Emphasis on Ethical Product Engineering especially around Energy Efficiency and Environmental Impact Assessment

1. IEEE Bangalore Humanitarian Technologies
Conference (B-HTC) 2020
( https://ieeebangalore.org/bhtc/ )
Climate Crisis
and
Ethics in Engineering
Narayanan Subramaniam
IEEE Bangalore Executive Committee 2020 Co-Chair Humanitarian Technologies
IEEE BHTC-2020 Technical Program Co-Chair, Track Chair Climate Change, Green Energy, Education
Director of Engineering, Nutanix
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cnsubramaniam

2. Connecting the Dots … Engineering … Biology … Natural World
Borneo: My home from 1969 to 1986
Deforestation Trend from 1950-2020
My Inspirations:
Sir David Attenborough for the past 40 yrs
Ms Elizabeth Kolbert (author)

3. Climate Crisis -> Energy Imbalance -> Growing Energy Segments
Climate Change: Globally Pervasive, Borderless Phenomenon, owing to Man-Made Energy
Imbalance, resulting in the Unnatural Extinction of Species in the Natural World, along with
Unnatural “Landscaping” of the Geographical Environment

4. The Elephant In The Room - ICT Energy Consumption
Image Credit:
https://badmoodblog.com/2019/04/03/th
e-internets-energy-consumption/
Our Insatiable appetite for Data, for personal
consumption (video, voice, images), data analytics/ML
Unfortunately equipment vendors have no control
over vast amounts of wasteful content being
transmitted, processed and stored

5. What’s The Holy Grail for Data, Computing & ICT in General
Energy Efficiency
Data Engineering & Product
Management:
Use case driven data collection
as opposed to grounds up
design approach
An emphasis on type, depth and
frequency of content being
captured
Programming language
constructs used
Platform services used. This
includes storage and transport
protocols, off-cycle consumption
Performance
Design Engineering & Product
Management:
How do we ensure Energy
Efficiency and Performance are
not orthogonal ?
There is an intersection v.v.
programming language and
platform services
Revisit ICT and Software
Architectures to collapse
unnecessary layers – balance
modularity with efficiency
Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA)
 Design Engineering & Product
Management:
EIA in terms of energy
consumed per unit of storage
i.e. KwH/GB for a given
compute, network and storage
architecture
EIA in terms of how much
renewable energy can be
feasibly used to power Data
Center, Networking, Edge and
other devices
Per Capita Energy Consumption
has to reduce to flatten the
curve
@copyright: Narayanan Subramaniam

6. Sample Opportunities to Apply “Climate Principles”
Cloud Computing,
DevOps, IoT
Energy Consumed in Build, QA
Integration and Pre-Production
Staging Environments for SaaS,
some of which range in 100’s per
day
Energy Consumed for Compute,
Transport and Storage from Data
Source, Data Ingestion and Data
Processing for SaaS and IoT
Applications
DevOps to incorporate Energy
Efficiency (KwH/GB for example)
as a Key Metric for Operations
5-Star Ratings for Edge,
Mobile Computing
Energy Efficiency Ratings for
Mobile Devices (AH/GB)
Energy Efficiency Ratings for
Edge/Data Devices (WH/GB)
Pricing Models for
Storage, Speed
 Surge Pricing for Content beyond
a predefined set of GB’s/TB’s per
unit time. How do we
“encourage” reduction of wasteful
content ?
Surge Pricing for Bandwidth x
Time. How do we balance 5G
access, explosive content
generation, edge device energy
consumption ?
Stop subsidizing Digital Inequity
@copyright: Narayanan Subramaniam

7. THANK YOU !
IEEE Code of Ethics
(https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html )
1. to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, to strive to comply with
ethical design and sustainable development practices, to protect the privacy of others, and to
disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;
Image Credit: NASA – Apollo 8 Earth Rise