July 2010 - Swinburne University of Technology

swinburne JULY 2010
SUSTAINABILITY
14
INTERNET POWER MAY NEED
computers to sleep
STORY BY David Adams
ON ANY GIVEN DAY the amount of energy
used to power Facebook pages, recipe
searches, news sites and all that the internet
entails is about 20 or 30 gigawatts – in terms
of greenhouse gas emissions, this is roughly
the same as the airline industry.
That equates to two or three times as
much as Victoria’s total peak electricity
generating capacity and although it only
accounts for two or three per cent of the
energy consumed around the world, the rate
at which the internet is growing means this
figure is starting to climb – and fast.
Dr Lachlan Andrew, associate professor
at the Centre for Advanced Internet
Architectures (CAIA) at Swinburne
University of Technology, is researching
ways in which the efficiency of the internet
can be improved to lessen its environmental
impact.
He is motivated not only by the influence
the internet’s power use is already having on
the environment but also by the finite nature
of the world’s energy supply.
“The total rate of extraction of oil is
approaching its peak and the total rate of
energy generation will also reduce,” says
Dr Andrew, who joined Swinburne in 2008
after spending three years at the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US.
“The current mindset of ‘x’ per cent growth
per annum will have to change. We simply
can’t keep increasing our activity because
the rate at which we use one of our most
basic raw materials (oil) is going to have
to decline.”
Drawing on funding he will receive over
the next four years after being awarded
an Australian Research Council Future
Fellowship, Dr Andrew is proposing a
number of projects to investigate ways in
which the internet’s energy efficiency can
be increased and what effects this has on its
performance.
One of the projects already underway
is looking at how a computer’s processing
speed can be better regulated to minimise
energy consumption.
Computers can already slow down the
rate at which they process information to
save energy, but it is generally only done in
an ad-hoc fashion, according to parameters
set by the manufacturer. Together with
Caltech’s Dr Adam Wierman, Dr Andrew
is examining how the mechanism within
a computer responsible for controlling
processing speed can be manipulated to
make PCs’ energy use more efficient,
while holding the time a computer takes to
complete a job within reasonable limits.
Dr Andrew says the point of the research
is not necessarily to encourage more people
to adopt the most energy-efficient way of
processing but to make them more aware of
the trade-offs that are involved.
“We’re saying ‘Here’s the trade-off: if
you want to be putting a lot of emphasis on
going fast, then you will save this much less
Key points
Worldwide, the internet
currently draws as much
as 20 or 30 gigawatts of
power.
Swinburne researchers are
examining how internet
use can be made more
efficient, for example at
how improved regulation of
computer processing speed
could save energy.
Other investigations focus
on the effects on energy
use of shutting down
components of some
switches in routers and
placing computers used in
peer-to-peer file sharing
networks in sleep states.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: JUSTIN GARNSWORTHY
energy;; if you want to put the emphasis on
saving energy, then you will run this much
slower’. So we’re quantifying the trade-offs
for the designers.”
Other projects include one in which
Dr Andrew and his Swinburne colleague,
Associate Professor Hai Vu are looking at how
components of some switches located within
routers used to provide internet connectivity can
be shut down at certain periods to save energy.
In a separate initiative, Dr Andrew is also
proposing to examine how putting computers
used in commercial peer-to-peer file sharing
networks into a ‘sleep state’ for a period of
time will affect energy consumption and the
network’s performance.
Dr Kerry Hinton, a senior research
fellow at the Institute for a Broadband-
Enabled Society (IBES) at the University
of Melbourne, says Dr Andrew’s research
is particularly needed given the looming
‘energy bottleneck’ – a term used to describe
the problems many industry experts foresee
developing as the amount of power the
internet needs to function continues to grow.
“It is essential that the internet and
the equipment it relies upon continuously
become more energy efficient,” he says.
“Without this, the internet’s growth will
ultimately result in an energy bottleneck.
If this is not resolved, future growth of
the internet may be retarded. This could
negatively impact on social and economic
developments that rely on the internet.”
Dr Hinton says one of the most important
aspects of the work surrounds working out
how to use computer ‘sleep states’ to reduce
energy consumption.
“Get it right and we can make good gains
in energy efficiency. Get it wrong and the
energy consumption may actually increase.”
Dr Mung Chiang, an associate professor
of electrical engineering at Princeton
University in the US and someone aware of
Dr Andrew’s work, says that working out
how to trade-off technology performance
with energy consumption is a demanding
challenge to researchers globally.
“I believe Lachlan’s research work and
collaborations present one of the most
promising efforts to meet that challenge,” he
says, noting that it will complement work
being done elsewhere around the world – in
Asia, the US and the European Union – to
‘green’ the IT industry. “Lachlan’s research
program on this topic will naturally form
partnerships with some of these.” ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine