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Metrics for Sustainability in Data Centers

Published: 25 October 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Despite several calls from the community for improving the sustainability of computing, sufficient progress is yet to be made on one of the key prerequisites of sustainable computing---the ability to define and measure computing sustainability holistically. This position paper proposes metrics that aim to measure the end-to-end sustainability footprint in data centers. To enable useful sustainable computing efforts, these metrics can track the sustainability footprint at various granularities---from a single request to an entire data center. The proposed metrics can also broadly influence sustainable computing practices by incentivizing end-users and developers to participate in sustainable computing efforts in data centers.

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cover image ACM SIGEnergy Energy Informatics Review
ACM SIGEnergy Energy Informatics Review  Volume 3, Issue 3
October 2023
77 pages
EISSN:2770-5331
DOI:10.1145/3630614
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Publication History

Published: 25 October 2023
Published in SIGENERGY-EIR Volume 3, Issue 3

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Author Tags

  1. carbon footprint
  2. data centers
  3. embodied carbon
  4. metrics
  5. operational carbon
  6. sustainability

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  • (2024)VESTA: Power Modeling with Language Runtime EventsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36564028:PLDI(621-646)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Towards Environmentally Equitable AI via Geographical Load BalancingThe 15th ACM International Conference on Future and Sustainable Energy Systems10.1145/3632775.3661938(291-307)Online publication date: 21-May-2024
  • (2024)Reducing Datacenter Compute Carbon Footprint by Harnessing the Power of Specialization: Principles, Metrics, Challenges and OpportunitiesIEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing10.1109/TSM.2024.343433137:4(481-488)Online publication date: Nov-2024
  • (2024)Verifiable Sustainability in Data CentersIEEE Security and Privacy10.1109/MSEC.2024.337248822:6(62-74)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024

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