CAP F07/Ethics Team 2/Environment

In addition to deciding which types of usage are appropriate from an academic standpoint it is also important to discuss if the creation and use of a Beowulf cluster is indeed the best ethical use of our resources. The purchase of the hardware for the Beowulf cluster cost tens of thousands of dollars and it's operation has consumed countless hours of very intelligent people's time. How than can we justify it's purchase. Furthermore in addition to the opportunity cost of the labor and money invested in the beowulf project, we must also consider the environmental impact of it's production and operation.

Each machine consumes 188.3W during peack usage according to the | sun server power calculator. with 16 machines that represents a total of 3 012.8 Watts. Assuming that one third of that power comes from the wind turbine, and the remaining two thirds comes from sources typical to the state of Minnesota, we can use the governmental | Emission Factor to produce an estimate about the carbon footprint. Using this data we can estimate that when the cluster is running at full capacity it produces about 4.56 lbs of carbon per hour, or 20 tons of carbon per year. To give some perspective, it is estimate that a typical North American produces about five tons of carbon per year. In addition to the ongoing energy consumption associated with the operation of the cluster, we must also consider the environmental impact of producing these machines, this concept is called embodied energy. Calculating the embodied energy of the the machines is exceedingly difficult due to the wide composition of materials that go into each machine. We can however assume that this cost is quite high, the materials that go into a computer are often toxic and take special care to dispose of. The toxic nature of computers has created a push for Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) compliant machines, a standard which has been mandated in the European Union. Fortunately our Sun X2100s are indeed RoHS compliant.

Offsetting all of these costs are the benefits of the use of the cluster, research using the cluster has spanned many different disciplines on campus and produced plenty of valuable research. While it is impossible to objectively weight the value of the research verse the costs of the Beowulf clusters production and opperation, hopefully this analysis will help us remain mindful of the costs incurred and maximize the returns that it produces.