GreenTouch™ is a new global consortium organized by Bell Labs, and has one goal: to create the technologies needed to make communications networks 1,000 times more energy-efficient than they are today.

A lofty objective indeed.  A 1,000-fold reduction is roughly equivalent to being able to power the world’s communications networks, including the Internet, for 3 years using the same amount of energy that it currently takes to run them for a single day.

GreenTouch brings together leaders in industry, academia, and government labs to invent and deliver radical new approaches to energy efficiency that will be at the heart of sustainable networks in the decades to come. With its launch, the consortium also has issued an open invitation to all members of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) community to join forces in reaching this ambitious target.

Some heavy hitters have joined the consortium and have their sights set on making substantive change in a relatively short time frame.

The U.S. Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, shared his thoughts on the vision for this group: “Truly global challenges have always been best addressed by bringing together the brightest minds in an unconstrained, creative environment. This was what we used when putting a man on the moon and is the same approach we need to implement to address the global climate crisis. The GreenTouch Initiative is an example of such a response -- bringing together scientists and technologists from around the world and from many different disciplines in an environment of open innovation to attack the problem from many different directions.”

The UK is also committed to making a difference.  “The ICT sector is perfectly placed to bring its innovative and technological forces to bear in the low carbon transition as well as in curbing its own carbon footprint. The GreenTouch Initiative shows how business can play its part in delivering the low carbon society we are working to achieve. With Government creating an environment in which innovation can flourish, we welcome industry coming together with academia to create the research, technology, and solutions necessary to reduce carbon emissions,” said Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, UK.

France’s Minister for Industry, Christian Estrosi, realizes the goal is not entirely altruistic.  “Industry has to play a major role in the drive to increasing global energy efficiency. This is both a matter of environmental responsibility and competitiveness. We regularly endorse such projects in our “pole de compétitivité” (competiveness cluster) policy and the Eureka clusters. This is a particularly crucial area of focus because of increasing usage of ICT and the Internet. The world-wide GreenTouch consortium will open the way to generating major technological breakthroughs.”

The How-To Behind the Goals
GreenTouch plans to use an open innovation model that harnesses the brightest minds across the world to put competition aside and focus on the initiatives that can help address the challenge of global warming.

Bell Labs leads the consortium and aims to look beyond making incremental efficiency improvements. “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,” said Gee Rittenhouse, vice president of research at Bell Labs and consortium lead.

Just how does this group plan to do this? By tapping into innovation and expertise from around the globe to achieve fundamental breakthroughs in ICT carbon emissions reduction.

GreenTouch Initiative founding members include:
• Service Providers: AT&T, China Mobile, Portugal Telecom, Swisscom, Telefonica
• Academic Research Labs: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE), Stanford University’s Wireless Systems Lab (WSL), the University of Melbourne’s Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES)
• Government and Nonprofit Research Institutions: The CEA-LETI Applied Research Institute for Microelectronics (Grenoble, France), The Foundation for Mobile Communications (Portugal), imec (Headquarters: Leuven, 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

This 1,000-fold efficiency target is based on research from Bell Labs that determined that today’s information and communication technology (ICT) networks have the potential to be 10,000 times more efficient than they are today. This conclusion comes from a Bell Labs’ analysis of the fundamental properties of ICT networks and technologies (optical, wireless, electronics, processing, routing, and architecture) and studying their physical limits by applying established formulas such as Shannon’s Law.¹

“With the boom in broadband usage, ICT energy consumption is rapidly increasing and immediate steps need to be taken to address this trend and mitigate its impact,” said Vernon Turner, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Enterprise Computing, Network, Consumer, Telecom, and Sustainability at IDC, a leading industry analyst firm. “What distinguishes the GreenTouch Initiative is its commitment to a hugely ambitious yet quantifiable goal that is rooted in hard science. Its global profile and multi-disciplinary approach will accelerate the necessary fundamental rethinking and development of new technologies.”

To support its objectives the GreenTouch Initiative will deliver -- within 5 years -- a reference network architecture and demonstrations of the key components required to realize this improvement. This initiative also offers the potential to generate new technologies and new areas of industry.

Look for upcoming reports on the organization’s 5-year plan, first-year deliverables, and member roles and responsibilities.

Source
GreenTouch™: www.greentouch.org
For those companies interested in joining the consortium, please visit the web site www.greentouch.org

Endnote
1. Shannon's Law Explained: www.greentouch.org/index.php?page=shannons-law-explained

 OSP’s Quick Q&A
    {The Efficient Way}

Visionary Dr. Gee Rittenhouse
Vice President of Bell Labs Research

OSP: Why be a part of GreenTouch? 
Bell Labs is committed to GreenTouch and is devoting significant resources to the initiative because the goals and aspirations of GreenTouch are well aligned with those of Bell Labs.  GreenTouch contains fundamental ingredients -- highly complex problems, broad impact, and intense collaboration -- that characterize projects Bell Labs has engaged in throughout its history and that have been the source of its greatest breakthroughs and most renowned inventions.

GreenTouch presents a complex problem whose solution will depend on looking at things from an entirely different perspective and inventing technologies that don’t exist today; the outcome will have a clear and direct impact not only on the ICT industry, but on society at large; and its success is linked to open innovation a concept that Bell Labs has embraced and put at the center of its research strategy.

OSP: Assuming there were no obstacles, share 2 specific changes you would see in the telecom infrastructure 5 years from now.
To get some insight into how the telecom infrastructure will evolve over the next 5 to or even 10 years, we first have to consider the drivers for change.

Some of the key factors we see include tremendous growth in the user base -- millions of users getting access to high-speed broadband networks who never had service before, an exponential increase in video usage, the advent of sensor deployment and usage and machine-to-machine communication, and leveraging the network to reduce greenhouse gases from other sectors.
One immediate impact these changes have is a dramatic increase in energy consumption, and in response telecom networks need to be optimized for energy consumption -- this is the essence of the GreenTouch initiative.

Another change to the network infrastructure we foresee is the rise of Network Virtualization that involves inventing technologies that make it possible for a physical network to operate as if it were multiple logical networks, each one having a distinct function or supporting a different service provider. This will have clear cost benefits, and will make it possible for service providers to more easily scale and accommodate exponential growth in traffic.

Dr. Gee Rittenhouse oversees all Bell Labs research centers and activities for Alcatel-Lucent. Earlier in his career, Dr. Rittenhouse was Vice President of Bell Labs Wireless Research. In 2000, he was promoted to Director of the Wireless Technology Research Department and led several projects including MIMO system development, cellular network optimization, wireless IP networks, and fourth generation wireless systems. Dr. Rittenhouse is a recipient of the Bell Labs Fellow Award and has had numerous publications and patents in the areas of wireless systems and circuits.

Professor Rod Tucker
Laureate Professor and Director of the University of Melbourne’s Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (IBES)

OSP: Why be a part of GreenTouch? 
I represent IBES, the Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and one of the objectives of IBES is to find ways to benefit society using broadband.  One of the key ways in which it can do this is through the reduction of greenhouse emissions, and part of that is reducing the greenhouse emissions of the network itself.  IBES has a team of researchers who are doing similar work and have obtained similar conclusions to those in Bell Labs, but like them we certainly cannot do this by ourselves. 

What is really exciting about this GreenTouch Initiative is that, for the first time ever, it enables organizations from around the world to work together in a coordinated and interdisciplinary fashion to come up with outcomes that could never be achieved otherwise.  This is a very exciting initiative, and we are very much looking forward to working with Bell Labs and the other groups in GreenTouch.

OSP: Assuming there were no obstacles, share 2 specific changes you would see in the telecom infrastructure 5 years from now.
First, I see substantial changes in the access network and in the user modem in the home.  Fiber-based access networks use less energy than copper and wireless networks.  Clearly, fiber cannot provide the convenience and mobility that comes with wireless, but fiber-to-the-home is the most energy-efficient way to get data into the home.  Today’s user modems use more energy than they need to, and they are usually left running 24 hours a day.  Future generations of user modem will go into a low-energy sleep state whenever they are not being used.  Similar energy efficiency measures will be applied to other end-user equipment.

A second important change to the infrastructure will be a more efficient use of network switching.  If I send an e-mail today to a colleague somewhere else in the country or the world, that e-mail typically passes through 10 or 20 switches on its journey from my computer to my colleague’s computer.  This happens very quickly, so no one notices the delay.  But every time the e-mail is switched, it uses energy.   Switching in the telecommunications infrastructure is similar, in concept, to sorting mail in the Post Office.  But the Post Office does not sort ordinary mail 20 times between its source and destination -- it would clearly be too inefficient to do this.  The telecommunications infrastructure will need to follow the lead of the postal infrastructure and move to a more efficient structure that focuses on transporting the data to its destination with a minimum of switching.

The IBES is a cross-disciplinary research institute at the University of Melbourne dedicated to technologies products, services, and innovations that maximize the benefit of broadband technologies to society. The Institute’s activities cover a wide range of fields including advanced broadband technologies, energy-efficient networking and cloud computing, online engagement, content creation and delivery, delivery of remote health services and education, business and service transformation, social networking, and entertainment. For more information, please visit www.broadband.unimelb.edu.au.

Visionary Bruno Sportisse
Director of Transfer and Innovation at INRIA
© INRIA / Photo C. Dupont

OSP: Why be a part of GreenTouch? 
We are very enthusiastic about being a founding member of this consortium for three reasons.  The first reason is that we are sure this is the right direction for the future of communication networks.  The new criteria that must be taken into account are related to energy savings and so on, and we are convinced that these will be the key drivers for sustainable digital societies. 

The second reason is that the issue is so large that it covers the entire spectrum of science and technology from hardware, physical components, and software, to network design and network management.  INRIA has many research teams who are active in what could be called network sciences.

The third reason is related to the open innovation approach, which is one basic principle of this initiative.  That is to say, we know on the basis of our experience that it is vital to bring together expertise both from academia and from global industrial leaders.  For example, we have a joint research laboratory with Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs, focusing on the future of the Internet and mobile networks.  We know that this open innovation approach is the efficient one.  Another example is the European consortium, the so-called ICT Labs project, which will be supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and will involve Bell Labs and other partners.  This will be devoted to the development of the future sustainable digital society. 
 
OSP: Assuming there were no obstacles, share 2 specific changes you would see in the telecom infrastructure 5 years from now.
One major concern of the telecom industry is related to the transmission and virtualization of high definition images and videos.

Such images and video files are creating bottlenecks in access networks (especially in mobile access networks) and routing problems in backbone networks because Traffic Application Management solutions are not yet good enough and there are virtualization problems on small size screens like those found on smartphones.

Therefore, one specific change we expect is that the telecom infrastructure be able to transmit images and videos with satisfactory Quality of Service (QoS) at a minimum and preferably with a good Quality of Experience (QoE). Such topics are currently under discussion within French technology clusters such as Images & Reseaux and System@tic.

Another change we anticipate is related to telecom standardization. A solid standardization program within the telecom community has always served as a solid foundation for technological improvement. Therefore, I strongly believe that the success of IMS and LTE protocols will accelerate the emergence of telecom integration and ubiquity.

The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) is a public science and technology institution, under the supervision of the French Ministries of Research and Industry. INRIA employs 2,800 researchers, of which more than 1,000 are Ph.D.s. They work in more than 168 project teams of which the majority collaborates with other organizations, universities, and higher education institutions. 80 Associate Teams around the world. 96 companies set up since 1984. For more information, visit www.inria.fr.

The Vendor Vision: Ken Hansen
Senior Fellow, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Freescale Semiconductor

OSP: Why be a part of GreenTouch? 
The communications network has evolved from the early days of analog FM communications to early deployments of Long Term Evolution (LTE) on the wireless side and moved from voice-only communications to a 10,000 fold increase in data rate. The industry’s primary focus during this evolution has been to increase capacity and data throughput somewhat at the expense of power consumption.

Freescale has been a leading supplier of network components for both the wired and wireless sides throughout the entire cellular communications era. A major emphasis in our product development has been a focus on power consumption; making our products greener through architectural changes like multicore, power optimization techniques such as idle and sleep modes, and circuit techniques like the use of multiple volt transistors.

However, to make a dramatic change requires taking a fresh approach, understanding theoretical limits, and designing the entire network from the ground up with power consumption minimization the focal point.

OSP: Assuming there were no obstacles, share 2 specific changes you would see in the telecom infrastructure 5 years from now.
The goal of the consortium is to conduct the research over a 5-year period to prove out methods and techniques that will enable us to achieve a 1000X improvement in power consumption with early deployment in the 2020 timeframe. Only by taking a holistic approach and reconsidering every element of the current network can a goal like this be achieved. Many of the techniques for improving link margin and thus minimizing transmit power, which is one of the dominant energy consumers, will demand increased computational capability. Freescale is well positioned in this area and excited to contribute to the consortium’s goal.

Prior to becoming CTO, Ken was Vice President in the Chief Development Office where he focused on improving design efficiency and reducing product cost across all Freescale businesses. Previously, he held several senior technology and management positions at Freescale and Motorola, leading research and development teams. He is an industry veteran, with 33 years of analog and digital design experience in bipolar, CMOS, and BiCMOS technologies, primarily in the area of wireless communications.

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