Kick-off du Projet ANR SOCLOUD

The SOCLOUD project (Sober and Open Cloud) is an ANR project (ANR-25-CE25-2651) whose kickoff is taking place at FEMTO-ST from 01/19 to 01/22 in the SUPMICROTECH premises. 

On this occasion, all project partners (FEMTO-ST, IRIT Toulouse, LIG Grenoble, EATON Grenoble) are being welcomed. More than just discussing the future organization of the project and its upcoming operations, the event begins with a computer science/SSH acculturation workshop.

Initially invisible, the electrical consumption of datacenters is becoming a concern and could reach 10% of global electricity production by 2030. ICT is entering into competition with many other sectors of the economy seeking to decarbonize. For more than 10 years, the problem of energy efficiency has been tackled from every angle. Manufacturers have drastically reduced the consumption of ICT component by component, yet datacenter consumption continues to increase due to the rebound effect. The goal now is to approach the problem from the perspective of sufficiency (sobriété) for medium-power datacenters powered by an energy mix.

The objective of the SOCLOUD project is to study the human and technical conditions for implementing sufficiency in the cloud, and to identify levers and their consequences. Thus, SOCLOUD proposes to develop energy-sober, open, and "convivial" solutions that are understandable to users, so they have the choice to maintain, degrade, defer, or cancel specific cloud access depending on the context, thanks to the introduction of various scores and rewards. The provider's point of view will be taken into account when they are faced with a demand for load shedding from their electricity supplier, requiring an arbitration between drawing from stocks and reducing the offer to users or, on the contrary, offering a few hours with cheap and decarbonized energy.

SOCLOUD is a multi-disciplinary approach with an SSH component aimed at introducing the principle of conviviality, from the philosophy of techniques to design. A demonstrator will be proposed on a site of the SLICES-FR infrastructure.