Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Optimizing Computer Application Energy Efficiency

Greetings from the famous room N101 at the Australian National University where Associate Professor Steve Blackburn's PHD students are reporting their progress researching the energy efficiency of computer architectures for different applications.

As I teach in my course on ICT Sustainability, the first step in energy efficiency is to measure energy use. This is discussed in the paper "Looking Back on the Language and Hardware Revolutions: Measured Power, Performance, and Scaling" (2011).Measurement has become easier this year with the release of Intel's Center-bridge processor support of a Runtime Average Power Limit (RAPL) Driver.

This work is of more than just theoretical interest and it may change the future of the world. The share of electrical energy being used by computers is increasing and so their contribution to global warming.

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