CNS Core: Small: Repurposing Smartphones to Minimize Carbon

每年售出的智能手机超过10亿部，其中大多数在不到两年后就会退役。这些不想要的智能手机中的大多数既不被丢弃，也不被回收，而是被扔在垃圾抽屉和储藏室里。这种计算储备代表着巨大的浪费潜力；这些智能手机拥有高性能和高能效的处理器、广泛的网络功能和可靠的内置电源。这个项目给旧的、废弃的、闲置的智能手机带来了第二次生命。这项研究解决了如何将用户优化的交互式设备转变为能够长期无人值守操作的强大、可靠的设备的关键技术问题。它开发了新的指标来捕捉制造和运营的碳成本，将这些指标与经济模型结合起来，并为旧电子设备的最佳机会制定了路线图。最后，该项目对这些想法进行了大规模测试，以实证地确定如何最好地将手机用作计算机和手机作为传感器。重新使用智能手机来延长其寿命是减少其碳足迹的关键方面。集成电路制造是一个碳密集度极高的过程，在智能手机的总体碳成本中占据主导地位。重新调整用途延长了智能手机的使用寿命，以更好地摊销其制造碳成本。重新调整用途的手机可以取代新电子设备的制造，并降低整体碳消耗。该项目培训本科生和研究生利用旧的、不需要的智能手机构建可持续计算系统。该项目由可持续计算设计(NSF 22-060)资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

More than a billion smartphones are sold each year and most are decommissioned less than two years later. The majority of these unwanted smartphones are neither discarded nor recycled, but languish in junk drawers and storage units. This computational stockpile represents a huge wasted potential; these smartphones have a high-performance and energy-efficient processor, extensive networking capabilities, and a reliable built-in power supply. This project gives a second life to older, discarded, idle smartphones. The research addresses key technical questions of how to transform a user-optimized, interactive device into a robust, reliable device capable of long-term, unattended operation. It develops new metrics to capture both manufacturing and operational carbon costs, couples these with economic models, and establishes a roadmap for the best opportunities for old electronic devices. Finally, the project tests these ideas at scale, to empirically establish how best to use phones-as-compute and phones-as-sensors.Repurposing smartphones to extend their lifetime is a key facet of reducing their carbon footprint. Integrated circuit manufacturing is an extremely carbon-intensive process and dominates the overall carbon cost for smartphones. Repurposing extends smartphone lifetimes to better amortize their manufacturing carbon costs. A repurposed phone can displace the manufacture of a new electronic device and lower overall carbon consumption. This project trains undergraduate and graduate students to build sustainable computing systems out of old, unwanted smartphones.This project is funded by Design for Sustainable Computing (NSF 22-060)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.