Abstract

Outsourcing data storage and processing to large datacenter facilities is an attractive model for offering computing services efficiently today, and one that is increasingly compelling as the Internet evolves. With computing’s center of gravity moving away from desktops and towards this new class of /warehouse-scale computers/, there is an added focus on the energy-related costs of those installations. In this talk I will provide an overview of the challenges in this space, describe some of the ways that Google has tackled them, and suggest areas where the next big energy efficiency gains might come from.

Bio: Luiz André Barroso is a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he has worked across several engineering areas, ranging from applications and software infrastructure to the design of Google’s computing platform. He was previously a member of the research staff at Digital Equipment Corporation (later Compaq), where his group did some of the early work on chip-multiprocessing systems including the design of Piranha, an architecture that helped inspire some of today’s multi-core CPUs. Luiz has a Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from the University of Southern California and B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Rio de Janeiro.