About the session
Lieven Eeckhout, Full Professor, Ghent University, Belgium
Sustainability and climate change are major challenges for our generation. In this talk, I will argue that sustainable development requires a holistic approach and involves multi-perspective thinking. Applied to computing, sustainable development means that we need to consider the entire environmental impact of computing, including raw material extraction, component manufacturing, product assembly, transportation, use, repair/maintenance, and end-of-life processing (disassembly and recycling/reuse). Analysing current trends reveals that the embodied footprint is, or will soon be, more significant compared to the operational footprint. I will present a simple yet insightful first-order model to assess and reason about the sustainability of computer systems in light of inherent data uncertainty. Applying the model to various case studies illustrates what computer architects and engineers can and should do to better understand the sustainability impact of computing and to design sustainable computer systems.
