Green Your Compute
My research centres and expands from the concept of "energy efficient performant computing" (EEPC). In short one might say "Green HPC" but it is much more than that - in terms of more widely tackling the carbon footprint of ICT. I am PI of the UKRI Net Zero £120K project "Energy-aware heterogeneous computing at scale" (aka "Energetic"). This project, led by MMU with UCL, EPCC/University of Edinburgh & Newcastle as partners, runs until Dec2022 aims to test whether the use of heterogeneous architecture (use of FPGAs and GPUs alongside CPUs) could significantly reduce energy to solution and thus the energy consumed by UKRI data centres. For more information see my Research
This page is more concerned with immediate steps and ideas you can take now to reduce your environmental footprint when using today's digital society:
- Turn off AI bots! e.g. for Edge turn off the Bing AI (see image):
- Implement recommendations from JISC report "Exploring Digital Carbon Footprints"
- Implement recommendations from MMU Rise Grand Challenge on "Do digital technologies help or harm the planet: decolonising and decarbonising our digital society"
- Take (and encourage others to take) Carbon Literacy course & accreditation - this is available to any MMU staff or student who requests, as well as forming an integral part of many courses
- Careful web design (as we try to do here) e.g.
- dark theme
- simple (if any) graphics, and always using the "loading=lazy" option for "img"
- no videos (and always turn off auto-load)
Further info/ideas re web design see "Sustainable Web Design" by Tom Greenwood
- Sleep/hibernate your computer/s when not in use, and set its options on automatically doing so. Sleep keeps everything in memory (so uses a little power constantly) and is quick to return to where you were (although you will lose network connections) whereas hibernation saves everything to disk and completely turns the machine off (but takes 30-60 seconds to hibernate and perhaps a minute to restore). If you are responsible for many clients you can use software such as PowerMan / WakeMyPC to set institutional policies and to implement sleep/hibernation across the (Windows) PC estate and to allow, if you wish, remote wake up of PCs.
- Turn off video when not required in online meetings
- Follow guidance from the Green Software Foundation
- Python programmers can make of CodeCarbon to measure their Carbon footprints
- Consider employing "Green Software Engineers"
- See High End Compute for support in reducing energy requirements of modelling, simulation and analyses, and provision of GSE expertise
Look at the Carbon Intensity forecast (e.g. see below from WWF) to plan when to use electricity and when to unplug:
Do digital technologies help or harm the planet: decolonising and decarbonising our digital society?
- Adi Kuntsman, Samuel Attwood, Michael K. Bane, Dany
Cookney, Khadijah Diskin, Christopher Green, Hilde Helm, Ting
Luo, Liz Price, Beth Senior, Valeria Vargas and Georgia Williams.
Do digital technologies help or harm the planet: decolonising and decarbonising
our digital society. Manchester Metropolitan University, U.K. (August, 2022).
ISBN: 978-0-9933426-5-3
- "Imagining" Slides from Hackathon
If you are interested in working with me on any of the above please contact me as below:
My Contact Details
email // LinkedIn // Twitter