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Final Comprehensive Report

A report for US National Science Foundation (NSF) On Sustainability in Computing

(Click here to download the final report)

Working Roundtable

Date: 05/18/2023

Time: 8:00am to 6:00pm (Pacific Time)

Location: San Diego, California, USA

      • Area Leads and Scribes to meet and write overall report

SUSCOMP Workshop Agenda and Panel Questions

Date: 12/12/2022

Time: 11:00am to 4:00pm (Eastern Time)

Timeline:

  1. Welcome Remarks – 11 am – 12 pm
      • Introductions – PI Amlan Ganguly, RIT
      • Expectations and Vision for the day – Alex Jones, NSF
      • Keynote talk – PI Massoud Pedram, USC
      • Logistics for the day – PI Amlan Ganguly, RIT
  2. Panels: 12-3pm
      • Please see table below for details and time slots
  1. Panel Summaries and Discussions on future events: 3-4pm
      • Welcome back to Summary Session – PI Fabrizio Lombardi, Northeastern
  • Scribes reading out panel discussion summaries (~5 mins each)
  • Moderators/Area Leads are welcome to chime in
  • Open discussions
  • Wrap-up with future plans and timeline – PI Amlan Ganguly, RIT

Table: Panels, panelists, moderators, and scribes:

All Panel formats:

  • Moderator/Lead makes an opening statement for the panel: 5 mins
  • Moderator invites all panelists to make their opening remarks: ~5 mins each
  • Moderator-led Q&A and discussions: ~ 30 mins
  • Audience Q&A: till time is up

Overview

The continuous pursuit of increasing performance in computing has resulted in the discovery of various methodologies for designing computers for various important application domains. However, However, such methods have largely neglected sustainability and in particular, their impact on the environment and energy resources of the planet. It has been shown that the embodied environmental cost of integrated-circuit (IC) manufacturing can often exceed its operational footprint. With the use of metals such as tantalum, tungsten, and gold, which are extracts of conflict minerals, in electronic equipment and the inevitable exhaustion of the planet’s energy resources within the next few decades and the potentially existential threat of climate change impacted by CO2 emissions, there is an urgent need to consider factors beyond operational-phase energy consumption of the computing infrastructure. The research community engaged in the design of next-generation computers need to be aware of the impact of computing infrastructure on the larger society and environment. In order to increase awareness among researchers in the domain of computing for these factors beyond the operational phase of the computers, we will organize a series of activities that will increase awareness, facilitate cross-pollination of ideas among researchers across different disciplines encompassing not only computing sciences but also, environmental sciences and political sciences to identify sustainable methodologies for design and operation of computing infrastructure. The novelty and intellectual merit of this project are in identifying gaps in knowledge that need to be bridged to truly make computers sustainable. Most previous activities and scientific endeavors have been limited to the operational phase of computing systems, therefore, neglecting important details such as procurement of raw materials, total lifecycle analysis, and impact on the environment in addition to energy footprint. We will have a series of invited talks from experts from diverse fields with deep insights on these aspects that ultimately affect the sustainability of computing resources delivered remotely. Following these enlightening talks, we will host an in-person workshop bringing computing researchers together to discuss the lessons learned from the talks and how these ideas can be incorporated in various types of computing devices from low power miniature systems such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to warehouse-scale computers such as data centers. Through these activities, we intend to create awareness and strategies to create a sustainable future for computing systems.

The benefits of the proposed talks and workshop would be to create sustainable methodologies for the design and operation of computers. Computers are ubiquitous in the modern lifestyle. E-commerce, entertainment services such as video streaming, communications, smart healthcare, smart cities, scientific computing, smart transportation, and all such modern and future aspects of the digital lifestyle are impossible without computers of various types from the smallest nanosensors to the largest supercomputers. The environmental, societal, and energy footprint of such pervasive systems can no longer be ignored if we are to preserve and sustainably utilize the planet’s resources. Therefore, this is the perfect time to perform the activities proposed in this project to build a sustainable future of computing. 

Thrust areas

  1. Life Cycle Science for Computing Infrastructure
  2. Environmental sciences and raw materials for computing fabrics
  3. Metrics for sustainability of computing
  4. Sustainability in High-Performance Computer Architectures, Servers, Data Centers and Supercomputers
  5. Sustainable Microelectronics and Integrated Circuits

Logistics

The overall workshop series is broken into 2 parts:
  1. A series of virtually invited talks on the topics outlined in Project Description will be organized. 
  2. An in-person meeting of invited community members to brainstorm and identify research gaps and opportunities in sustainable computing. More precisely, a few working groups will be assembled to focus on challenges and opportunities related to different aspects of sustainable computing, from modeling and analysis of the environmental cost of computing to hardware and software solutions that are energy-efficient and sustainable, to system solutions that are driven by full lifecycle cost of computing paradigms and infrastructures. Limited travel support will be available for the in-person meeting.

Important Dates

  • The invited talks will be conducted between September 2021 to November 2021. 
    • It is to be noted that the meeting can be pivoted to an online format depending on the progress of the COVID19 pandemic.

Call for Participation

Sponsor