Towards More Sustainable Computing

The Faculty of Informatics is pleased to announce a seminar given by Fred Chong

DATE: Thursday, September 08th, 2011
PLACE: USI Università della Svizzera italiana, room SI-006, Black building (Via G. Buffi 13)
TIME: 13.30

ABSTRACT:
Computing devices are the fastest-growing segment of carbon production into our atmosphere, and their continued proliferation will have substantial impact on our global environment, energy needs, and IT-based economy.  A modern server consumes as much energy in a year as an SUV.  Worldwide, businesses now spend billion annually to power their data centers, and that cost is growing rapidly. Energy expenditures are already becoming as significant as the cost of machines, making energy efficiency a critical factor in the future success of our information technology infrastructure.  To meet these challenges, our community must leverage its strengths and embrace new metrics, disciplines, and technologies.

In this talk, I will explore some of these challenges and opportunities, including why the cost of manufacturing needs to be evaluated alongside device usage using life-cycle analysis, why emerging computing, storage, and cooling technologies could be the key to more energy-proportional computing, and how the hardware and software of servers need to be more robust for energy management.

BIO:
Fred Chong is the Director of Computer Engineering and a Professor of Computer Science at UCSB.  He also directs the Greenscale effort in Energy-Efficient Computing, which involves over 20 multi-disciplinary
faculty.  Chong received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1996 and was a faculty member and Chancellor's fellow at UC Davis from 1997-2005.  He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award and his research interests include
emerging technologies for computing, multicore and embedded architectures, computer security, and sustainable computing.

HOST: Prof. Laura Pozzi