Call for Papers

This workshop will be in a hybrid format, with both in-person and remote participation allowed.
See Policies for important information regarding remote participation.

Dates and location

• Date: Tue. July 9, 2024
  Immediately before OSDI 2024
• Location: Santa Clara Santa Cruz, CA
• [NEW] Paper registration Deadline: May 5, 2024 (AoE)
• Submission Deadline: May 8, 2024 (AoE)
• Notifications: June 12, 2024

Overview

The HotCarbon Workshop on Sustainable Computer Systems aims to engage researchers and practitioners in a lively discussion on new ideas to improve the sustainability of computer systems. The research community has had a relentless focus on the implications of increased scale and raw performance of consumer devices, cloud systems and datacenters, as well as networks. We must address the negative aspects of computing’s proliferation – through innovative approaches to how we build, deploy, operate, and retire our creations. For example, software-driven hardware obsolescence that increases e-waste and embodied carbon suggests we must challenge computing’s endemic upgrade and throwaway practices and mindset.

The National Science Foundation has recently called for research on exactly this problem domain:

Environmental impacts of computing technologies extend well beyond their energy consumption and require a holistic focus on broader sustainability. Negative impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, depletion of rare earth elements, and e-waste are exacerbated by the proliferation of computing throughout society and treatment of computing systems as disposable commodities with planned obsolescence. Furthermore, environmental concerns range from the better-known carbon footprint from energy consumption (e.g., cloud) to equally important concerns of embodied carbon[1], generation of methane, carcinogens, volatile organic compounds, and eutrophication, among others. Widespread use of compute intensive techniques (e.g., blockchain and artificial intelligence), handling and moving massive amounts of data, the rollout of next generation wireless/edge networks, and growth of smart devices amplifies the environmental concerns of this proliferation of computing. A new sustainable way of thinking about computing, across the full lifecycle – including manufacturing, operation, and disposal – is necessary to meet the needs of the present without compromising the wellbeing of future generations.

Scope

We solicit research and position papers that address sustainability and/or the carbon footprint of computer and networked systems. An ideal submission has the potential to open a line of inquiry that results in multiple conference papers by different authors in related venues rather than a single follow-up conference paper. Position papers that frame larger new challenges and opportunities are encouraged. The program committee will explicitly favor papers likely to stimulate reflection and discussion, addressing the root causes of unsustainability in current designs.

By its very nature, HotCarbon takes a broad view of systems research, relevant metrics, and intertwined infrastructure and software. Its scope includes, among others,

• operating systems
• storage
• distributed systems
• mobile and embedded systems
• virtualization
• programming languages
• networking
• security
• dependability
• manageability

as well as new systems contributions influenced by other fields such as

• hardware design
• machine learning
• verification
• economics
• social organization
• biological or other nontraditional computing systems.

Because of the nature of sustainability, research that connects to other complex infrastructures, such as

• power grids
• electronic supply chains
• circular economies
• right-to-repair / demanufacturing

is directly relevant.

This year, we are broadening the scope to also include research on systems issues in sustainable AI, including those that span the life cycle of AI models, specialized AI systems, data, and ecosystems.

Policies

Research and position paper submissions must be no longer than five pages, including figures and tables, plus as many pages as needed for references. Submissions must be in PDF format and formatted according to the official ACM Proceedings format. Word and LaTeX templates are available on the ACM Publications Website. Please use the template sigconf. The conference acronym is HotCarbon'24, July 9, 2024, Santa Cruz, CA.

Submissions will be double-blind. The title and an abstract should appear on the first page; author names should not. Authors must make a good-faith effort to anonymize their submissions, and they should not identify themselves either explicitly or by implication (e.g., through references or acknowledgments).

HotCarbon will also feature panels and events to inspire discussion of future research directions independent of any specific work. Panels and events may have many formats, from conventional panel discussions to breakouts to games. If you are interested in hosting or proposing an event, please submit a 1-page proposal (using the same format above) describing the topic, format, and length (up to 90 minutes), plus as many pages as necessary for references and supporting letters from planned participants. The committee will evaluate proposals based on the topic’s relevance and potential to engage the audience. Panel submissions are single-blind.

All submissions must be received by the deadline listed below, which is a hard deadline. Papers and proposals should be submitted via the web submission form as PDF files. Please identify your submission type in the form (paper or proposal). Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, or plagiarism constitutes dishonesty or fraud.

Revised versions of all accepted papers will be available open-access on the workshop’s website, along with slides of the presentation and, in some cases, a discussion summary.

This workshop will adhere to the ACM Code of Ethics.

HotCarbon is designed primarily as an in-person workshop, but with optional remote attendance. We believe that in-person attendance is essential to the discussion and interaction that is expected of a workshop. At the same time, we recognize that authors may have issues with the carbon footprint of the required travel, obtaining visas, or have other obstacles to in-person attendance. To support such cases, we accept submissions that do not intend to attend the workshop in-person. In these cases, we ask authors of accepted submissions to record a presentation video. We will make every effort to discuss such submissions at the workshop, but we reserve the right to release the publication and associated video direct-to-proceedings to allow for more interactive discussion of in-person presentations if necessary.

Program Committee

Chairs

• Simon Peter, University of Washington
• Esha Choukse, Microsoft Research

Committee

• Udit Gupta, Cornell
• Timo Hoenig, RUB
• Eun Kyung Lee, IBM
• Bobbie Manne, AMD Research
• Akshitha Sriraman, CMU
• Karin Strauss, Microsoft Research

Contact

You can contact the program chairs at hotcarbon24chairs@googlegroups.com.

Submission forum

hotcarbon24.hotcrp.com