InfoQ Homepage Sustainable Computing Content on InfoQ
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Developing and Deploying Software in a Sustainable Way
Sustainable APIs benefit most from minimalism, Jochen Joswig said at OOP Conference . Deployment should consider energy, usage, carbon intensity, hardware acquisition. Remote work, long device lifespans, and green office practices can lower emissions. Efficient CI, selective builds, smaller artefacts, and optimized assets can further reduce energy use.
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Green IT: How to Reduce IT’s Environmental Footprint
Green IT focuses on reducing IT’s environmental footprint, by rethinking how you build, deploy, and power IT systems. At QCon London, Ludi Akue presented how her team did a lifecycle assessment, set a 10% emissions reduction goal, simplified architecture, and optimized frontends, to align with climate goals.
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The Rise of Energy and Water Consumption Using AI Models, and How It Can Be Reduced
Artificial intelligence's (AI) energy and water consumption has become a growing concern in the tech industry, particularly for large-scale machine learning models and data centers. Sustainable AI focuses on making AI technology more environmentally friendly and socially responsible.
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How Developers Can Eliminate Software Waste and Reduce Climate Impact
High performance and sustainability correlate; making software go faster by improving the efficiency of algorithms can reduce energy requirements, Holly Cummins said at QCon London. She suggested switching systems off when not in use to reduce the environmental footprint. Developers can achieve more by doing less, improving productivity, she said.
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AWS Promotes Responsible AI in the Well-Architected Generative AI Lens
AWS announced the availability of the new Well-Architected Generative AI Lens, focused on providing best practices for designing and operating generative AI workloads. The lens is aimed at organizations delivering robust and cost-effective generative AI solutions on AWS. The document offers cloud-agnostic best practices, implementation guidance and links to additional resources.
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Meta Optimizes Data Center Sustainability with Reinforcement Learning
In a recent blog post, Meta describes how its engineers use reinforcement learning (RL), to optimize environmental controls in Meta’s data centers, reducing energy consumption and water usage while addressing broader challenges such as climate change.
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Microsoft Unveils Azure Cobalt 100-Based Virtual Machines: Enhanced Performance and Sustainability
Microsoft's Azure Cobalt 100 VMs are now generally available. They deliver up to 50% improved price performance with energy-efficient Arm architecture. Tailored for diverse workloads, these VMs offer various configurations, including general-purpose and memory-optimized options. Their release supports sustainable computing, aligning with Microsoft's commitment to lower carbon footprints.
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How AWS Well-Architected Framework Supports Frugal Architecture
AWS shared how to deliver frugal architecture using Well-Architectured Framework guidance. The authors outline areas of alignment between the WAF and the Frugal Architect laws Dr. Werner Vogels introduced in his re:Invent 2023 keynote. By implementing the frugal approach, organizations can achieve sustainability and cost optimization goals for their cloud architectures.
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CO2.js Helps Developers Track Their Application’s Carbon Footprint
The Green Web Foundation published a new release of CO2.js, a JavaScript library that enables developers to access the Green Web API and estimate the carbon emissions associated with their apps, websites, and software. CO2.js supports developers who want to create a carbon budget for their site or include carbon footprint estimation in monitoring tools.
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People, Planet, Cloud and AI: Key Takeaways from QCon London
This year’s QCon London brought a wealth of talks directly or indirectly related to software architecture, ranging from the rise of AI to more established areas like anything cloud-related to the usual classics like architecture quality traits . The conference also featured many talks about sociotechnical aspects of software architecture and engineering and broadly considered sustainability.
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How to Do Sustainable Software Development
Software sustainability includes computing for environmental purposes and using resources appropriately. According to Coral Calero, software engineers need a holistic way of looking at software and should be aware of the environmental impact of software. Several tools and frameworks are available for software engineers to do sustainable software development.
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The Frugal Architect: AWS Promotes Cost Awareness for Sustainability
Dr. Werner Vogels, AWS' CTO, dedicated the first part of his re:Invent keynote to discussing the laws of frugal architectures, cloud-native architectures aiming at delivering cost-aware, sustainable, and maintainable solutions. Vogels laid out seven simple laws based on his and AWS’ experience building and evolving cloud platform services, with cost implications as one of the primary drivers.
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AWS Restructures and Consolidates Its Well-Architected Framework
AWS published a new set of updates to its Well-Architected Framework, with changes across all six pillars of the framework. The performance efficiency and operational excellence pillars have been restructured and consolidated to reduce the number of best practices. Other pillars received improved implementation guidance, including recommendations and steps on reusable architecture patterns.
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Sustainable Product Development Using Agile and Value Stream Mapping
Sustainable product development can be done by combining agile with concepts from the circular economy in our daily work. Value stream mapping can be extended to incorporate circular economy principles to optimize the flow of materials, information, and energy usage.
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Cloudflare Claims Migration to Their Services Can Reduce Network Carbon Emissions by 78-96%
A study conducted by the consultancy firm Analysys Mason suggests that shifting networking and security workloads to Cloudflare can significantly reduce network carbon emissions. According to the report, Cloudflare’s networking products can help companies lower their carbon emissions and meet sustainability objectives.