Collaboration with Hong Kong: Minimizing Energy Consumption Through Task Scheduling

University Of California-Riverside, Riverside CA

Investigators

Abstract

This CNIC award supports planning-visit travel to Hong Kong. Three trips will be used to develop a new research collaboration with Tak-Wah Lam at the University of Hong Kong and Mordecai Golin at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The target of the research is the general problem of energy consumption in information technology. The three collaborators bring complementary strengths to the problem. The initial approach is to analyze strategies and algorithms for minimizing energy consumption in task management, comparing power-down scheduling with speed-scaling scheduling using dynamic programming and then exploring the possibility of alternative models. A graduate student from UC-Riverside will participate in the project and will travel to Hong Kong with the PI. It is anticipated that the initial collaboration will lead to a full-scale research proposal to CISE. This planning visit aims to establish an international research collaboration that can contribute new insights and algorithmic techniques required to address challenges in energy management. From a theoretical point of view it will expand the understanding of feasible solutions of power-down and speed-scaling scheduling problems, leading to more efficient algorithms. Existing algorithms for these scheduling approaches are currently too slow or too complex for practical applications. The proposed research aims to design faster, simpler, and more general algorithms. As one of the reviewers noted, more efficient approaches in information technology, which is consuming increasing amounts of energy, can help to control global energy consumption. Thus, the results of this research can have an impact on supporting sustainable computing and a sustainable modern society. Another benefit of the project is the involvement of a graduate student in the international collaboration.