A Binghamton University computer scientist has received a National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program grant for $448,641 for development of green programming that could affect everything from smartphones to facility data centers.
Yu David Liu plans to address the steadily growing amount of energy that electronic devices consume. In recent years, scientists have attempted to attack the problem by paring back the consumption though hardware and/or operating systems, but Liu is taking aim at the programming itself with energy-efficient software.
"Saving energy is an activity that should come from many layers," says Liu, who plans to build energy-related parameters into a programming language.
A change at the programming level would encourage programmers to express energy-saving intentions during software development.
Solutions at this level of programming enjoy a certain degree of platform independence, meaning everything from phones to servers could be in the scope of this revolutionary energy-efficient initiative.
"I think every researcher wants to make the world better, and we just put it into our own perspective," says Liu. "Sometime in the Computer future, every Science 101 class may include a lecture or two on energy-aware programming. As an educator, I'm excited about helping to ensure that next-generation programmers are green-conscious from the beginning of their careers."
