CNS Core: Small: Repurposing Smartphones to Minimize Carbon

智能手机每年的销量超过10亿部，其中大多数在不到两年的时间里就退役了。这些不需要的智能手机中的大多数既没有被丢弃也没有被回收，而是在垃圾抽屉和存储单元中苦苦挣扎。这种计算储备代表了巨大的浪费潜力；这些智能手机具有高性能和节能的处理器，广泛的网络功能和可靠的内置电源。这个项目给了旧的、被丢弃的、闲置的智能手机第二次生命。该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建立了路线图。最后，该项目在规模上测试这些想法，以经验确定如何最好地使用手机作为计算和手机作为传感器。重新利用智能手机来延长其使用寿命是减少碳足迹的一个关键方面。集成电路制造是一个碳密集程度极高的过程，在智能手机的总体碳成本中占主导地位。重新利用智能手机可以延长智能手机的使用寿命，从而更好地摊销其制造碳成本。重新利用的手机可以取代新电子设备的制造，并降低总体碳消耗。这个项目训练本科生和研究生用旧的、不需要的智能手机构建可持续的计算系统。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。

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.