Research
Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing
Dr. Fred Chong, Director
As computing and data storage increasingly become a globally-available, public utility, the proliferation of large numbers of servers and massive data centers will have a substantial energy footprint in our future. The typical server consumes as much energy in one year as an SUV. Worldwide, businesses now spend $30 billion to power their data centers, and that cost is growing rapidly. Energy expenditures are already becoming more significant than the cost of machines, making energy efficiency of critical importance to our future information technology infrastructure and natural environment.
The goal of the Greenscale Center is to leverage key strengths at UCSB to face the new millennium's energy challenges. Energy-efficient computing can not be achieved without the interplay between computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and environmental science. Designing tomorrow's large-scale computing systems will require a vertically-integrated effort to drive key energy-efficient technologies in computing, electronics, and building systems. Collectively, these technologies address very significant near-term and long-term energy challenges and their impact will require evaluation in economic and environmental terms.
The Greenscale Center has Computer Engineering Program faculty involved in the following areas:
- Emerging Technologies for Energy-Proportional Computation: Banerjee, Brewer, Cheng, Chong, Marek-Sadowska, Sherwood
- Cooling Technologies: Chong, Sherwood
- Energy-Aware Computation: Krintz, Wolski
- Life-Cycle Analysis and Policy: Chong
- Wireless Networking: Almeroth, Rodoplu, Zheng
Greenscale News
Greenscale Center featured in article entitled Energy Star Ratings for Servers in the Institute for Energy Efficiency newsletter. The Center applies cutting-edge software and hardware techniques to address these challenges... (June 2009)
Fred Chong presents at the 2009 Santa Barbara Summit on Energy Efficency. Chong, who is the Computing Solutions Group Head at the Institute for Energy Efficiency and the Director of the Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing presented a talk entitled Computing: Enabling the Continued Growth of the Internet Services (May 2009)
Greenscale Director Fred Chong delivers keynote opening entitled Towards More Sustainable Computer Design (pdf) at the 26th International Conference on Computer Design. (Oct 2008)
Research News
Prof. Kaustav Banerjee and his Nanoelectronics Research Lab and the Institute of Microelectronics (IME) of Singapore have entered into a “green electronics” research collaboration agreement focused on developing ultra-efficient nanoscale transistors and exploring their circuit-level functionality. The collaboration will be led by ECE Prof. Kaustav Banerjee, an affiliated faculty member of the Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE) and the Greenscale Center at UCSB, and by Dr. Navab Singh at IME - more (October 2009)
Faculty Research Spotlight: Dr. Luke Theogarajan
- Lab/Group Name - Biomimetic Circuits & Nanosystems
- Research Interests: Low-Power Analog VLSI, Biomimetic Nanosystems, Neural Prostheses, Biosensors, Triblock Polymer Synthesis, Self-Assembly, and Microfabrication
- Courses: VLSI for Computer Engineers (194BB) and Circuits and Electronics I and II (137A and B )
Tell Us About Your Research: Our lab is fundamentally interested in utilizing science and engineering to enhance the lives of people suffering from debilitating neurological diseases. To achieve this goal we focus on the following areas: circuits, microfabrication, chemistry and nanoscience. Some of the areas we are actively pursuing are:
- Retinal prosthesis that hopes to restore vision to the blind by stimulating the remaining healthy layers of the retina either electrically or chemically.
- Wireless neural recording from the brain.
- Nanostructures for triggered drug-delivery.
- Nanostructures that cross the blood-brain barrier.
- Nanosensors for sensing biomolecules such as DNA and glucose.
How and Why Did You Get Into Your Area of Research: I believe that life should be fair and unfortunately this is not a reality for many disabled people and this had a great impact on me very early on during my childhood and I decided if there was anything I could to do help I would and this is why I decided to work on neural prosthetics.
What do you Find Particularly Rewarding about your Research?: To be honest I am still far way from achieving the goals of what I set out to do so maybe this is a question best asked at the end of my career. Of course, I do enjoy working on the problem and solving it , engaging students and seeing their eyes light up when they understand things or discover new things.