The Green Cloud Project: Innovative Solutions for Energy-Efficient Cloud Computing

Introduction

Traditionally, high-performance computing (HPC) community has focused on performance (speed). Since early 2000, several companies have started building Data Centers inspired by commodity HPC (cluster computing) systems-architecture for hosting/powering industrial applications including search engines such as Google. At the same time microprocessor vendors have not only doubled the number of transistors (and speed) every 18-24 months, but they have also doubled the power densities. That is, the tremendous increase in computer performance has come with an even grater increase in power usage. As a result operational cost of HPC systems including industrial Data Centre is rapidly growing. This is reflected from a statement by CEO of Google (Eric Schmit): "what matter most to Google is not speed but power, because data centers can consume as much electricity as a city."

The aim of Green Cloud Project is to develop high-end computing systems such as Clusters, Data Centers, and Clouds that allocate resources to applications hosting Internet services (e-Services) to meet not only users' quality of service requirements, but also minimise consumption of electric power. That is to, to improve power management and consumption by dynamically managing and configuring power-aware ability of system devices, such as processors, disks, and communication links.

Team Members @ Melbourne CLOUDS Lab

External Collaborators

Publications

Presentation/Exhibition

Useful Pointers

       
Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory
School of Computing and Information Systems
The University of Melbourne, Australia