Researchers at University College Cork are leading a €4 million EU-funded research project to improve energy efficiency in cloud computing.

The project, called CloudLightning, aims to develop a power-efficient cloud computing infrastructure that will simplify access to cloud resources. Prof John Morrison, director of the centre for unified computing at UCC, said current cloud service delivery models were inefficient with regard to energy consumption.

He said current cloud computing models were homogeneous in that they comprise a large number of machines, components and hardware of the same type. This restricts computational processing power, said Prof Morrison, and limits what certain cloud computing users can do.

“The typical cloud server operates at approximately 20 per cent computing capacity. This could be increased to 80 per cent using heterogeneous processing resources with no change to the server’s energy consumption,” he said.

Heterogeneous processing refers to a combination of different types of hardware and servers that all work together. Prof Morrison said the project would run until January 2018, adding that CloudLightning’s initial focus was on technical and scientific users in oil and gas exploration and genomics.

UCC’s project partners include Intel Labs Europe, Dublin City University, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Institute e-Austria Timisoara (Romania), the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (Greece), Democritus University of Thrace (Greece) and Maxeler Technologies (UK).

Truong Duy