19 Nov 24

Visited Princeton to share the latest on our NSF Expedition, Carbon Connect. I particularly enjoyed connecting with Margaret Martonosi, her class, and other students throughout the day.

18 Nov 24

Very interesting to see emerging trends in civil engineering intersect with datacenter computing. Mass timber construction is a promising alternative to carbon intensive concrete and steel, part of a holistic approach to sustainable datacenters. See IT Brew.

5 Nov 24

I chaired the PhD Forum at MICRO, which provides a venue for doctoral candidates and postdocs to share their research portfolio in preparation for the job market. Check out their webpages for more info!

3 Nov 24

Jiali Xing presents our perspective on data center demand response at IGSC. I also enjoyed contributing to the panel discussion on sustainable datacenters. Wonderful to see such a large community of sustainable computing researchers. See Paper

1 Nov 24

I very much enjoyed the panel discussion on sustainable AI at Santa Clara University's v Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Engaging with economic and legal perspectives was particularly exciting! See Santa Clara University.

30 Oct 24

As program committee co-chair for ASPLOS 2026, I am eager to hear from the community about proposed changes in the paper submission process. Please take a few minutes to review the issues and complete a survey. See SIGARCH.

7 Oct 24

It was a privilege to moderate a PRECISE Industry Day panel on sustainable datacenters. Many thanks to Sandra Rivera (CEO, Altera), Marc Fleischmann (SVP, NetApp), and Tarun Chopra (VP, IBM) for their perspectives. See PRECISE.

7 Oct 24

Penn Engineering is looking for new faculty in several signature initiatives (quantum, energy, health, information). Candidates could interface with these initiatives in many interesting ways. Looking forward to further growth and new colleagues. See Interfolio.

25 Sep 24

The main challenge with nuclear for datacenter computing is its economic (not technical) feasibility. Companies in the United States rarely build new nuclear power plants and, when they do, these projects are significantly delayed and over budget. See PYMTS.

24 Sep 24

I am chairing a committee for The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that is organizing a workshop on AI and datacenter electricity use. Please join us on November 12-13 to explore how to map, measure, and mitigate AI data center electricity use. See National Academies.

24 Sep 24

Enjoyed the opportunity to connect with Dion Harris (NVIDIA) on Energy Policy Now, a podcast released by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the University of Pennsylvania. See Energy Policy Now.

23 Sep 24

I was delighted to visit Columbia and contribute to its workshop on Sustainable Cloud Computing and AI, part of recent Climate Week programming. Thanks to Asaf Cidon for organizing the workshop and bringing disparate communities together.

23 Sep 24

Datacenter operators explore interesting trade-offs between power and water use, but more needs to be done to improve efficiency. See Tech Republic

13 Aug 24

Very interested in advances that will permit automated planning. AI agents promise greater productivity but also require greater oversight. See IBM Blog.

5 Aug 24

Excited to join Google as a visiting researcher to explore new directions in datacenter infrastructure.

25 July 24

Shared a few reflections on AI, its evolution and adoption. I would caution against a rush to judgement. It is early days yet. See Forbes.

23 July 24

There are ongoing vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure, and there need to be contingency plans in place so that, for whatever reason, if computer systems go down, there are backup plans. See Fox29 Philadelphia.

10 July 24

I enjoyed attending the recent Workshop on Sustainable Computing (WSCS). Thanks to Roch Guerin, Amy McGovern, and Klara Nahrstedt for organizing the workshop and synthesizing the discussion into a great report. See arXiv.

10 July 24

We are inviting submissions to the MICRO 2024 PhD Forum, a conference session for Ph.D students to present their dissertation research and gain visibility within the com arch community. See MICRO 2024 for details.

11 June 24

Cloud computing has made AI incredibly convenient. Looking forward to more research into the real-world costs of our digital actions. See Scientific American.

29 May 24

Enjoyed connecting, in a live interview on KCBS radio, with listeners in the San Francisco Bay Area this morning. Shared perspectives on the growth in artificial intelligence and implications for sustainable computing. See Audacy.

23 May 24

Excited to lead Carbon Connect, an NSF Expedition in Computing, with David Brooks at Harvard. Penn and Harvard collaborate with an interdisciplinary team at Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Ohio State, Yale. Thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far. I look forward to scaling up our research! See Carbon Connect.

23 May 24

I am thrilled to announce Carbon Connect, an NSF Expedition in Computing. By rethinking computing infrastructure, from semiconductors to datacenters, a multi-institutional research team will lay new design and management foundations for environmentally sustainable systems for artificial intelligence. See Penn's press release

7 May 24

Great to see attention on the high-bandwidth memory systems, which have the critical role of keeping high-performance AI processors supplied with data. See ComputerWorld.

3 May 24

Interesting to see massive deployment of AMD chips for AI datacenter. See Network World.

22 April 24

Excited about the many activities around sustainable AI. More research is needed to synthesize best practice, look beyond offsets, and eventually reverse computing's carbon trend. See Tech Republic.

22 April 24

A holistic approach to sustainable datacenters likely requires some combination of carbon-free energy generation and storage as well as scheduling flexibility. See Technical.ly.

11 April 24

As hyperscale datacenter operators invest in chip design, the market wonders about evolving competitive dynamics. These chips likely improve supply chain diversity and platform costs for datacenter infrastructure and workloads. See Quartz.

10 April 24

Interesting to see Arm-based processors becoming more relevant in hyperscale datacenters. Seems some of the performance and efficiency gains are from the processor architecture and others are from custom microcontrollers that offload datacenter platform operations. See Tech News World.

9 April 24

Great to see Intel's new roadmap making a splash. Interest in AI computing really opens up the design space with interesting trade-offs in performance, power, sustainability, and supply chain diversity. See ComputerWorld.

1 April 24

An interesting perspective on the solar eclipse and the impact on solar energy generation. Unless you operate a power grid (or perhaps datacenter?), there is little need to worry. See CNET.

20 Mar 24

Climate technology seeks AI's benefits but also worries about its costs See Cipher.

20 Mar 24

Exciting to see advances in power efficiency in the latest NVIDIA architecture. See PYMNTS.

14 Mar 24

Enjoyed speaking about AI, datacenters, and sustainability as part of Penn Energy Week. Wonderful to be part of a broader community at Penn studying these questions. See Energy Week.

21 Feb 24

The development and growth of computer architectures for AI is only just beginning, but excitement about NVIDIA persists. See PYMNTS.

15 Feb 24

Investments in renewable energy and grid infrastructure are essential, but induce persistent inflation in electricity prices. See Yahoo Finance.

8 Feb 24

As AI clusters and datacenters seek sustainability, an interesting case study in Iceland uses hydroelectric and geothermal energy. See Tech Times.

1 Feb 24

Enjoyed visiting the NASDAQ Market Site to share perspectives on semiconductors and chips. Thanks to Jill Malandrino at TradeTalks and co-panelists! See YouTube for more.

1 Feb 24

Carbon Explorer -- our framework for carbon-aware datacenter design -- has been recognized by an IEEE Micro Top Picks, Honorable Mention. Congratulations to Bilge Acun and team! See the paper for more.

16 Jan 24

Sustainable datacenters require increasingly sophisticated decisions that balance site selection, availability of carbon-free energy, and impact on local communities. See Business Insider.

20 Dec 23

Excited to see the growing community in machine learning for computer architecture and systems. A recent workshop has integrated varied perspectives into directions for future research. See blog post.

7 Dec 23

Building bridges between computing and policy during a workshop on sustainable AI. Enjoyed connecting with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the Penn Program on Regulation. See YouTube.

30 Nov 23

Exciting to see the breadth of industry activity in datacenter computing for AI. It is early days yet. See Silicon Angle.

30 Nov 23

The growth of AI increasingly raises questions about sustainability and regulation. Prof. Cary Coglianese and I explore the issues from legal and technical perspectives. See link.

29 Nov 23

Elected IEEE Fellow for contributions to the design of microprocessors with machine learning and game theory! Grateful to mentors, collaborators, and the research community for supporting this work.

29 Nov 23

Despite advances in the 2000s, power and thermal management remain pressing challenges. Enjoyed commenting on these fundamental questions with IEEE Spectrum.

20 Nov 23

Concerns about AI energy usage are driven, in part, by a large and growing gap in datacenter energy usage and renewable energy installation. See Recharge News.

10 Nov 23

We were excited to launch the inaugural PhD Forum at MICRO last week. If you are looking to hire a computer architect, please consider the forum's participants here.

23 Oct 23

Data centers should schedule their energy use, looking beyond batch jobs and bitcoin mining, which offer flexibility but not at scales needed to align large datacenter demand with intermittent carbon-free supply. See S&P Global Podcast.

16 Oct 23

Growth in data centers is likely to outpace that in renewable energy deployments, requiring new strategies to reduce operational carbon. See Yahoo Finance.

10 Oct 23

Excitement about AI has implications for computer systems, architectures. While there is uncertainty about growth rates and energy costs, numbers are large and require sustainably scaling data center infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing. See New York Times.