Sustainability in HPC: Vision and Opportunities

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities for reducing the carbon footprint of high-performance computing systems as they scale towards exascale, emphasizing sustainability and environmental impact.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities for making HPC systems more environmentally sustainable in the exascale era.

Findings

Identifies key challenges in reducing HPC carbon emissions.

Highlights potential strategies and opportunities for sustainability.

Emphasizes the importance of community efforts in sustainability.

Abstract

Tackling climate change by reducing and eventually eliminating carbon emissions is a significant milestone on the path toward establishing an environmentally sustainable society. As we transition into the exascale era, marked by an increasing demand and scale of HPC resources, the HPC community must embrace the challenge of reducing carbon emissions from designing and operating modern HPC systems. In this position paper, we describe challenges and highlight different opportunities that can aid HPC sites in reducing the carbon footprint of modern HPC systems.