Bell Labs is aiming to cut the power consumption of the Internet by launching a consortium called Green Touch.
At its launch, the UK, US, French, South Korean and Portuguese Governments issued statements supporting the initiative.
"Its goal is to create the technologies needed to make communications networks 1000 times more energy efficient than they are today," said Bell Labs, "A thousand-fold reduction is roughly equivalent to being able to power the world's communications networks, including the Internet, for three years using the same amount of energy that it currently takes to run them for a single day."
Green Touch brings together leaders in industry, academia and government labs, and at its launch, the consortium issued an open invitation to other members of the information and communication technology (ICT) community to join forces.
"Over the next decade billions more people will upload and share video, images and information over public and private networks as we communicate with each other in new, rich ways. We also expect ICT usage to dramatically increase as other industries use networks to reduce their own carbon footprints. This naturally leads to an exponential growth in ICT energy consumption which we, as an industry, have to jointly address. This consortium is unique in looking way beyond making incremental efficiency improvements and tapping into innovation and expertise from around the globe to achieve fundamental breakthroughs in ICT carbon emissions reduction," said Gee Rittenhouse, consortium head and v-p of research at Bell Labs.
This 1000-fold efficiency target is based on Bell Labs research which it claims indicates that today's ICT networks have the potential to be 10,000 times more efficient.
Analysis included exploring the fundamental properties of communication networks and technologies - optical, wireless, electronics, processing, routing, and architecture - and studying their physical limits by applying established formulas such as Shannon's law.
To support its objectives the Green Touch Initiative aims to deliver, within five years, a reference network architecture and demonstrations of the key components.
The first consortium meeting is in February and will establish the organisation's five-year plan, first-year deliverables, and member roles and responsibilities.
Belgian research lab IMEC, a world leader in low-power wireless data transfer, is to be a member.
"By joining the Green Touch Initiative, IMEC teams up with industrial and academic leaders in R&D to solve one of the grand challenges our world faces: to provide sustainable yet ubiquitous connectivity for everyone and everything at an energy consumption which approaches the theoretical limits", said Luc Van den hove, IMEC's CEO.
Green Touch Initiative founding members include:
- Service Providers:
- AT&T
- China Mobile
- Portugal Telecom
- Swisscom
- Telefonica
- Academic Research Labs:
- MIT's Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE)
- Stanford University's Wireless Systems Lab (WSL)
- University of Melbourne's Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES)
- Government and Non-profit Research Institutions:
- The CEA-LETI Applied Research Institute for Microelectronics (France)
- IMEC (Belgium)
- The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA)
- Industrial Labs:
- Bell Labs
- Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT)
- Freescale Semiconductor