Collaborative Research: NGSDI: Foundations of Clean and Balanced Datacenters: Treehouse

计算需要能量。大多数计算是在称为数据中心的集中式集线器中完成的。据估计，数据中心消耗了全球电力生产的1-2%。数据中心计算及其能源使用预计将继续快速增长，速度可能达到每隔几年翻一番。这是不可持续的。Treehouse项目旨在提高数据中心计算的能源效率，使数据中心计算的能源使用在细粒度层面上对用户负责，并减少数据中心计算中最常用部分的不必要浪费。Treehouse在几个方面提高了数据中心的能源效率。Treehouse引入了一种新的计算抽象，允许应用程序开发人员（通过在细粒度级别上显示应用程序的能源使用情况）和系统设计人员（通过确定何时可以安全地执行节能优化，而不会损害用户对应用程序性能和可靠性的目标）进行新的能源优化。其他策略包括减少不必要的软件膨胀，减少资源搁浅，以及利用新型硬件带来的机会，在性能和能源使用之间进行复杂的权衡的新算法。除了更好的能源和资源管理，Treehouse还为最终用户提供工具，帮助他们了解并减少云服务对个人碳的使用。这可以从根本上改变云计算行业对数据中心能源使用的看法。数据中心运营商可以以更低的成本提供新的节能计算模型。Treehouse软件系统和协议将是开源的。通过外展和新的教育材料，树屋将率先培训一种新型的能源意识工程师，以满足社会对节能计算基础设施的需求。Treehouse将产生软件工件，硬件设计，以及运行这些程序和工件的结果。这些材料将在许可的开源许可下供公众使用，在多个地点存档，并在项目完成后至少五年内在项目网站treehouse.cs.washington.edu上提供。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Computing requires energy. Most computing is done in centralized hubs called datacenters. Datacenters consume an estimated 1-2% of worldwide electricity production. Datacenter computing, and its energy use, is projected to continue to grow rapidly, perhaps as fast as doubling every few years. This is simply not sustainable. The Treehouse project aims to improve the energy efficiency of datacenter computing by making datacenter computing energy use accountable to users at a fine-grained level and by reducing unnecessary waste in the most frequently used parts of datacenter computation. Treehouse improves datacenter energy efficiency in several ways. Treehouse introduces a new computational abstraction that allows new energy optimizations by both application developers (by making application energy use visible at a fine-grained level) and systems designers (by identifying when energy-efficient optimizations can be safely performed without compromising user goals for application performance and reliability). Additional strategies include reducing unnecessary software bloat, reducing resource stranding, and new algorithms to exploit the opportunity posed by new types of hardware with complex tradeoffs between performance and energy use. Beyond better energy and resource management, Treehouse provides end users the tools to understand and reduce their individual carbon use from cloud services. This can fundamentally change the way the cloud computing industry thinks about datacenter energy use. Datacenter operators can provide new energy efficient computing models at lower cost. Treehouse software systems and protocols will be open source. Through outreach and new educational materials, Treehouse will pioneer the training of a new type of energy-aware engineer to meet societal needs for an energy-efficient computing infrastructure. Treehouse will produce software artifacts, hardware designs, and the results of running those programs and artifacts. These materials will be available for public use under a permissive open source license, archived in multiple locations, and available at the project website treehouse.cs.washington.edu for at least five years after the completion of the project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.