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Jennifer Switzer, Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher, and David Patterson, Fellow, Google

With support from Google, Researchers at the University of California San Diego are building a useful second-life for consumer smartphones.

The carbon footprint of computing is a key sustainability challenge. It is driven by two major sources: operational carbon reflects emissions from energy consumed during use, and embodied carbon encompasses emissions associated with hardware manufacturing. While operational carbon is often addressed with efforts such as improved energy efficiency and using clean energy, the manufacturing footprint represents a more complex hurdle.

On average, people replace their phone every four years . This is generally driven by people’s desire for a new device, including for the functionalities provided by new models. Many replaced phones, however, have their core compute functionalities intact and are still relatively powerful computers with integrated processors, accelerators, memory, and storage. While an old phone might no longer be of interest to its first purchaser, putting it back in service can directly reduce the environmental footprint of computing by avoiding the need for further raw material extraction.

This blog discusses a novel strategy: re-deploying unwanted smartphones for cloud computing applications.