Amortizing Embodied Carbon Across Generations

Data centers have been relying on renewable energy integration coupled with energy efficient specialized processing units and accelerators to increase sustainability. Unfortunately, the carbon generated from manufacturing these systems is becoming increasingly relevant due to these energy decarbonization and efficiency improvements. Furthermore, it is less clear how to mitigate this aspect of embodied carbon. As workloads continue to evolve over each hardware generation we explore the tradeoffs of fabricating new application-tuned hardware compared with more general solutions such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). We also explore how REFRESH FPGAs can amortize embodied carbon investments from previous generations to meet the requirements of future generations workloads.