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The ecological impact of high-performance computing in astrophysics

Nature Astronomy volume 4, pages 819–822 (2020)Cite this article

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Computer use in astronomy continues to increase, and so also its impact on the environment. To minimize the effects, astronomers should avoid interpreted scripting languages such as Python, and favour the optimal use of energy-efficient workstations.

The third pillar of science, simulation and modelling, already had a solid foothold in fourth-century astronomy1, but this discipline flourished with the introduction of digital computers. One of its challenges is the carbon emission resulting from this increased popularity. Generally unrecognized, the magnitude of the carbon footprint of computing in astrophysics should be emphasized. One purpose of this Comment is to raise this awareness, and present best practices for (super)computer usage and choice of programming language.

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Fig. 1: Carbon production of a number of common activities among astronomers.
Fig. 2: Energy to solution as a function of code performance.
Fig. 3: Programming language efficiency as a function of the time to solution.

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Acknowledgements

I thank A. Allen for providing data on the ASCL language usage and L. Butscher for comments and inviting me to present this discussion at the 2020 European Astronomical Society conference. Part of this work was performed using resources provided by the Academic Leiden Interdisciplinary Cluster Environment (Alice), TITAN (LANL) and LGM-II (NWO grant number 621.016.701) We used the Python, Matplotlib, NumPy, Numba and AMUSE open-source packages.

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  1. Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands

    Simon Portegies Zwart

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Correspondence to Simon Portegies Zwart.

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Portegies Zwart, S. The ecological impact of high-performance computing in astrophysics. Nat Astron 4, 819–822 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1208-y

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