[CS] Alok Kamatar MS Presentation/Aug 14, 2025

[via cs]

This is an announcement of Alok Kamatar's MS Presentation
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Candidate: Alok Kamatar

Date: Thursday, August 14, 2025

Time:  9 am CST

Remote Location: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/91535157991?pwd=IF5jKmrLcekb2oRL77AalbGJOgHwp0.1__;!!BpyFHLRN4TMTrA!97tQpkEq8SfA3FzfZTT4oSRlHmevx7LRF67SoBbACukCqBIujVetG2-kGTstMTR7M-IKr5RBVOy3AwlLtWa8-yo$

Location: JCL 346

Title: Core Hours and Carbon Credits: Investigating and Incentivizing Sustainability in HPC

Abstract: Growing demand accompanied by slower improvements in the efficiency of hardware and data-centers has reinvigorated research into energy-efficient and sustainable methods for computing. In this work, we begin by examining the effect that user decisions can have in the environmental impact of computing; specifically, how users' choices of which facility/machine to run jobs can significantly impact the efficiency/performance trade-off of an application. Despite this considerable influence users have to control the efficiency of their applications, we observe they remain largely unconcerned with their energy-use. In a survey of 300 HPC users, we find that fewer than 30% are aware of their energy consumption, and that energy efficiency is a low priority concern. To incentivize more awareness of energy and sustainability, we then propose two new multi-resource accounting methods that charge for computations based on their energy consumption or carbon footprint, respectively. We conduct both simulation studies and a user study to evaluate the impact of these two methods on user behavior. We find that while only providing users feedback on their energy use had no impact on their behavior, associating energy with cost incentivized users to select more efficient resources, and use 40% less energy.

Advisors: Kyle Chard

Committee Members: Kyle Chard, Rafael Ferreira Da Silva and Ian Foster