InfoQ Homepage Sustainable Computing Content on InfoQ
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Meta Optimizes Data Center Sustainability with Reinforcement Learning
In a recent blog post, Meta describes how its engineers use reinforcement learning (RL), to optimize environmental controls in Meta’s data centers, reducing energy consumption and water usage while addressing broader challenges such as climate change.
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Microsoft Unveils Azure Cobalt 100-Based Virtual Machines: Enhanced Performance and Sustainability
Microsoft's Azure Cobalt 100 VMs are now generally available. They deliver up to 50% improved price performance with energy-efficient Arm architecture. Tailored for diverse workloads, these VMs offer various configurations, including general-purpose and memory-optimized options. Their release supports sustainable computing, aligning with Microsoft's commitment to lower carbon footprints.
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How AWS Well-Architected Framework Supports Frugal Architecture
AWS shared how to deliver frugal architecture using Well-Architectured Framework guidance. The authors outline areas of alignment between the WAF and the Frugal Architect laws Dr. Werner Vogels introduced in his re:Invent 2023 keynote. By implementing the frugal approach, organizations can achieve sustainability and cost optimization goals for their cloud architectures.
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CO2.js Helps Developers Track Their Application’s Carbon Footprint
The Green Web Foundation published a new release of CO2.js, a JavaScript library that enables developers to access the Green Web API and estimate the carbon emissions associated with their apps, websites, and software. CO2.js supports developers who want to create a carbon budget for their site or include carbon footprint estimation in monitoring tools.
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People, Planet, Cloud and AI: Key Takeaways from QCon London
This year’s QCon London brought a wealth of talks directly or indirectly related to software architecture, ranging from the rise of AI to more established areas like anything cloud-related to the usual classics like architecture quality traits . The conference also featured many talks about sociotechnical aspects of software architecture and engineering and broadly considered sustainability.
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How to Do Sustainable Software Development
Software sustainability includes computing for environmental purposes and using resources appropriately. According to Coral Calero, software engineers need a holistic way of looking at software and should be aware of the environmental impact of software. Several tools and frameworks are available for software engineers to do sustainable software development.
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KubeCon EU Keynotes: a Call to Action to Innovate Responsibly with Generative AI
The KubeCon EU morning keynotes were a veritable call to action encouraging the cloud-native community's involvement in building the scalable infrastructure needed by generative AI. This call was balanced with encouragement to make a cloud-native platform’s “golden path” green and sustainable, ensuring that any innovation is also responsible.
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The Frugal Architect: AWS Promotes Cost Awareness for Sustainability
Dr. Werner Vogels, AWS' CTO, dedicated the first part of his re:Invent keynote to discussing the laws of frugal architectures, cloud-native architectures aiming at delivering cost-aware, sustainable, and maintainable solutions. Vogels laid out seven simple laws based on his and AWS’ experience building and evolving cloud platform services, with cost implications as one of the primary drivers.
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AWS Restructures and Consolidates Its Well-Architected Framework
AWS published a new set of updates to its Well-Architected Framework, with changes across all six pillars of the framework. The performance efficiency and operational excellence pillars have been restructured and consolidated to reduce the number of best practices. Other pillars received improved implementation guidance, including recommendations and steps on reusable architecture patterns.
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Sustainable Product Development Using Agile and Value Stream Mapping
Sustainable product development can be done by combining agile with concepts from the circular economy in our daily work. Value stream mapping can be extended to incorporate circular economy principles to optimize the flow of materials, information, and energy usage.
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Cloudflare Claims Migration to Their Services Can Reduce Network Carbon Emissions by 78-96%
A study conducted by the consultancy firm Analysys Mason suggests that shifting networking and security workloads to Cloudflare can significantly reduce network carbon emissions. According to the report, Cloudflare’s networking products can help companies lower their carbon emissions and meet sustainability objectives.
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Why Your Workloads Do Not Run on Renewable Energy (Yet) and What to Do about it
Renewable energy is an important step on the way to fight climate change. The energy produced by burning fossil resources is one of the main drivers of carbon emissions. But running a datacenter on renewable energy all the time is difficult. Usually - with only a few exceptions - your workloads do not run on renewable energy.
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Sustainable Software Systems Using Circular Economy Principles
The circular economy is a framework that aims to keep products and materials in use for as long as possible, reducing waste and pollution, and regenerating natural systems. As practitioners or change enablers, we can support sustainable product development using concepts from the circular economy in our daily work.
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What Carbon Neutral Really Means and How Net-Zero Is Different
Carbon neutrality means that the total amount of emissions is either eliminated, neutralized, or compensated. Net-zero is a target that doesn’t include compensation and puts more emphasis on avoiding carbon emissions. Many products, data centers, or companies are already carbon neutral, but few have reached net-zero. The problem with offsetting approaches is that you continue to emit carbon.
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Is ChatGPT Fit for Every Purpose: Alan Turing Ethics Fellow Presents Checklist in Devoxx UK Keynote
During her keynote at Devoxx UK, Mhairi Aitken talked about the limitations of AI when grappling with the complexities of human language. Further, she provided checklist developers use to inspect the AI Foundations before building on top of them. She urged us to be guided by ethical and social considerations when building on AI, as a general-purpose AI model may not be fit for every purpose.