Green challenges to system software in data centers

Abstract

With the increasing demand and the wide application of high performance commodity multi-core processors, both the quantity and scale of data centers grow dramatically and they bring heavy energy consumption. Researchers and engineers have applied much effort to reducing hardware energy consumption, but software is the true consumer of power and another key in making better use of energy. System software is critical to better energy utilization, because it is not only the manager of hardware but also the bridge and platform between applications and hardware. In this paper, we summarize some trends that can affect the efficiency of data centers. Meanwhile, we investigate the causes of software inefficiency. Based on these studies, major technical challenges and corresponding possible solutions to attain green system software in programmability, scalability, efficiency and software architecture are discussed. Finally, some of our research progress on trusted energy efficient system software is briefly introduced.

Keywords

green software / multi-core / data center / power efficient system software

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (2007AA01Z119, 2009AA01Z141 and 2009AA01Z151), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 90718040). We thank all the members of our team.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg