| Issue |
EPJ Web Conf.
Volume 337, 2025
27th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP 2024)
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 01314 | |
| Number of page(s) | 9 | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202533701314 | |
| Published online | 07 October 2025 | |
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202533701314
Carbon Compromises: Minimising the Carbon-Cost and Power-Use of Grid Sites
1 SUPA-School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom
3 DESY, Hamburg and Zeuthen, Germany
* Corresponding author: david.britton@glasgow.ac.uk
Published online: 7 October 2025
This paper presents an overview of ways to reduce the carbonimpact of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) along with specific results demonstrating the potential benefits of CPUs based on the ARM architecture. The choice of CPUs during procurement depends on balancing costs, performance, and the carbon-impact (both the embodied and operational) and decisions made within the context of site, fundingagency, and national preferences or policies. To aid this, we have developed a web-based utility that allows comparison of various options, once actual costs have been established. Operating CPUs at frequencies lower than their maximum, can improve their carbon-efficiency, doing the same work for less power/carbon but more slowly. In this paper we show that the effect is quite significant for CPUs based on the ARM architecture and discuss the compromises involved.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.