The following article was featured in the EPFL magazine Dimensions, and on the EPFL homepage Can energy-hungry AI help cut our energy use? It takes ten times more electricity for ChatGPT to respond to a prompt than for Google to carry out a standard search. Still, researchers are struggling to get a grasp on the energy implications of generative artificial intelligence both now and going forward. Few people realize that the carbon footprint of digital […]

The new EcoCloud Experimental Space is running, and experiments are underway. The facility is located in the CCT Building, alongside the EPFL Data Center and above the campus central heating plant. There are currently eight racks with passive rear door liquid/air exchangers. A large experimental area is dedicated to projects that target energy monitoring and different approaches to liquid cooling, with the possibility of two experimental liquid loops. Each rack is equipped with a per-plug […]

If we are going to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers we need to use computing resources more efficiently. If processes always made use of data center facilities in a regular way, it would be an easy game. However, the resources of a data center are used by customers (more often customers of customers) in ways that are not only unpredictable, but lacking in transparency – even in real time. Data center staff are […]

The School of Engineering has published the following news about Heating Bits The cloud is ever-growing and, as a consequence, data centers are multiplying in size and number. The situation is difficult to manage. To meet demand, outdated and inefficient technology is often being used to provide quick solutions. Cooling systems are frequently unwieldy and energy inefficient, with little or no use made of the wasted heat. The carbon footprint of data centers is soaring. […]