an illustration of an integrated circuit surrounded by a green cube.

Crunching Numbers, Sustainably

Powerful computer applications can draw as much energy as small countries. Engineers are working to develop less wasteful hardware that can be considered green.
February 13, 2024
ASME

In this article, Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center researcher Vijay Gadepally talks to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers about strategies for reducing energy use of high-performance computing applications, improving energy transparency, and incentivizing data center users to reduce their carbon footprint. 

As Gadepally explains:

“We have spent a lot of effort in making the information public. People don’t know what the carbon footprint or energy requirements of their jobs are and are flabbergasted when I tell them how much some of these models use in terms of energy. You’re talking about megawatt hours or gigawatt hours. If you’re thinking about things like GPT 3.5 or Bard or [other AI programs], you’re talking about dozens of gigawatt hours’ worth of energy usage.”