Green Computing Group

As computer technology as found its way to all corners of the Earth on a massive scale, issues of power, networking, affordability, reusability, and recyclability have come to the forefront.  Our lab's research in this area involves exploring ways to reduce the environmental footprint of computing technology and to find ways to spread the democratizing power of information and computing to developing communities.

Project: Power Minimization in Computing

Purpose: Investigate green computing approaches to reduce power consumption, saving money and reducing waste. Explore related areas and generate spin-off projects.

Researchers: Tom Way

Research alumni: Mujtaba Talebi, Christopher Continanza

Description:

The goal of the project is to explore technological solutions to the problems of pervasive computing which leads to excessive use of power, and ultimately to dramatically increased power consumption, power production and pollution. Among the possible projects include travel to developing communities to investigate technology needs, development of software and hardware that supports the goals of Green Computing, and authoring reports and making presentations to communicate the results of our research.

Research subprojects:

• Power Consumption Study - develop approaches for quantifying power consumption, investigate techniques and develop guidelines and software tools for reducing power use and eliminating power waste.
• Power Minimizing Compiler Optimizations - develop compiler optimizations that can emphasize reduced power consumption of compiled executable programs.
• Technological Support of Munting Paraiso Project - travel to a community in the Philipines to assess technology needs, assist the community with networking and technology, and devise plans for future research that can benefit similar communities in a variety of ways.
• Tips for home and office - develop tips for saving power and resources that can be used at home, in the office or around your computer science department. The start of this list is here.

Benchmarks

• Auto-surf - web page that automatically surfs the web to enable power use estimation for common task of viewing the Internet.

Resources

• Green Computing - Wikipedia entry.
• Wakeup 1.6 - tool that purports to enable remote wakeup on a LAN.
• Standby tools - collection of power saving tools.
• PC Power Management guidelines - Policies at Univ. of Western Australia.
• Smart Strip - power strip that intelligently powers down all items
• Kill-a-watt power monitor - records power use at the outlet
• Watt's Up Pro - Support and info from Electronic Educational Devices

updated: 10/01/09

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