Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GREENEDGE (Taming the environmental impact of mobile networks through GREEN EDGE computing platforms)
Período documentado: 2021-03-01 hasta 2023-02-28
Mobile communications have pervaded our everyday lives, deeply affecting the way in which we work, travel and spend our free time. Mobile applications and services are used on a daily basis, and fifth generation (5G) and beyond 5G networks are expected to lead to a further digital revolution, enabling ubiquitous and enhanced broadband services, smart/autonomous vehicles, intelligent transport, and complex human machine interactions (e.g. industrial IoT and extended reality). Hence, our connected society will generate a vast amount of data, which has to be transmitted, processed and analysed, often in an online fashion. Especially, such a data surge demands a massive use of computing services based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms. With the advent of 5G networks, these algorithms will be increasingly pushed towards the edge of the mobile wireless network and, at a global scale, they will have a large, unsustainable, carbon footprint.
The GREENEDGE project aims at mitigating the carbon footprint of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), including mobile networks and AI-based computing systems. In this context, our project is aligned with the current mitigation policies for climate change at EU and UN levels, which plan a reduction of carbon emissions and achieve carbon neutrality of human activities by 2050.
Sustainable development of ICT is essential for achieving these objectives. In fact, such technology has been used extensively during the last decade and it is estimated to be consuming around 20% of electricity worldwide by 2030.
The GREENEDGE project’s mission is to tame the growing carbon footprint of ML/AI based edge computing services adopting a twofold approach.
- As a first step, renewable energy resources, such as wind or solar power, will be utilised to sustain the communication and computing tasks that run at the mobile network edge.
- Second, fundamentally new and green-by-design computing and communication paradigms will be developed, to wisely exploit the available communication, computing and energy resources across the mobile edge network. This entails the design of novel ML/AI in-network processing techniques that have a small memory footprint, and that are at the same time trainable in an energy efficient manner. Particular attention will be paid to distributed computing approaches (federated learning).
The GREENEDGE project aims at mitigating the carbon footprint of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), including mobile networks and AI-based computing systems. In this context, our project is aligned with the current mitigation policies for climate change at EU and UN levels, which plan a reduction of carbon emissions and achieve carbon neutrality of human activities by 2050.
Sustainable development of ICT is essential for achieving these objectives. In fact, such technology has been used extensively during the last decade and it is estimated to be consuming around 20% of electricity worldwide by 2030.
The GREENEDGE project’s mission is to tame the growing carbon footprint of ML/AI based edge computing services adopting a twofold approach.
- As a first step, renewable energy resources, such as wind or solar power, will be utilised to sustain the communication and computing tasks that run at the mobile network edge.
- Second, fundamentally new and green-by-design computing and communication paradigms will be developed, to wisely exploit the available communication, computing and energy resources across the mobile edge network. This entails the design of novel ML/AI in-network processing techniques that have a small memory footprint, and that are at the same time trainable in an energy efficient manner. Particular attention will be paid to distributed computing approaches (federated learning).
Since the project started, the GREENEDGE consortium has been actively running the training network, by pursuing the objectives stated in the Annex 1.
At first, the Coordinator prepared the project Website, which has been online and fully operational since March 7th, 2021. Along with this, a LinkedIn page and a YouTube channel were set up, both are being extensively used by the partners and by the research fellows. After two years from the project start, the GREENEDGE LinkedIn account has 203 connections and 300 followers. Also, according to LinkedIn statistics, our posts have received more than 55000 views so far.
The consortium's second endeavourment has been to carry out and complete the hiring process. This has gone smoothly, identifying all the 15 candidates and running the process in a coordinated manner.
Following the GA Annex 1, three training schools were run so far, providing technical as well as soft-skill training and covering multidisciplinary topics useful to the GREENEDGE fellows. The 2nd training school has been co-organized as a PhD summer school open to a wider international community of PhD researchers, co-organizing it with EU MINTS ITN. Including GRENEDGE and MINTS fellows, this school has attracted more than 100 PhD researchers from across Europe.
GREENEDGE Youtube channel has been created and populated with several videos, with generalist content and with more specific technical sessions by our fellows. Moreover, selected training talks have been uploaded to our channel.
At first, the Coordinator prepared the project Website, which has been online and fully operational since March 7th, 2021. Along with this, a LinkedIn page and a YouTube channel were set up, both are being extensively used by the partners and by the research fellows. After two years from the project start, the GREENEDGE LinkedIn account has 203 connections and 300 followers. Also, according to LinkedIn statistics, our posts have received more than 55000 views so far.
The consortium's second endeavourment has been to carry out and complete the hiring process. This has gone smoothly, identifying all the 15 candidates and running the process in a coordinated manner.
Following the GA Annex 1, three training schools were run so far, providing technical as well as soft-skill training and covering multidisciplinary topics useful to the GREENEDGE fellows. The 2nd training school has been co-organized as a PhD summer school open to a wider international community of PhD researchers, co-organizing it with EU MINTS ITN. Including GRENEDGE and MINTS fellows, this school has attracted more than 100 PhD researchers from across Europe.
GREENEDGE Youtube channel has been created and populated with several videos, with generalist content and with more specific technical sessions by our fellows. Moreover, selected training talks have been uploaded to our channel.
The GREENEDGE project has three original aspects that differentiate it from the current state-of-the-art research and existing doctoral programs.
1. We devise highly energy efficient communication and computing techniques with a holistic look at the underlying computing/learning applications together with an intelligent network management spanning across all layers.
2. We account for any distributed energy generation and harvesting technologies, and energy storage hardware that the network may exploit.
3. We contribute to the EU Green Deal by introducing metrics and methodologies to measure the energy efficiency and the environmental footprint of ICT (with focus on computing and communication) by devising energy management techniques to reduce its carbon footprint.
Our fellows are being trained in a cross-disciplinary field of knowledge including: 1) energy generation and storage, 2) communication and coding theory, 3) mobile network design and management, 4) ML and mathematical optimisation, and 5) distributed computing. The fellows have been working in a multicultural environment, thus building a solid basis to enable their future transnational research, and to exploit synergies among the international partners of the consortium.
GREENEDGE technology has a strong impact and is highly needed, as it aims at bringing energy frugality to ICT. All GREENEDGE fellows are actively addressing their projects, and some already have attained quite advanced results on experimental activities and/or software and/or datasets that may be released, which have concrete impact. Our industrial partners have already started to investigate possible actions to promote and exploit such results.
1. We devise highly energy efficient communication and computing techniques with a holistic look at the underlying computing/learning applications together with an intelligent network management spanning across all layers.
2. We account for any distributed energy generation and harvesting technologies, and energy storage hardware that the network may exploit.
3. We contribute to the EU Green Deal by introducing metrics and methodologies to measure the energy efficiency and the environmental footprint of ICT (with focus on computing and communication) by devising energy management techniques to reduce its carbon footprint.
Our fellows are being trained in a cross-disciplinary field of knowledge including: 1) energy generation and storage, 2) communication and coding theory, 3) mobile network design and management, 4) ML and mathematical optimisation, and 5) distributed computing. The fellows have been working in a multicultural environment, thus building a solid basis to enable their future transnational research, and to exploit synergies among the international partners of the consortium.
GREENEDGE technology has a strong impact and is highly needed, as it aims at bringing energy frugality to ICT. All GREENEDGE fellows are actively addressing their projects, and some already have attained quite advanced results on experimental activities and/or software and/or datasets that may be released, which have concrete impact. Our industrial partners have already started to investigate possible actions to promote and exploit such results.