ForgetMeNot: Understanding and Modeling the Impact of Forever Chemicals Toward Sustainable Large-Scale Computing

2025-05-16

AI Summary

This work addresses the overlooked long-term environmental impact of fluorinated compounds (“forever chemicals”) used in semiconductor manufacturing on global warming—a gap in current sustainability assessments of computing systems. We introduce the first hardware-process co-modeling framework to quantify fluorinated gas emissions across CPU, DRAM, and storage device fabrication. Our methodology integrates wafer-fab process parameters, equipment specifications, empirically measured emission data, and multi-tier emission factors, enabling cross-generational, lithography-technology, and capacity-sensitive analyses. Unlike prior carbon-centric studies, our findings reveal that advanced process nodes do not necessarily reduce fluorinated emissions. The framework provides foundries with actionable insights for material selection and process optimization, and enables data centers to adopt low-fluorine-emission server procurement strategies. By incorporating fluorinated compound emissions into life-cycle assessment, this work advances the paradigm for sustainability evaluation of computing systems.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Hardware-aware ML
• Humans and AI: Other Foundations of Human Computation & AI
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Intelligent Query Processing

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Sustainability and carbon-aware systems for Web, mobile, and WoT
• Responsible Web: Sustainability and climate impact of web technologies
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Fluorinated compounds, often referred to as forever chemicals, are critical in various steps of semiconductor fabrication like lithography, etching, chamber cleaning, and others. Forever chemical emissions can exhibit global warming potentials thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide and persist in the atmosphere for millennia. Despite their severe impact, most sustainability works in computer systems have focused on carbon emissions alone. We address this gap by introducing ForgetMeNot, a modeling tool that quantifies fluorinated compound emissions by integrating fabrication facility-specific practices and hardware specifications, and validate its accuracy using real-world emission data from fabrication facilities. We show how ForgetMeNot can enable fabrication facilities to optimize design and material usage decisions for emission reduction and provide researchers with a methodology to calibrate emission estimates for hardware designs. When ForgetMeNot is applied to analyze emissions for manufacturing CPUs, DRAM, and storage, it illustrates how hardware generations, lithography techniques, and capacities impact fluorinated compound emissions. Finally, we demonstrate how datacenter operators can assemble low-emission servers while balancing performance demands. By factoring in fluorinated emissions into manufacturing decisions, ForgetMeNot paves the way for building more sustainable systems.

Problem

• Quantifying fluorinated compound emissions in semiconductor fabrication
• Modeling emission impacts of hardware design and manufacturing choices
• Enabling sustainable server assembly with reduced forever chemical emissions

Innovation

• Modeling tool quantifies fluorinated compound emissions
• Integrates facility-specific practices and hardware specifications
• Enables low-emission server assembly balancing performance