LOCOS Seminar – Lieven Eeckhout: Sustainable Processor Design

Low Carbon Computing Seminar

Lieven Eeckhout is a Professor at Ghent University, Belgium, and will deliver a LOCOS Seminar on Sustainable Processor Design.

Sustainability and climate change is a major challenge for our generation. In this talk I will argue that sustainable development requires a holistic approach and involves multi-perspective thinking. Applied to computing, sustainable development means that we need to consider the entire environmental impact of computing, including raw material extraction, component manufacturing, product assembly, transportation, use, repair/maintenance, and end-of-life processing (disassembly and recycling/ reuse). Analyzing current trends reveals that the embodied footprint is, or will soon be, more significant compared to the operational footprint. I will present a simple, yet insightful, first-order model to assess and reason about the sustainability of processors in light of the inherent data uncertainty. Applying the model to a variety of case studies illustrates what computer architects and engineers can and should do to better understand the sustainability impact of computing, and to design sustainable processors.

See past and future LOCOS Seminars at https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/computing/research/researchthemes/lowcarbon/