Chinese Journal of Computers   Full Text
Title	The Redefinition and Some Discussion of Green Computing
Authors	GUO Bing1) SHEN Yan2) SHAO Zi-Li3)
Address	1)(School of Computer Science & Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065) 2)(School of Mechatronics Engineering, University of Electronic Science & Technology of China, Chengdu 610054) 3)(Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong)
Year	2009
Issue	No.12(2311—2319)
Abstract &   Background	Abstract The environment of computer systems can be divided into two parts, humanities environment and natural environment. Along with a large number of computer systems have been widely used around the world, they gradually produce some negative effects to environment. As a kind of computing mode centered on the environment, by eliminating the environment-unfriendly aspects of computer systems, Green Computing can enable computer systems, people, society and natural environment in better harmony, and reach the goals of energy-saving, environment-protection and cost-saving. Compared with the research of Green Chemistry, the authors use a more universal and abstract way to redefine Green Computing, and discuss its main research contents, so that the limitation and scope of Green Computing can be ascertained, and the research tasks and relation between the related research fields can be clarified. Then, some basic ideas and general methods of Green Computing are proposed, which are an important fundament to explore some specific models, methods and tools of Green Computing under the various kinds of conditions in the next step. Keywords green computing; power-aware computing; sustainable computing; environment-aware computing Background The work presented in this paper was supported by the National High Technology Development Program(863 Program) of China under grant No.2008AA01Z105. In this project, the power consumption optimization of embedded systems is based on a Software/Hardware co-design method, and cooperated with Department of Computer Science Laboratory of Embedded systems of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In fact, since 2002, the authors have been focusing on the power consumption of embedded systems. So far, a large number of computer systems have been widely used, and play an very important role in the progress of human society development, but “every coin has two sides”, it also has brought some clear negative impact on the environment, and power consumption is one of the main aspects. Meanwhile, illumined by the research of Green Chemistry, we attempt to use a more universal and abstract way to redefine Green Computing, and discuss its main research contents, quantitive indexes and solution. Recently, a flood of message about financial crisis is full of various kinds of media. However, currently there still exists a more severe problem than financial crisis, i.e., global warming may cause the ecological collapse, and it will endanger exist of human being. So, we think, the global computer science circles should take some actions to deeply research the environmental problems arose from computers, and apply computer technologies into the environmental protection.