CAREER: Towards Sustainable Computing with Carbon-Efficient Integrated Electro-Photonic Fabrics

NSF Award Search · 01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $598,325 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Carbon emissions from powering information and computing technologies (ICT) are projected to increase to 8% of worldwide carbon emissions over the next decade due to the explosion of computing required in everyday consumer electronic devices and systems. Recent studies have shown that integrated electro-photonics-based fabrics (the base layer chips are built on) for communication and computing, compared to conventional electronic fabrics, can result in substantially higher energy and carbon efficiency (up to 100× in some cases) for future computing hardware platforms. This project leverages the energy efficiency of electro-photonic hardware fabrics to investigate their embodied carbon efficiency (related to carbon emissions due to hardware manufacturing and product infrastructure-related activities) following the universally accepted sustainability tenets of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The goal is to develop an infrastructure for designing sustainable computing platforms using carbon-efficient electro-photonic hardware components. The project’s novelties are (1) employing the principles of heterogeneity, reconfigurability, and recycling to design multi-functional and multi-lifespan electro-photonic transceiver and accelerator architectures, (2) transforming the sustainability, performance, resource utilization, and lifetime reliability of electro-photonics-based computing platforms using carbon-efficient cross-layer design techniques, and (3)creating novel educational materia

Key facts

NSF award ID
2443677
Awardee
University of Kentucky Research Foundation (KY)
SAM.gov UEI
H1HYA8Z1NTM5
PI
Ishan G Thakkar
Primary program
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
EXP PROG TO STIM COMP RES, CAREER-Faculty Erly Career Dev
Estimated total
$598,325
Funds obligated
$235,107
Transaction type
Continuing Grant
Period
07/01/2025 → 06/30/2030