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U04: Guest in the Active Plenum

Written on 10.09.26 (last change on 10.09.26) by Robin Ohs

Dear students,

Tomorrow we will have Sophie Kolb from "Netzwerk Entwicklungspolitik im Saarland e.V." (what roughly translates to "Sustainable Development Network in Saarland") as a guest in the plenum. This is your chance to ask questions — including broader ones — about theoretical and political problems of sustainability, which don't necessarily need to relate to computer science. Further, she co-authored U04 and can help you close potential gaps you have from reading the chapter.

We hope to see many of you tomorrow.

Best regards,
Your SCS Team

Less than a Week until SCS

Written on 31.08.26 by Andreas Schmidt

Dear SCS students,

Less than one week are between all of us and the start of "Sustainable Computing Systems". We're excited about that and hope you are too.

For now, the most important thing is that we start Mo, 07th September at 09:45 in E1.3 Lecture Hall 003.

As we have gotten various… Read more

Dear SCS students,

Less than one week are between all of us and the start of "Sustainable Computing Systems". We're excited about that and hope you are too.

For now, the most important thing is that we start Mo, 07th September at 09:45 in E1.3 Lecture Hall 003.

As we have gotten various inquiries regarding presence requirements, here is some clarification:

As of today, the only mandatory event to be present is the (re)examination. This gives you the maximum flexibility w.r.t. to other obligations like exams, internships, etc. At the same time, we are convinced that attending only this single event leaves you with a low likelihood of passing. Note that we do not record anything. You only get access to slides and best-effort notes from the plenum. Please mix and match our three presence formats (lecture, active plenum, and office hour) with self-study periods and asynchronous participation in the forum. You are students in higher semesters and we believe you can manage this and find good, individual solutions.

Best regards and see you soon,
The SCS Team

Introduction

Computing is becoming an increasingly integral part of our lives. At the same time, information and communication technology (ICT) is currently responsible for 4% of global carbon emissions as well as other detrimental environmental impacts (water usage, electronic waste, …).

“Sustainable Computing Systems” (SCS) is a course designed to introduce computer science students to two things: a) environmental impacts of computing systems as well as b) approaches to reduce and mitigate these impacts.

(Preliminary) Curriculum

The course covers three major areas, giving you practical and theoretical knowledge to create, maintain, and advance sustainable computing systems, which are essential for today's world. We will answer the following questions (among others) in this course:

Fundamentals of Sustainability
- What do we care about and why should you care?
- How do we get to sustainable action?
General Sustainable Computing
- How do computing systems have an environmental impact?
- How are computing systems organized and where do these impacts happen?
- What are the important metrics? e.g. Time, Energy, Carbon, PUE, SCI, ...
Practical Approaches to Make Computing Sustainable (Again)
- How can we make software development produce more sustainable software?
- How can we green AI and web applications?
- What has to change with respect to hardware?
- How can networked applications become more sustainable and what do we need from the operating system for that?
- How can I trade dependability for sustainability? Can I have a bit of both at the same time?

Organization