Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Prof Andy Hopper has given Business Weekly the inside track on a number of research projects that not only seek to dramatically reduce the energy requirements of computer infrastructure, but also technology aimed at optimising the use of physical resources - and ultimately their substitution by the digital world.

Since taking over as the head of the lab in 2004, Prof Hopper has established ‘computing for the future of the planet’ as a central strand of its research output, knitting together research from different computing disciplines to address key issues of sustainability.

As a founder of Acorn Computers in addition to a host of other world-class tech companies, Hopper has a clear picture of what it takes for technologies to be widely adopted.

“On a basic level, we are trying to get a more accurate analysis of what the future holds for the planet by making the environmental simulation at the core of that endeavour faster, cheaper and better, but there is a lot more to it,” he said.

A key element is improving the energy usage of computer infrastructure, by, as Hopper puts it: “removing the equivalent of the standby button” from digital architecture.

“We are moving toward an era of ‘mandatory computing,’ whereby we can't live without them. Given this trend, who is to say how many computers will be working on our behalf in twenty years. At the moment, they just aren't efficient.”

The Computer lab is involved in work that overhauls the current design of computing systems by completely shutting down any circuit that isn't performing a useful function, i.e processing a request from an end-user.

The challenge from there, according to Hopper, is getting a disk, for example, to reboot in the hundredths of a second required to make the technology agile enough to deal with real-world requirements.

The exchange and effective utilisation of data - from traffic information to sensor readings of CO2 levels - will also be crucial in halting climate change, Hopper says.

In the future, Prof Hopper believes that motorists will have to plan their journeys in much the same way as they currently do their air travel, providing information on their destination, timings and route, in exchange for cheaper travel.

He also “postulates” that every mobile phone will have a built in CO2 sensor, and the world's mobile phone network will also double as a sensor network, beaming real-time environmental information as well as voice and other data.

To this end, his lab is working on scaleable computing systems, addressing challenges such as where the truly mind-boggling amounts of information can be stored, how it will be stored, how it can be searched, and how the systems will deal with millions, if not billions of queries.

“With those kinds of stresses placed upon it - the system will have to have very sound theoretical underpinnings,” Hopper said.

“And of course, issues of privacy and security of data will have to be addressed, but they are by no means insurmountable.”

Hopper concedes that the most “wacky-sounding” element of his vision for technology driven sustainability is the move from wealth creation based on the physical world and physical resources, to commerce in cyberspace.

“It sounds geeky, but at some point in the past, Google and MySpace would have sounded geeky,” he said.

Hopper predicts that in just the same way that MP3 downloads have reduced the carbon footprint of the music industry, much of the world's leisure and even business activities will increasingly move to the virtual world - from gaming and socialising to buying and selling. With a much lesser requirement for physical infrastructure, such as roads, this new economy will not have the same barriers to entry for the developing world.

A number of groups at the lab, are working on making this new virtual world as realistic as possible, Hopper said.

“Some of what I am saying might sound a bit off-the-wall but I can afford to be to a certain extent.

“I whole-heartedly believe that taking a long-term view, much of this work will be crucial in stopping us all going down the pan.”