challenges: environmental design for pervasive computing systems an saic company ravi jain*john r....

Challenges:Environmental Design for Pervasive Computing Systems

An SAIC Company

Ravi Jain* John R. Wullert II

Autonomous Comm. Lab Applied ResearchDoCoMo USA Labs Telcordia [email protected] [email protected]

*Work performed while at Applied Research, Telcordia

Ravi Jain / 19-Sep-02 / 2

Outline

Motivation and background Using less Using it longer Smart disposal Conclusions


Summary

Pervasive computing offers exciting opportunities but also possible negative environmental impacts

We need to treat environmental impact as a first-class design constraint

Increasingly software is a key to reducing environmental impact

We need research in many areas of system design for pervasive computing and communications

Ravi Jain / 19-Sep-02 / 4Recycling Council of Ontario


Frequently Raised Objections (FRO)

Just throw all the old PCs and cellphones into the sea– Ahem …

This is a naïve and ambitious plot to overthrow the capitalist system– No … we are just promoting environmentally sustainable design– Environmental responsibility has been embraced by many major corporations

and governments This is not really a big problem

– We hope to show data that indicates otherwise This is not my problem … why would I (or anyone) pay for this?

– Legislation and consumer pressure is building– Market-leader advantages

This is not a computer science problem– We believe software, not hardware or materials, is increasingly important

This is not a research problem– We believe environmental factors can affect all layers of system design – Analogy with battery power considerations in mobile computing


Computer waste (so far …)

Estimate: Over 75% of all computers ever bought in the US are stored in people’s attics, basements, garage … (MCC, 1996)

The growth of electrical/electronic waste is 3 times the growth of other municipal waste (AEA, 1997)

Estimate: By 2004 there will be over 315 million obsolete computers in the US alone (NSC, 1999)– 4 billion pounds of plastics waste alone

Toxic materials in PCs (MCC, 1996)– Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Arsenic, Chromium– Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)– Polybrominated Diphenylethers (PBDE) – …– “New personal computers release over 100 different chemical

compounds as gases, adversely affecting the health and performance of office workers”, Technical Univ. of Denmark study, Environment Daily, 9 Sep 2002

Accounts for a significant proportion of U.S. energy consumption


This is just the beginning

Source: Rainer Malaka, EMLICDE 2001


Pervasive Computing

Most pervasive computing devices consume less material than traditional PCs

However pervasive computing devices:– Will be far more numerous

Example: 13M Bluetooth devices shipped in 2001; Expect 780M by 2005 (Cahners In-stat) … compare with black phones

– Rapid replacement due to low cost or immature technology– Can be disposable

Example: disposable cell phones (Telespree, HopOn)

– Will be embedded in other products Jewelry, clothing, smart floors, sensor networks, … Makes location, extraction, collection, recycling harder

– More likely to be lost, forgotten, or simply abandoned– Use batteries, likely exclusively– Will bring computer environmental impacts to regions where none exist at

present


A Challenge

Reduce total-lifecycle per capita computer & communications environmental impacts– Material and energy consumption by 10x– Non-recycled material and non-renewed

energy consumption by 100x– Toxic and harmful byproducts by 1000x


Design motivations

Not “The sky is falling …”, but pervasive computing does pose a new environmental risk

Design for the environment– Reduction of resource consumption– Reuse of resources and products– Recycling* Needs to be an integral part of the design process, not an afterthought* Recycling is important, but is not the answer* Software is increasingly important

We have an opportunity to do this while still at the start of the technology wave

Legislative and consumer pressure– Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in Europe

First-mover advantage (e.g. NEC Eco PC)– Many “socially responsible” advances are first resisted (e.g. Cellular

911)– Foresight sees market opportunities and differentiators


Using less:Minimizing physical materials

Minimizing physical materials– Doing more with less, not Doing with less

Two parallel trends– Integration: cell phone as pager, organizer, e-wallet, radio, media

player ...– Specialization: different functionality, form factors, power

requirements, connectivity, processing and storage, fashion niches Reducing physical materials within a single device

– Modular design should allow configuration on a per-user basis– Similar to PC configuration options but with smaller option units

Device sharing– Example: Environmental impacts of answering machines ~10x

more than centralized voicemail (Taiariol, 2001)– But voicemail still lacks features (e.g. live screening) and a good UI


Using less: Device sharing on a larger scale

150M hosts connected to the Internet, mostly underutilized– Have been harnessed for tasks that would be impossible otherwise

Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS): 130K users, 1.5 TFlops– 213466917-1 (4M digits), Michael Cameron (Age 20), Canada, 800 MHz PC

Two key challenges (Anderson & Kubiatowicz, 2001)– Internet Scale Operating System (ISOS) for resource allocation,

security …– Economic models to provide private owners with incentives

Additional challenge: take environmental concerns into account– Energy: Preferentially utilize computers in cold regions, or those that

are not in dormant mode, or depending on available cycles – Materials: Utilize CPU and storage that would otherwise be wasted

Sharing in enterprise and wireless networks– Pervasive computing environment in user’s home, office, car– Greater device and network heterogeneity, limited resources,

restricted UI


Using less:Minimizing energy usage Formal models of energy consumption (Big-oh joules)

– Needed to motivate algorithm improvements– Analogy to formal models of disk I/O

Energy-efficient applications and architectures– Example: Half-duplex multiparty calls (“Push-to-talk”) use 50% less

power than voice calls Most 2G/3G systems do not support this feature

Need to consider total-lifecycle energy impacts– Cellphone consumes ~6 kJ/day. Charger: ~110 kJ/day (Nicolaescu, 2001)– Nearly 90% of energy usage in cordless phones and answering machines

is in standby mode (U.S. DoE, 2002)– Consider energy consumed in manufacture, distribution, and disposal

Alternative energy sources– Solar energy– Human energy: wrist movement (Citizen eco-drive watch), footfalls can

generate 50 mW (Paradiso, 2000), keystrokes


Using it longerProgrammability

Software Sprawl –SLOC = 13992 e0.74 yrs R2 = 0.98

Linux Size(1991-8 data from Forbes; 2000-1 from Wheeler)

y = 13992e0.7428x

R2 = 0.9765

10,000

100,000

1,000,000

10,000,000

100,000,000

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Elapsed Years Since 1991

Ph

ysic

al S

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Lin

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f C

od

e (S

LO

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SLOC = Lines excluding comments and blank lines


Microsoft Office Requirements

050

100150200250300

1995 1997 1999 2001

Release Year

MB

/ M

Hz

/ MIP

S

Min disk space(MB)

CPU clock (MHz)

Est MIPS


Software Sprawl Again

Office Productivity Suite



Most users do not need all the features of the program (or even know they exist) at any one time

Need mechanisms to – discover system capabilities– discover applications and components– auto-configure software– secure, just-in-time, just-right plug-in upgrades

Hardware requirements should be written not only for entire applications, but based on user-level features

Automated testing techniques need to be developed that support modular hardware

Similar considerations apply to data sprawl


Smart disposal

Recent increase in recycling PCs–Manufacturer take-back legislation in US

Cellphone recycling in Japan (Belson, 2002)–Gold: 24 micrograms/phone. Total metal extracted: 21 cents/phone

Crushing devices into their raw materials loses the vast majority of their value

In addition, there are significant health and safety risks of recycling itself …


This is not a problem …

Source:USA Today2/25/02


Smart disposal

Recycling should focus on– Identifying subassemblies

and larger blocks for reuse RF ID tags

– “Upcycling” or remanufacturing into new products

Close the loop of product information– Provide quantitative

feedback to designers on actual use, upgrade and failure of software and hardware

Product Lifecycle Stage

Production RetailInfo

rmat

ion

As

soc

iate

d w

ith

Pro

du

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Consumer

Remanufacture

Disposal

Resale

Thomas, 2001


Summary

Lower layers– Hardware requirements specification based on

user-level features– Modularly upgradeable hardware– Identify subassemblies for recycling– Software radios to adapt to new protocols and air

interfaces OS and system software

– Seamless integration of old and new hardware and just-right upgrades

– Environmental parameters to an Internet Scale OS

– Pervasive OS with environmental design– Minimize OS and software sprawl

Low-cost fault-tolerance techniques– Reduced requirements– Intelligent hardware diagnostics and workarounds– Present surviving resources to apps

Applications support– Minimize data sprawl with better knowledge

management, duplicate avoidance, retrieval, and automatic compression

– Discover system capabilities, software component discovery and composition, secure, just-in-time plug in

– Compiler and automated testing techniques Applications and UI

– Just-right software upgrades– Energy-efficient applications and architectures– Improve UI for device sharing– Make energy and toxic byproducts visible to users:

EnergyStar -> NonToxicStar Formal models of energy consumption New design and modeling methodologies Use and management of alternative

energy sources (human, solar)

Environmental impacts need to be treated as a first-class design constraint

If applied consistently, they will have impacts at all levels of software and systems design … a major challenge to integrate total-lifecycle costs into all design aspects


Barriers

“A threat to growth / capitalism / our way of life”– Sustainable and environmentally responsible design is the best

way to promote long-term growth– Carrots (economic incentives, secondary markets, broker

opportunities) are better than sticks (legislation, consumer disaffection)

No immediate short-term benefits– But see NEC Eco PC, Electric cars, etc

Few professional incentives for R&D in this area– National or international R&D funding programs are needed– No workshops, journals or “tenure-friendly” forums and outlets

Research area is difficult: – need multidisciplinary approach (e.g. air bags)– need precise problem formulations– no established benchmarks

challenges: environmental design for pervasive computing systems an saic company ravi jain*john r....

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