program to include an Embedded EthiCS module on computational sustainability into a computer architecture course this spring.
From Harvard University John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
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Abstracts Copyright © 2021 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
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