research-article

Totally green: evaluating and designing servers for lifecycle environmental impact

Authors:

Parthasarathy Ranganathan,

Cullen BashAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, Volume 40, Issue 1

Pages 25 - 36

https://doi.org/10.1145/2189750.2150980

Published: 03 March 2012 Publication History

Abstract

The environmental impact of servers and datacenters is an important future challenge. System architects have traditionally focused on operational energy as a proxy for designing green servers, but this ignores important environmental implications from server production (materials, manufacturing, etc.). In contrast, this paper argues for a lifecycle focus on the environmental impact of future server designs, to include both operation and production. We present a new methodology to quantify the total environmental impact of system design decisions. Our approach uses the thermodynamic metric of exergy consumption, adapted and validated for use by system architects. Using this methodology, we evaluate the lifecycle impact of several example system designs with environment-friendly optimizations. Our results show that environmental impact from production can be important (around 20% on current servers and growing) and system design choices can reduce this component (by 30--40%). Our results also highlight several, sometimes unexpected, cross-interactions between the environmental impact of production and operation that further motivate a total lifecycle emphasis for future green server designs.

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Cited By

Wang JPalanisamy BXu J(2020)Sustainability-aware Resource Provisioning in Data Centers2020 IEEE 6th International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC)10.1109/CIC50333.2020.00018(60-69)Online publication date: Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/CIC50333.2020.00018
Suresh SSakthivel S(2018)System modeling and evaluation on factors influencing power and performance management of cloud load balancing algorithmsJournal of Web Engineering10.5555/3177218.317722415:5-6(484-500)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3177218.3177224
Kong FLiu X(2014)A Survey on Green-Energy-Aware Power Management for DatacentersACM Computing Surveys10.1145/264270847:2(1-38)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2642708
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Totally green: evaluating and designing servers for lifecycle environmental impact
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Distributed architectures
      1. Client-server architectures
2. Information systems
  1. Data management systems
    1. Middleware for databases
      1. Application servers
      2. Database web servers

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 40, Issue 1

ASPLOS '12

March 2012

453 pages

ISSN:0163-5964

DOI:10.1145/2189750

Issue’s Table of Contents

ASPLOS XVII: Proceedings of the seventeenth international conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
March 2012
476 pages
ISBN:9781450307598
DOI:10.1145/2150976
General Chair:
Tim Harris
Microsoft Research
,
Program Chair:
Michael L. Scott
University of Rochester

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 03 March 2012

Published in SIGARCH Volume 40, Issue 1

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Cited By

Wang JPalanisamy BXu J(2020)Sustainability-aware Resource Provisioning in Data Centers2020 IEEE 6th International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC)10.1109/CIC50333.2020.00018(60-69)Online publication date: Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/CIC50333.2020.00018
Suresh SSakthivel S(2018)System modeling and evaluation on factors influencing power and performance management of cloud load balancing algorithmsJournal of Web Engineering10.5555/3177218.317722415:5-6(484-500)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3177218.3177224
Kong FLiu X(2014)A Survey on Green-Energy-Aware Power Management for DatacentersACM Computing Surveys10.1145/264270847:2(1-38)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2642708
Wu CAcun BRaghavendra RHazelwood K(2024)Beyond Efficiency: Scaling AI SustainablyIEEE Micro10.1109/MM.2024.340927544:5(37-46)Online publication date: Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/MM.2024.3409275
Fernandes JEiland RNagendran BMulay VAgonafer D(2017)Effectiveness of Rack-Level Fans—Part II: Control Strategies and System RedundancyJournal of Electronic Packaging10.1115/1.4038014139:4(041012)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2017
https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4038014
Marco VWang ZPorter B(2017)Real-Time Power Cycling in Video on Demand Data Centres Using Online Bayesian Prediction2017 IEEE 37th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)10.1109/ICDCS.2017.167(2125-2130)Online publication date: Jun-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS.2017.167
Whitehead BAndrews DShah A(2015)The life cycle assessment of a UK data centreThe International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment10.1007/s11367-014-0838-720:3(332-349)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-014-0838-7
Aleksic SSafaei M(2014)Exergy consumption of cloud computing: A case study2014 19th European Conference on Networks and Optical Communications - (NOC)10.1109/NOC.2014.6996818(1-6)Online publication date: Jun-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/NOC.2014.6996818
Scott S(2014)2013 Maurice Wilkes Award Given to Parthasarathy (Partha) RanganathanIEEE Micro10.1109/MM.2013.13634:1(90-91)Online publication date: Jan-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/MM.2013.136
Chong FHeck MRanganathan PSaleh AWassel H(2014)Data Center Energy Efficiency:Improving Energy Efficiency in Data Centers Beyond Technology ScalingIEEE Design & Test10.1109/MDAT.2013.229446631:1(93-104)Online publication date: Feb-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/MDAT.2013.2294466
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