Collaborative Research: NGSDI: CarbonFirst: A Sustainable and Reliable Carbon-Centric Cloud-Edge Software Infrastructure

云计算平台继续呈指数级增长，并正在成为我们信息化经济的基础。虽然在过去十年中，由于积极的能源效率优化，云计算的能源需求增长速度比预期的要慢，但使用传统方法进行优化的机会很少。因此，云的持续指数级增长将转化为指数级增长的能源需求，这将使其成为全球碳排放的主要贡献者之一。为了解决这个问题，该项目将碳提升为设计可持续可靠的云边缘软件基础设施的一流指标，以实现持续的指数级增长。该项目的基础是一个软件定义的能源虚拟化层，它为应用程序提供了对自身能源和碳使用的可见性和控制。该项目将利用这一基础来开发更高层次的系统抽象，以支持不同地理尺度上的碳效率应用，包括：集群气球技术，该技术可以自动调整应用的能源使用，以匹配本地边缘站点不稳定的清洁能源供应；边缘跳跃机制，利用较低的区域能量波动来平衡边缘站点之间的能量；碳上限政策，跟踪应用程序的全球电网碳排放量，并在达到上限后限制电网能源。通过使商业云平台能够持续地继续其指数级增长，该项目有可能产生重大的社会影响。该项目将通过将提案中的主题纳入合作机构的当地初高中学生的暑期课程来进行推广。该项目还将通过在研究生和高级本科课程中采用边缘计算、云计算和可持续计算的元素，影响这些机构的课程。最后，该项目将通过利用机构多样性努力招募不同群体的学生，并将通过本科生研究经验（REU）项目吸引本科生。该项目将通过项目网站http://www.carbonfirst.org和麻省大学跟踪存储库http://traces.cs.umass.edu向研究社区提供其软件工件、数据集和研究结果。来自这个项目的工件将在项目结束后的至少五年时间里被维护在项目网站和跟踪存储库中。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。

Cloud computing platforms continue to grow exponentially, and are becoming the foundation of our information-based economy. While the cloud’s energy demand grew more slowly than expected over the past decade due to aggressive energy-efficiency optimizations, there are few remaining optimization opportunities using traditional methods. As a result, the cloud’s continued exponential growth will translate into exponentially rising energy demand, which will position it as one of the primary contributors to global carbon emissions. To address the problem, this project elevates carbon to a first-class metric in designing a sustainable and reliable cloud-edge software infrastructure that can enable continued exponential growth.The project's foundation is a software-defined energy virtualization layer that provides applications visibility into, and control of, their own energy and carbon usage. The project will leverage this foundation to develop higher-level systems abstractions for supporting carbon-efficient applications at different geographical scales including: a cluster balloon technique, which automatically adjusts applications’ energy usage to match a volatile clean energy supply at local edge sites; edge hopping mechanisms, which exploit lower regional energy volatility to balance energy across edge sites; and carbon capping policies, which track applications’ global grid carbon emissions and restrict grid energy after reaching the cap.The project has the potential for significant societal impact by enabling commercial cloud platforms to sustainably continue their exponential growth. The project will conduct outreach by incorporating topics from the proposal into summer programs for local middle and high school students at the partner institutions. The project will also impact the curriculum at these institutions by adopting elements of edge, cloud, and sustainable computing into graduate and advanced undergraduate courses. Finally, the project will recruit a diverse group of students by leveraging institutional diversity efforts and will involve undergraduate students through Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) projects.The project will make its software artifacts, datasets, and research results available to the research community on the project website at http://www.carbonfirst.org and via the UMass Trace Repository at http://traces.cs.umass.edu. Artifacts derived from this project will be maintained on the project website and the trace repository for a minimum of five years after the project's conclusion.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.