Transcript Document
Grand Challenge:
Global Climate Change
Carla Ellis
Duke University
What do Distributed Systems have to do with it?
Carla Ellis / Duke University / NSF Grand Challenges in Distributed Systems Workshop @ MIT / Sept, 29-30, 2005
A “Greener” Computing
Infrastructure
Reducing the
environmental
impact of
• Manufacture,
deployment,
and disposal
• Energy cost of
running and
cooling
Supporting Climate Science &
Engineering
• Computational support for
science of global climate
change
• Applications to enhance
energy efficiency /
management outside the
computing sector
Role for Distributed
Computing Research in
Greener Computing
• Improved lifecycle: reduce/reuse/recycle
– Incentive systems to encourage energy-motivated
resource sharing
• P2P to achieve more efficient utilization of existing unused
capacity
• Low power / low energy computing systems
– Broader systems context for energy management
– Lessons from mobile computing – tolerating
disconnectedness – not always “on”
– Develop energy metrics / measurement expertise / tools
Carla Ellis / Duke University / NSF Grand Challenges in Distributed Systems Workshop @ MIT / Sept, 29-30, 2005
Role for Distributed
Computing Research
in Climate Science
• Deployment of sensor networks designed
specifically for environmental monitoring
– Harvesting energy in the field
• Dynamic data driving large-scale scientific
simulations
• Application-specific tools
Carla Ellis / Duke University / NSF Grand Challenges in Distributed Systems Workshop @ MIT / Sept, 29-30, 2005
Role for Distributed
Computing Research in
Energy Management
• Managing energy distribution systems
– Microgrids: peer-to-peer power generation
• Supporting energy conservation efforts in
buildings, transportation systems,
manufacturing processes, etc.
– Interfaces exposing energy use to users
• Collaboration applications for more effective
teleconferencing / telecommuting
Carla Ellis / Duke University / NSF Grand Challenges in Distributed Systems Workshop @ MIT / Sept, 29-30, 2005
Implications for NSF
• Inter-disciplinary research with
scientists & engineers dealing with
environmental and energy problems.
• Any new networking hardware should
emphasize energy efficiency.
• Is it a candidate for a CISE program?
– Potential to redirect lots of areas of
expertise in systems to new goals, different
metrics & underlying assumptions.
Carla Ellis / Duke University / NSF Grand Challenges in Distributed Systems Workshop @ MIT / Sept, 29-30, 2005