Abstract
At UCSB IEE in October 2015, I characterized the stranded power opportunity and the ideas behind ZCCloud. Now, scientific studies show ZCCloud is economically viable, enabling TCO-competitive systems with higher capability, higher throughput (utility), and zero-carbon footprint. Cloud computing is the world's fastest growing consumer of electricity and has a rapidly growing carbon-footprint. We describe Zero-carbon Cloud (ZCCloud), a cloud approach that presents data centers as a “dispatchable load” to the power grid, exploiting stranded, renewable power to eliminate carbon emissions and increase renewable absorption. Such dispatchable loads are the key to solving growing power waste of terawatt-hours (TWh) in high-renewable fraction grids in the US, Europe, and globally. Zero-carbon cloud studies show that properly sited, these dispatchable data centers can be both high productivity and cost-effective computing resources. In particular, in high power cost geographies today and cloud of the future, the ZCCloud approach can enable 60% higher “peak capability” supercomputers and economically competitive cloud systems. We will outline why this is possible, and the large-scale benefits achievable. Recent changes suggest that the Zero-Carbon Cloud paradigm is on the verge of breakout adoption. We will discuss these early signs -- actions by hyperscale cloud provider and new startups. We will discuss a few of the exciting research challenges that the Zero-carbon paradigm presents for computing including resource prediction, adaptive workload distribution, new distributed protocols, and new business models.
Biography
Dr. Andrew A. Chien is the William Eckhardt Distinguished Service Professor in Computer Science and Director of the CERES Center for Unstoppable Computing at the University of Chicago, as well as Senior Computer Scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory. In 2017-18, he spent a yearlong sabbatical at the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). In 2017, Andrew Chien became the Editor-in-Chief of the Communications of the ACM. In 2015, Dr. Chien founded the CERES Center, an ambitious multi-disciplinary research center involving 15 faculty and leading companies that seeks to create new foundations for computing systems. From 2011-2016, he led the initiative to build a Computing Systems group in UChicago Department of Computer Science, that hired a ten faculty and has transformed the culture, perception, research breadth of the department, and its international stature. From 2005-2010, Dr. Chien served as Vice President of Research at Intel Corporation, leading long-range and “disruptive technologies” research at Intel Research and Intel’s external research programs, including government and higher education engagements. Working with Microsoft, NSF, and Yahoo, Chien launched major initiatives in Parallel Computing and Open Cloud Computing. Previous academic positions include the SAIC Chair Professor in Computer Science and Engineering, and founding Director of the Center for Networked Systems at the University of California at San Diego (1998-2005). While at UCSD, he also founded Entropia, a widely-known Internet Grid computing startup. From 1990 to 1998, Chien was a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana where he created the well-known Fast Messages, HPVM, and Windows NT Supercluster systems. Dr. Chien is a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and has published over 170 technical papers. His research has been recognized for excellence by numerous awards, and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA), Department of Energy (DOE), National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), Office of Naval Research (ONR), and numerous industry sponsors. Chien served on the Board of Directors for the Computing Research Association (CRA), and the Advisory Board of the National Science Foundation’s Computing and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. Chien received his Bachelor's in electrical engineering, Master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.