Full time PhD research position on reducing the energy consumption of HPC data centers through user engagement

Data centers consume an increasing amount of energy. Unconstrainted growth of data centers is no longer acceptable in light of their financial and environmental implications. Users of data centers are generally not aware of the energy consumed by their jobs, and no incentives are provided by data center operators to reduce this impact. In this project you will give end users of a scientific High Performance Computing (HPC) data center the information they need to make decisions about reducing their energy footprint. Through measurements, modeling, reporting and visualization, you will give policy and decision makers and stakeholders the information they need to offer proper incentives to those end users.

What are you going to do?

Working on the project entails:

• Building the instrumentation for measuring the energy consumption of jobs in an HPC cluster using both modeling and measured data
• Building the visualization and reporting mechanisms that inform users about the energy consumption of their jobs
• Investigating the relation between energy consumed and jobs characteristics
• Investigating mechanisms for incentivizing users to reduce their energy consumption
• Engage with users of a large scale scientific instrument towards optimizing their job scheduling to maximize use of available renewable energy in the HPC cluster

Employed PhD candidates are expected to spend 10% of their working hours on teaching and/or supervising candidates.

1. Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field
2. Experience in observability, ideally for energy or performance monitoring
3. Familiarity with cluster/HPC/HTC environments and/or performance engineering would be counted as positive
4. Technical requirements: Linux, comfortable with C/C++, MPI and/or (open)MP is preferred, some familiarity with observability stacks and/or performance profiling and visualization is welcome
5. Good communication skills, and excellent grasp of written and spoken English are required

• 232 vacation hours per year, based on a 38-hour workweek (1.0 FTE). You can also work more or fewer hours in exchange for more or fewer free hours. For example, with a 40-hour workweek, you save 96 extra free hours, and with a 36-hour workweek, you lose 96 hours.
• End-of-year bonus of 8.3% and 8% holiday allowance.
• Extensive opportunities for personal and professional development.

The Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) provides teaching and research across a wide range of disciplines, from physics and biology to artificial intelligence, mechanical engineering, and pharmacy. In close collaboration with partners from industry, healthcare, and society, we contribute to the urgent challenges of our time, such as energy, sustainability, digitization, and medical technology. Our community is open and informal, with more than 7,000 students, 1,000 PhD students, and 1,400 staff members from all over the world. If you would like to learn more about the Faculty of Science and Engineering, visit rug.nl/fse. 

ASTRON is the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, ASTRON is part of the institutes organisation of NWO. Our mission is to make discoveries in radio astronomy happen. We do this by developing new and innovative technologies, operating world-class radio astronomy facilities, and pursuing fundamental astronomical research.

This research project is embedded within the RECUS project at the University of Groningen, in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON). In this project we bring together data center operations staff, HPC administrators, Computer Science researchers, end users from the wider Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen, radioastronomy end users working with a large scale radio telescope at ASTRON, with the goal of reducing the environmental impact of individual jobs submitted to HPC clusters hosted at the University of Groningen.  

Do you have any questions or need more information?

Questions about the content of the job?
Vasilios Andrikopoulos (Associate Professor): V.Andrikopoulos@rug.nl

Questions about your application process?
Femke Postma (Human Resources Adviser): femke.postma@rug.nl