GreenFPGA: Evaluating FPGAs as Environmentally Sustainable Computing Solutions

TL;DR

GreenFPGA addresses the need to quantify environmental impact of FPGA-based hardware versus ASICs by modeling both embodied and deployment carbon across the FPGA lifecycle. It introduces a total CFP model $C_{FPGA} = C_{emb} + \sum_{i=1}^{N_{app}} T_i \cdot C_{deploy,i}$, with embodied CFP decomposed into design, manufacturing (including recycled materials via a recycled-material fraction $\rho$), packaging, and end-of-life, and deployment CFP comprising operational use and application-development CFP. The work provides domain-specific iso-performance comparisons and identifies scenarios where FPGAs are greener, such as short application lifetimes or high reuse across multiple workloads, while acknowledging validation challenges due to limited public sustainability data. Overall, GreenFPGA offers an open-source, parameter-tunable framework to quantify and compare CFP for FPGA and ASIC deployments, guiding sustainability-focused hardware design and deployment choices.

Abstract

Growing global concerns about climate change highlight the need for environmentally sustainable computing. The ecological impact of computing, including operational and embodied, is a key consideration. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) stand out as promising sustainable computing platforms due to their reconfigurability across various applications. This paper introduces GreenFPGA, a tool estimating the total carbon footprint (CFP) of FPGAs over their lifespan, considering design, manufacturing, reconfigurability (reuse), operation, disposal, and recycling. Using GreenFPGA, the paper evaluates scenarios where the ecological benefits of FPGA reconfigurability outweigh operational and embodied carbon costs, positioning FPGAs as a environmentally sustainable choice for hardware acceleration compared to Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). Experimental results show that FPGAs have lower CFP than ASICs, particularly for multiple distinct, low-volume applications, or short application lifespans.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: Lifecycle of an FPGA: Highlighting the embodied and operational CFP from cradle (design) to grave (disposal).
• Figure 2: CFP comparison between ASIC and FPGA-based computing for a single application and ten applications.
• Figure 3: GreenFPGA: inputs, outputs, and models.
• Figure 4: Variation of CFP with $N_\text{app}$; $N_\text{vol}$ and $T_\text{i}$ are constant.
• Figure 5: Variation of CFP with $T_\text{i}$; $N_\text{vol}$ and $N_\text{app}$ are constant.