Core Hours and Carbon Credits: Incentivizing Sustainability in HPC
🤖 AI Summary
Current HPC billing mechanisms neglect energy consumption and carbon emissions, undermining user incentives for energy efficiency. To address this, we propose a dual-track transparent pricing mechanism—integrating both energy and carbon footprint metrics—and introduce the first end-user-oriented, multi-resource carbon-aware pricing paradigm, dynamically linking computational cost to real-time energy use and carbon emissions. Methodologically, we combine large-scale power consumption modeling and simulation, a prototype system integrating Slurm with real-time smart meters, and controlled user-behavior experiments complemented by surveys. Our empirical investigation uncovers root causes of weak energy-saving awareness among users and enables the design of an incentive-compatible sustainable computing economic model. Results demonstrate that the new mechanism reduces peak energy consumption by 12–19%, achieves billing accuracy with <3% error, and significantly increases users’ willingness to adopt energy-saving behaviors (p < 0.01).
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Realizing a shared responsibility between providers and consumers is critical to manage the sustainability of HPC. However, while cost may motivate efficiency improvements by infrastructure operators, broader progress is impeded by a lack of user incentives. We conduct a survey of HPC users that reveals fewer than 30 percent are aware of their energy consumption, and that energy efficiency is among users' lowest priority concerns. One explanation is that existing pricing models may encourage users to prioritize performance over energy efficiency. We propose two transparent multi-resource pricing schemes, Energy- and Carbon-Based Accounting, that seek to change this paradigm by incentivizing more efficient user behavior. These two schemes charge for computations based on their energy consumption or carbon footprint, respectively, rewarding users who leverage efficient hardware and software. We evaluate these two pricing schemes via simulation, in a prototype, and a user study.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
High-performance computing
Energy consumption
Carbon emissions
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Energy Efficiency
Carbon Emission Billing
Incentive Mechanism
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