Building a green supercomputer in the cloud

on YouTube ↗42m

" summary

Builds an HPC cluster in the cloud for Vestas that scales to 400,000 cores and handled ~6.5 million IOPS, combining VM-based HPC and serverless for bursts and scale-to-zero. Uses spot/reserved instances (up to ~90% discounts), Carbon Intensity APIs (ElectricityMap), and a carbon-economy SDK to do carbon-aware scheduling. Time-shifting cuts emissions ~12–16%, moving jobs regionally cuts 30–90%, and automated data staging and blob-triggered transfers keep costs and carbon low.

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" chapters (11)

1. 0:00🚀 Introduction: The need for sustainable computing and how it impacts climate change
2. 3:00Vestas wind turbines: Engineering challenges and the need for simulation
3. 7:03Building a high-performance compute (HPC) cluster for wind turbine simulation
4. 11:00Ensuring efficiency: Reducing costs and carbon emissions through cloud optimization
5. 14:05The role of programming languages, CPU/GPU selection, and hardware efficiency in green computing
6. 18:00Carbon awareness: How to calculate and reduce carbon emissions in cloud computing
7. 23:11Using tools like the Green Software Foundation and Carbon Intensity APIs
8. 28:44Shifting workloads between regions and utilizing spot instances to reduce carbon footprint
9. 32:02Implementing time-shifting to optimize carbon savings in cloud-based workloads
10. 37:20Real-world impact: How Vestas saved carbon emissions and costs by optimizing workloads
11. 41:10Closing thoughts: How you can apply these practices to make your own cloud infrastructure greener

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