Energy-awareComputing

Energy-aware computing (synopsis)

Course name (tentative) : Performance, Power and Energy Consumption Analysis of Computer Systems and Networks. (Shorter names could be Energy-aware Computing, or Sustainable Computing.)

Overall goal:

To provide an introduction to analysis and assessment of performance and energy consumption in computer systems and networks. The course should provide a holistic perspective on sustainable and energy-aware computing covering a range carefully selected topics. It should target students with different backgrounds and from different masters programs. Thus, it should be be a fairly broad course (but not too board) that covers performance and energy aspects of both hardware and software. In addition to providing a system perspective on sustainable computing, it should serve as an appetizer attracting students to more advanced courses in topics such as sensor networks, compiler design, computer architecture and circuit design.

Strategic relevance:

Support a Green IT specialization within the D&IT programmes

Content:

Selecting the topics to be included in the course is difficult and requires much analysis and thoughts by experts in many fields. Here is a list of tentative topics:

Factual knowledge about energy consumption of computer systems ( Can be obtain, e.g., from reports issue by EPA – the US Environmental Protection Agency).
Basic energy properties of hardware, especially CMOS circuits
Basic performance and energy trade-offs in computer architecture
The impact of compiler optimizations on performance and energy-consumption.
OS support for energy management
Energy preserving techniques in wireless sensor networks.
Probabilistic performance and energy modeling.

Some links of interest:

http://www.google.com/corporate/green/datacenters/

http://computing.fs.cornell.edu/fsit/sustainable

http://www.usenix.org/publications/login/2009-04/openpdfs/hotpower08.pdf