The energy consumption and ecological impact of main Internet components such as data centers and communications infrastructures are reaching alarming levels. In 2007, the electric energy production for operating ICT (information and communications technologies) caused a CO2 output reaching 25% of the level of world-wide automobiles. Current projects show that the growth of energy consumption of Internet components will be passing the levels of the last 15 years which has been doubling every 5 years. The visionary goal of the approved Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 912 (HAEC–Highly Adaptive Energy-Efficient Computing) is to research technologies enable computing systems with high energy efficiency without compromising on high performance.

On November 23 and 24, 2011 the first HAEC Research Festival took place at the Spreehotel in Bautzen. Principal investigators, scientists and PhD students had been invited to get the latest update on HAEC. After a brief welcome by Prof. Fettweis, the principal investigators gave an overview about the activities in the subprojects. Poster sessions between the talks provided an opportunity for our PhD students to discuss the research results with the principal investigators and the industrial partners.

In addition to the HAEC team, our strategic advisors from industry participated in the event. It was a great pleasure to welcome Thomas Pflüger (IBM), Chris Schläger (AMD) and Helmut Prengel (Globalfoundries) as our guests at the Research Festival. In the evening of the first day, three feedback sessions had been scheduled for the industrial partners and the principal investigators. There, the participants received excellent feedback from our industrial partners.

On the second day, the four working groups came together and discussed next steps and goals which should be prepared by HAEC staff. The four working groups are an interface between the research projects of HAEC. Prof. Fettweis closed the Research Festival by providing an overview of the CRC. The second Research Festival will be held in June 2012 at TU Dresden as an internal meeting.  Research Festivals will provide an important platform to regularly discuss the latest results and next steps.

© CRC 912