book

Building Green Software

by Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, Sara Bergman

March 2024

Intermediate to advanced

244 pages

6h 59m

English

O'Reilly Media, Inc.

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Why Should You Read This Book?How Does This Book Work?Why Do Techies Matter?The CulpritsWhat Won’t We Talk About?Says Who?Why Can’t You Trust Us?Conventions Used in This BookO’Reilly Online LearningHow to Contact UsAcknowledgmentsAnneSarahSara
What Does It Mean to Be Green in IT?What We Reckon
The Reason We Are Here: CarbonGreenhouse GasesWeather Versus ClimateHow About Global Warming? How Is It Related to Climate Change?Monitoring Climate ChangeBack to Basics: ElectricityWork, Energy, Electricity, and BillsHigh- and Low-Carbon EnergyHow Can We Improve Energy Efficiency?Hardware 101 for Software EngineersThe Physical SideThe Operations SideYou’re All Set
Efficiency Is Everything—or Is It?What Is Code Efficiency?Why Is Most Code Deliberately Inefficient?The Benefits of EfficiencyDeveloper ProductivityBackground: Hyperefficient CodeThe GoodiesPerformance Versus Efficiency Versus GreennessPick the Right PlatformUse Green Design PatternsAvoid Too Many LayersBe Mindful with MicroservicesReplace Inefficient Services and LibrariesDon’t Do or Save Too MuchLeverage Client DevicesManage Machine LearningThe Big Problem with EfficiencyThe Lowdown
The Battle Against the MachinesHot StuffTechniquesMachine UtilizationMultitenancyServerless ServicesHyperscalers and ProfitSRE PracticesLightSwitchOpsLocation, Location, LocationOh No! Resistance Fights Back!Green Operational Tools and Techniques
Carbon Intensity of ElectricityVariability of Carbon IntensityElectricity DemandToolingDemand ShiftingTime ShiftingLocation ShiftingDemand ShapingAny Devil’s Advocates?Location Shifting Can Be TrickyReal-World ExamplesGoogleXboxiPhoneCarbon Hack 22You’re Carbon and Aware
Embodied CarbonDevice LongevitySoftware-Defined ObsolescenceCloud Applications and ServicesSelf-Hosted Data CentersSpecialized HardwareE-wasteWhat Are Hardware Producers Doing to Make Their Operations Greener?That Is a Wrap!
Are Networks Already Green Enough?Looking at the Big PictureDefining the InternetWhat Are These Wires?How Do Compute and Storage Fit In?More Than the Sum of Its Parts?Are Internet Satellites Good or Bad?The Role of SoftwareWhy Can’t We Just Make Routing Greener?Border Gateway ProtocolGreening the Internet from the Top DownLessons from LockdownDemand ShiftingBrownouts, Graceful Downgrades, and Demand ShapingSo, What Did We Learn from 2020?In Conclusion
Growth in Size and UsageProject PlanningData CollectionDesign and Training of ML ModelsSize MattersSize Isn’t AllDeployment and MaintenanceWhere Should You Start?

The PerfectPerfect Energy DataPerfect Carbon Intensity DataWhere Do Market-Based Reductions Fit In?Perfect Embodied-Carbon TracingThe Future of Perfect MonitoringThe Good Enough?Use of ProxiesConsistent Use of Imperfect Data to Reach ReductionsExamination of the Current MethodologiesGreenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol)Green Software Foundation’s Software Carbon Intensity Specification (SCI)ISO 14064 StandardAvailable ToolingHyperscale Cloud Provider ToolsOpen Source Options for the CloudClient-Side ToolingYou Made It!
Availability as a North StarFour Horsemen of Metrics-Based MonitoringService Level Is Why We Are HereWhen a Carbon Metric Is ReadyObservabilityThe Anticipated Showdown: Observability Versus MonitoringAre We Ready for Observability?We Will Get There
Is It About the Money?Why Is Greener Also Cheaper?How About Reliability and Resilience?ExampleMaybe It’s Performance?How Fast Is Fast Enough?Best Fit and PerformanceIt’s Got to Be Security!Security Is GreenBut What About Data?Control LLMsThink About Data ModelsActually, It’s All of the AboveRight, We Think You’re Ready
The History of Maturity MatricesGreen Software Maturity MatrixLevelsAxesAxes ChecklistsWhere Are We Today?
Why Us?Moving Through the MatrixThe Green Software 50% ChallengeWhat Next?To Everything There Is a SeasonThe Cost?“All the Things!”Then How?Code ReuseSo, What Is Green Software?Epilogue

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About the Authors

Anne Currie is a tech veteran who has been a part of the industry as a developer, senior manager, and startup founder for nearly thirty years working on everything from high performance C software in the 90s, to e-commerce in the 00s, to modern operations in the 10s. She is a campaigner for future-proof, sustainable systems and regularly writes and speaks on the subject. She is a community chair of the Green Software Foundation, and co-founder of tech consultancy Strategically Green. She is also the author of the scifi Panopticon series.

Sarah (Chun-Wei) Hsu strongly advocates green, sustainable software. She regularly speaks and writes on the subject and serves as the chair of the Green Software Course project for the Green Software Foundation. In collaboration with the Linux Foundation, the group recently launched a free online educational course titled Green Software for Practitioners (LFC131) to assist software practitioners in building and maintaining greener applications. She currently works as a Site Reliability Engineer on a distributed platform on Google Cloud.

Sara Bergman is a Senior Software Engineer working as a backend engineer with people experiences in the Microsoft ecosystem. She is an advocate for green software practices and frequently speaks about green software publicly in conferences, meetups and podcasts. She is an individual contributor of the Green Software Foundation, where she has contributed to several projects, including the Software ...