Changing 30 lines of code in Linux could cut energy use at some data centers by up to 30 percent, researchers claim.
Computer scientists at the University of Waterloo in Canada say making a small alteration to the Linux code used by many data centers to process packets of network traffic can lead to a significant energy reduction. Open-source operating system Linux is the most widely used OS for data center servers.
Through their research, Martin Karsten, professor of computer science in the University of Waterloo’s Math Faculty, and computer science grad student Peter Cai, discovered that the way that data centers were processing packets of network traffic was inefficient, and devised a small change to make it far more efficient.
“We didn’t add anything,” Karsten said. “We just rearranged what is done when, which leads to a much better usage of the data center’s CPU caches. It’s kind of like rearranging the pipeline at a manufacturing plant, so that you don’t have people running around all the time.”
Karsten teamed up with Joe Damato, distinguished engineer at content delivery network firm Fastly, to develop a small section of code - approximately 30 lines - that would improve Linux’s network traffic processing. If adopted, the new method could reduce the energy consumption of important data center operations by as much as 30 percent, the researchers said.
The team tested their solution’s effectiveness and submitted it to Linux for consideration, and the code was published this month as part of Linux’s newest kernel, release version 6.13.
“All these big companies – Amazon, Google, Meta – use Linux in some capacity, but they’re very picky about how they decide to use it,” Karsten said. “If they choose to ‘switch on’ our method in their data centers, it could save gigawatt hours of energy worldwide. Almost every single service request that happens on the Internet could be positively affected by this.”
The University of Waterloo is building a green computer server room as part of its new mathematics building, and Karsten believes sustainability research must be a priority for computer scientists. “We all have a part to play in building a greener future,” he said.
The Linux Foundation, which oversees the development of the Linux OS, is a founder member of the Green Software Foundation, an organization set up to look at ways of developing “green software” - code that reduces energy consumption.