Computação de elevado desempenho sustentável
The increasing demand in computing power for different areas of society and the exascale computing paradigm have raised issues on the energy consumption of large data and computing centers. Thus, awareness of sustainability and additional measures are crucial for this sector. Industry and academia have led efforts to enhance the energy efficiency of this sector, and there are also initiatives for regulation, standardization, and research funding. Energy efficiency can be addressed by developing frameworks that categorize the different areas of data and computing centers where energy-saving measures can be implemented. Typically, the main categories are related to cooling systems (the use of more efficient technologies, such as liquid cooling, immersion cooling, airflow management, etc.), power supply (i.e., to reduce inefficiencies), waste heat reuse (i.e., diverse applications for the captured heat) and workload management. While power usage effectiveness (PUE) is the most used metric to assess the energy performance of these systems, it also has some limitations, such as i) lack of guidelines for calculation, ii) lowering PUE has become a goal itself instead of lowering energy consumption, iii) further improvements beyond 1.1 are difficult and iv) disregard for the source of energy, on-site energy generation or waste heat recovery. Multiple KPIs are available related to the integration of renewable energy, carbon footprint, heat reuse, IT and cooling equipment efficiency, among others which are more tailored to the needs and worries of modern computing infrastructures. Current state-of-the-art and funded projects lack a holistic view of HPC systems (energy sources and carbon footprint, predictive management and optimization, innovative cooling technologies, applications for captured heat and new business models). Sustainable HPC project aims to address those issues, while relying on an energy management system that maximizes the sustainability of the HPC operation. The Sustainable HPC project will offer the following contributions: innovate the state-of-art in Green HPC centers: - Managing computing and energy resources, and their interdependencies, in a coordinated way, allows for further optimization in HPC systems. While also accounting for the cooling system at some extent, the energy management system to be developed allows an even more integrated approach. - The utilization of different RES and storage technologies can leverage the advantages of each one to provide a more robust system. - Implementing sustainable cooling solutions that take advantage of environmental conditions available on-site such as free cooling. - Grid carbon intensity forecasting is a valuable product that will be developed within the scope of this project, with only a few examples in the current state-of-the-art. This forecast product provides the possibility of minimizing carbon emissions in a predictive manner and has future applications in energy management systems and on the overall decarbonization of different industries. - The possibility of developing new tools and mechanisms (awareness, incentive, billing) that contribute to behavioral change on HPC utilization from a user point of view, which can lead to further decarbonization for the HPC industry. - The adopted concept of “living lab” will leave the system open to further innovations to occur in the future, by testing and implementing new solutions on, for example, computing and energy management, integration of different RES and storage systems, among others
