2,504 research outputs found
Toward sustainable data centers: a comprehensive energy management strategy
Data centers are major contributors to the emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and this contribution is expected to increase in the following years. This has encouraged the development of techniques to reduce the energy consumption and the environmental footprint of data centers. Whereas some of these techniques have succeeded to reduce the energy consumption of the hardware equipment of data centers (including IT, cooling, and power supply systems), we claim that sustainable data centers will be only possible if the problem is faced by means of a holistic approach that includes not only the aforementioned techniques but also intelligent and unifying solutions that enable a synergistic and energy-aware management of data centers.
In this paper, we propose a comprehensive strategy to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers that uses the energy as a driver of their management procedures. In addition, we present a holistic management architecture for sustainable data centers that implements the aforementioned strategy, and we propose design guidelines to accomplish each step of the proposed strategy, referring to related achievements and enumerating the main challenges that must be still solved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
ASCR/HEP Exascale Requirements Review Report
This draft report summarizes and details the findings, results, and
recommendations derived from the ASCR/HEP Exascale Requirements Review meeting
held in June, 2015. The main conclusions are as follows. 1) Larger, more
capable computing and data facilities are needed to support HEP science goals
in all three frontiers: Energy, Intensity, and Cosmic. The expected scale of
the demand at the 2025 timescale is at least two orders of magnitude -- and in
some cases greater -- than that available currently. 2) The growth rate of data
produced by simulations is overwhelming the current ability, of both facilities
and researchers, to store and analyze it. Additional resources and new
techniques for data analysis are urgently needed. 3) Data rates and volumes
from HEP experimental facilities are also straining the ability to store and
analyze large and complex data volumes. Appropriately configured
leadership-class facilities can play a transformational role in enabling
scientific discovery from these datasets. 4) A close integration of HPC
simulation and data analysis will aid greatly in interpreting results from HEP
experiments. Such an integration will minimize data movement and facilitate
interdependent workflows. 5) Long-range planning between HEP and ASCR will be
required to meet HEP's research needs. To best use ASCR HPC resources the
experimental HEP program needs a) an established long-term plan for access to
ASCR computational and data resources, b) an ability to map workflows onto HPC
resources, c) the ability for ASCR facilities to accommodate workflows run by
collaborations that can have thousands of individual members, d) to transition
codes to the next-generation HPC platforms that will be available at ASCR
facilities, e) to build up and train a workforce capable of developing and
using simulations and analysis to support HEP scientific research on
next-generation systems.Comment: 77 pages, 13 Figures; draft report, subject to further revisio
Challenges and complexities in application of LCA approaches in the case of ICT for a sustainable future
In this work, three of many ICT-specific challenges of LCA are discussed.
First, the inconsistency versus uncertainty is reviewed with regard to the
meta-technological nature of ICT. As an example, the semiconductor technologies
are used to highlight the complexities especially with respect to energy and
water consumption. The need for specific representations and metric to
separately assess products and technologies is discussed. It is highlighted
that applying product-oriented approaches would result in abandoning or
disfavoring of new technologies that could otherwise help toward a better
world. Second, several believed-untouchable hot spots are highlighted to
emphasize on their importance and footprint. The list includes, but not limited
to, i) User Computer-Interfaces (UCIs), especially screens and displays, ii)
Network-Computer Interlaces (NCIs), such as electronic and optical ports, and
iii) electricity power interfaces. In addition, considering cross-regional
social and economic impacts, and also taking into account the marketing nature
of the need for many ICT's product and services in both forms of hardware and
software, the complexity of End of Life (EoL) stage of ICT products,
technologies, and services is explored. Finally, the impact of smart management
and intelligence, and in general software, in ICT solutions and products is
highlighted. In particular, it is observed that, even using the same
technology, the significance of software could be highly variable depending on
the level of intelligence and awareness deployed. With examples from an
interconnected network of data centers managed using Dynamic Voltage and
Frequency Scaling (DVFS) technology and smart cooling systems, it is shown that
the unadjusted assessments could be highly uncertain, and even inconsistent, in
calculating the management component's significance on the ICT impacts.Comment: 10 pages. Preprint/Accepted of a paper submitted to the ICT4S
Conferenc
Evaluation of DVFS techniques on modern HPC processors and accelerators for energy-aware applications
Energy efficiency is becoming increasingly important for computing systems,
in particular for large scale HPC facilities. In this work we evaluate, from an
user perspective, the use of Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS)
techniques, assisted by the power and energy monitoring capabilities of modern
processors in order to tune applications for energy efficiency. We run selected
kernels and a full HPC application on two high-end processors widely used in
the HPC context, namely an NVIDIA K80 GPU and an Intel Haswell CPU. We evaluate
the available trade-offs between energy-to-solution and time-to-solution,
attempting a function-by-function frequency tuning. We finally estimate the
benefits obtainable running the full code on a HPC multi-GPU node, with respect
to default clock frequency governors. We instrument our code to accurately
monitor power consumption and execution time without the need of any additional
hardware, and we enable it to change CPUs and GPUs clock frequencies while
running. We analyze our results on the different architectures using a simple
energy-performance model, and derive a number of energy saving strategies which
can be easily adopted on recent high-end HPC systems for generic applications
Sustainable HPC: Modeling, Characterization, and Implications of Carbon Footprint in Modern HPC Systems
The rapid growth in demand for HPC systems has led to a rise in energy
consumption and carbon emissions, which requires urgent intervention. In this
work, we present a comprehensive framework for analyzing the carbon footprint
of high-performance computing (HPC) systems, considering the carbon footprint
during both the hardware production and system operational stages. Our work
employs HPC hardware component carbon footprint modeling, regional carbon
intensity analysis, and experimental characterization of the system life cycle
to highlight the importance of quantifying the carbon footprint of an HPC
system holistically
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