November 7th, 2016
In the October 2016 IEEE Communications Magazine, the President’s Page states that “ComSoc is leading the IEEE Initiative on Green Information and Communication Technologies (Green ICT) and the IEEE Standards Association is helping to support this initiative. To start with, we have had two very successful Rapid Reaction Standardization Activities on this topic, one in the UK last November, and one in Chicago this past June. Just recently, nine new standards proposals have come out of our engagement with the Green ICT initiative, including a couple that could have a significant impact on the 5G initiative mentioned above through producing some practical ideas about how to limit the power consumption of 5G wireless devices. In this way, we can see how synergy can be achieved between and among ComSoc industry initiatives.”
The Green ICT initiative has thus made significant progress in the Standards arena as 9 Projects Authorization Request (or PARs) were defined in two different workshops. These 9 PARs were submitted for approval of the creation of Standards Working Groups within IEEE and, as of October 2016, they have all passed the first stage of the approval process and are awaiting the second stage by the end of this year. As such, Working Groups (WG) for these 9 standards could be created in early 2017.
The initiative at that point will be soliciting participation in these WG to ensure that the broadest representation of competence is available to them. The PARs deal namely with methods to calculate and access the greenhouse gas emissions that result from the telecom infrastructure and that, in particular, can be mitigated by virtual machine migration and placement. They also deal with energy efficiency at the signal waveform level and on the transmission systems and the processing of big data.
Eventually lead by the IEEE Standards association when launched next year, this activity is presently coordinated by Dr. Jaafar Elmirghani, Dr. Thierry Klein and Dr. Charles Despins, all co-chairs of the Green ICT Initiative.
The development of these 9 PARs speaks eloquently to the commitment of the initiative’s volunteers as well as to the broad scope of the Green ICT theme. A description of each of these PARs follows below.
PAR 1: Standard for a method for calculating anticipated emissions caused by virtual machine migration and placement
Project number P1922.1
Working Group: GICT Emissions
Scope:
This standard specifies rules to calculate anticipated emissions caused by virtual machine (VM) migration and placement in geographically distributed locations supplied by different electricity sources. The method specified in this standard is used to determine anticipated marginal emissions from the electric grid due to the adaptation of its power generation capacity in response to an extra power demand from the server receiving the VM and the network supporting the migration of the VM. This standard provides a method to assess anticipated gaseous (including Greenhouse Gases) and particle emissions caused by VM migration and placement in distributed servers located in different regions.
Purpose
The purpose of this standard is to assess anticipated emissions caused by a virtual machine migration and placement prior to the migration accomplishment. Thus, in the context of virtual machine migration management among several servers located in different regions and powered by different energy sources, this standard can be used:
- to evaluate the anticipated emissions related to a VM migration to each available server;
- to consider these emissions in the virtual migration strategy as a parameter to minimize (other parameters related to electricity price and quality of service can be considered as well).
Need
The standard is needed because the current approach (as described in scientific publications) to manage virtual machine migrations has uncertain emissions since marginal emissions from the electric grid caused by virtual machines off-loading are not taken into account. This standard addresses this important issue in the context of minimization of emissions.
Stakeholder
Stakeholders include parties interested in the reporting and monitoring emissions of information and communication technology infrastructure, such as data center operators, electricity utilities, telecom operators, telecom and energy regulators, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO).
PAR 2: Standard for a method to calculate near real-time emissions of information and communication technology infrastructure
Project number P1922.1
Working Group: GICT Emissions
Scope
This standard specifies rules for the near real-time calculation of pollutant emissions allocated to the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure (servers, network, etc.). Emissions in this standard are defined as gaseous and particle emissions caused by the generation of electricity consumed during the ICT infrastructure use phase.
Purpose
The purpose of this standard is to enable near real-time assessment of ICT infrastructure use phase emissions by taking into account temporal variations of emissions related to electricity generation.
Need
This standard is needed because the current calculation of emissions related to electricity consumption by ICT during their use phase is inaccurate due to simplifying assumptions of average emissions. The standard provides a more accurate figure of the environmental footprint of ICT infrastructures in real-time. The standard may be used in the context of carbon tax assessment.
Stakeholder
Stakeholders include parties interested in the reporting and monitoring emissions of ICT infrastructure, such as data center operators, electricity utilities, telecom operators, telecom and energy regulators, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO).
PAR 3: Standard for computation of energy efficiency upper bound for apparatus processing communication signal waveforms
Project number P1923.1
Working Group: COM/SDB/GICT Energy Efficient Comm Hardware
Scope
This standard specifies a method for computation of an energy efficiency upper bound for an apparatus processing a particular communication signal waveform. This method utilizes the signal envelope probability density function in combination with apparatus’ power dissipation characteristics.
Purpose
The purpose of this standard is to evaluate communication signal waveforms potential for energy efficiency.
Need
The standard is needed because the fundamental energy efficiency of waveforms must be established before a particular waveform is chosen.
Stakeholder
All wired and wireless communications suppliers, operators and standards bodies.
PAR 4: Recommended practice for developing energy efficient power-proportional digital architectures
Project number P1924.1
Working Group: COM/SDB/GICT Energy Efficient Comm Hardware
Scope
This recommended practice specifies a set of guidelines for the development of power-proportional digital architectures so that energy is only consumed when computations are underway.
Purpose
The purpose of this practice is to provide a set of guidelines for the designers and developers of digital architectures that ensures that power is only consumed when useful computational work is underway.
Need
The need is to reduce the power consumption of devices when in idle mode and in transition to an “on” state at logic switching speeds. Meeting this goal will substantially reduce the energy consumption of digital devices. The cost of implementing and operating a standardized device is also generally minimized. It is impossible to ignore the economics of ICT at the scale it has reached, and at the rate it continues to grow. Economic viability of a standard is a key aspect of it becoming a success. This is particularly important for large server farms and cloud computing installations, yet it is equally important for embedded computing devices at the opposite end of the power scale.
Stakeholder
Stakeholders include digital hardware designers, system architects, and chip manufacturers.
PAR 5: Standard for Energy Efficient Dynamic Line Rate Transmission System
Project number P1925.1
Working Group: COM/SDB/GICT Energy Efficient ICT
Scope
This standard specifies an energy-efficient rate-adaptive transmission system that can be used to deploy mixed line rates. It introduces the architecture and mechanisms needed to enable the use of an optimal combination of line rates to accommodate the traffic while reducing power consumption.
Purpose
The purpose of this standard is to create a new energy-efficient transmission system.
Need
Energy-efficient and cost-effective solutions are needed to meet the increasing demand for high capacity core, metropolitan, and access networking infrastructure.
Stakeholder
Core, metropolitan, and access network providers, Equipment Suppliers, Regulators
PAR 6: Standard for a Functional Architecture of Distributed Energy Efficient Big Data Processing
Project number P1926.1
Working Group: COM/SDB/GICT Energy Efficient ICT
Scope
This standard specifies a functional architecture that supports the energy-efficient transmission and processing of large volumes of data, starting at processing nodes close to the data source, with significant processing resources provided at centralized data centers.
Purpose
The purpose of this standard is to improve the energy efficiency of data networks involved in the processing and transmission of big data. Dealing with the large data volumes generated by big data applications requires a mechanism to handle the tradeoffs between transmission and processing from an energy consumption viewpoint.
Need
This standard is needed because traditional design efforts have focused on how to process these vast volumes of data inside data centers, however the transmission of large data volumes to distant data centers results in increased network power consumption, increased delay and the transmission of potentially redundant data.
Stakeholder
Data center operators, network operators, big data analytics service providers, and big data end users.
PAR 7: Standard for Services Provided by the Energy-efficient Orchestration and Management of Virtualized Distributed Data Centers Interconnected by a Virtualized Network
Project number P1927.1
Working Group: COM/SDB/GICT Energy Efficient ICT
Scope
This standard specifies an architecture for a service composed of distributed data centers interconnected by a network. It specifies the interfaces and the dynamic orchestration and management mechanisms for energy-efficient allocation of resources from data centers and network.
Purpose
The purpose of this standard is to provide an energy efficient networked data center service through joint network and data center virtualization.
Need
The need is to reduce the energy consumption of virtualized, interconnected data centers. This standard also fills the need for enabling independent network and data center operators to cooperate in the provisioning of energy-efficient networking and processing services.
Stakeholder
Data Center Operators, Network Operators, Equipment Suppliers, and Regulators.
PAR 8: Standard for a Mechanism for Energy Efficient Virtual Machine Placement
Project number P1928.1
Working Group: COM/SDB/GICT Energy Efficient ICT
Scope
This standard specifies an algorithm for energy-efficient virtual machine placement strategies considering network and computational power consumption. It also considers the geographic distribution of user demand.
Purpose
The purpose of this standard is to enable energy efficient processing of information considering processing requirements and network power consumption.
Need
Information processing is becoming more centralized in large data centers that are distributed across geographic areas. Therefore, there is a need to establish mechanisms for energy efficient virtual machine placement.
Stakeholder
Data center operators, network operators, equipment suppliers, application users and developers, and regulators.
PAR 9: An Architectural Framework for Energy Efficient Content Distribution
Project number P1929.1
Working Group: COM/SDB/GICT Energy Efficient ICT
Scope
This standard specifies a framework for designing energy efficient content distribution services, such as migration, placement, and replication, over networks.
Purpose
The purpose of this standard is to create a framework for design of energy-efficient content distribution mechanisms for various service and networking scenarios.
Need
It is needed for designing content distribution networks with energy efficiency as a primary goal. Content (primarily video) currently represents about 90% of the traffic on the network and therefore improving energy efficiency of the network requires energy efficient content delivery.
Stakeholder
Content providers, network operators, Content Distribution Network (CDN) operators, equipment suppliers, and regulators.