Code reduces energy consumption

Through their research, Martin Karsten, professor of computer science in the University of Waterloo’s Math Faculty, and computer science grad student Peter Cai, discovered that the way that data centers were processing packets of network traffic was inefficient, and devised a small change to make it far more efficient.

“We didn’t add anything,” Karsten said. “We just rearranged what is done when, which leads to a much better usage of the data center’s CPU caches. It’s kind of like rearranging the pipeline at a manufacturing plant, so that you don’t have people running around all the time.”

Karsten teamed up with Joe Damato, distinguished engineer at content delivery network firm Fastly, to develop a small section of code —approximately 30 lines —that would improve Linux’s network traffic processing. If adopted, the new method could reduce the energy consumption of important data center operations by as much as 30 percent, the researchers said.

The team tested their solution’s effectiveness and submitted it to Linux for consideration, and the code was published this month as part of Linux’s newest kernel, release version 6.13.