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Publications of SPCL

A. Kamatar, M. Gonthier, V. Hayot-Sasson, A. Bauer, M. Copik, R. Castro Fernandez, T. Hoefler, K. Chard, I. Foster:

 Core Hours and Carbon Credits: Incentivizing Sustainability in HPC

(In Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC'25), presented in St. Louis, MO, USA, Nov. 2025)

Abstract

Efforts to reduce the environmental impact of HPC often focus on resource providers, but choices made by users, e.g., concerning where to run, can be equally consequential. Here we present evidence that new accounting methods that charge users for energy used can incentivize significantly more efficient behavior. We first survey 300 HPC users and find that fewer than 30% are aware of their energy consumption, and that energy efficiency is a low priority concern. We then propose two new multi-resource accounting methods that charge for computations based on their energy consumption or carbon footprint, respectively. Finally, we conduct both simulation studies and a user study to evaluate the impact of these two methods on user behavior. We find that while only providing users feedback on their energy use had no impact on their behavior, associating energy with cost incentivized users to select more efficient resources, and use 40% less energy.

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BibTeX

@inproceedings{2025corehours,
  author={Alok Kamatar and Maxime Gonthier and Valerie Hayot-Sasson and André Bauer and Marcin Copik and Raul Castro Fernandez and Torsten Hoefler and Kyle Chard and Ian Foster},
  title={{Core Hours and Carbon Credits: Incentivizing Sustainability in HPC}},
  year={2025},
  month={11},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC'25)},
  location={St. Louis, MO, USA},
  doi={10.1145/3712285.3759858},
}