Geo-distributed workloads - chasing the sun to reduce our data center energy use

Technology Now

In this episode, we are looking at improving the energy efficiency and sustainability of our computer workloads by shifting them around the world in real-time - something called ‘geo-distribution’.

The idea involves looking at real time global energy production- ideally from renewable sources - and a load of other factors including weather, water tables and more. By comparing these factors as well as compute availability and the lag between data source and data center, you can find the most sustainable locations to perform a task. Ideally, shifting the workloads so quickly that the user doesn’t even know it’s happening.

To tell us more we’re joined this week by Cullen Bash, Vice President, Research & Development at HPE, who leads the Systems Architecture Lab at Hewlett Packard Labs.

This is Technology Now, a weekly show from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Every week we look at a story that's been making headlines, take a look at the technology behind it, and explain why it matters to organizations and what we can learn from it.

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About this week's guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cullen-bash/

Sources and statistics cited in this episode:
IEA report on data centre energy usage: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6b2fd954-2017-408e-bf08-952fdd62118a/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf
ING research into data centre water use: https://think.ing.com/articles/data-centres-growth-in-water-consumption-needs-more-attention/
Brain-on-chip robot: https://h.xinhuaxmt.com/vh512/share/12076644?d=134d8f3&channel=weixin (in Mandarin)
English language story: https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/this-robot-is-controlled-by-a-human-brain-in-a-jar