Estimating the environmental impact of an HPC job – tools and challenges

Abstract

Researchers and research funders are increasingly interested in understanding the environmental impacts of computational research, including impacts through both energy-intensive computations and the production and disposal of specialised computing hardware. However, these impacts are hard to quantify and often hidden from end-users. While some High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities have implemented custom tools to allow users to estimate the carbon emissions of their work, these tools are not widely adopted. To understand what tools exist, the methodology they use, and to provide recommendations for tools that are suitable for different computational research contexts, we are carrying out a survey of researchers, RSEs, and HPC operators. We will carry out follow-up engagement with HPC operators to understand the factors that influence their decisions to adopt such tools. We plan to create a catalogue of existing tools, their features, and recommendations for tool developers, in order to promote the adoption of these tools and give HPC users the data needed to better understand the impact of their work. In this poster, we present preliminary results from the initial survey and tool assessments. We will invite feedback from attendees about their interest in and experiences with these tools, with the aim of starting a discussion about the motivations and barriers to using such tools.