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The environmental impact, carbon emissions and sustainability of computing in the ATLAS experiment

Aad, G. ; Åkesson, T.P.A. LU orcid ; Astrand, K.S.V. LU ; Calic, L. LU orcid ; Doglioni, C. LU ; Ekman, P.A. LU orcid ; Hedberg, V. LU ; Herde, H. LU orcid ; Konya, B. LU and Lytken, E. LU orcid , et al. (2025) In European Physical Journal C 85(12).
Abstract
ATLAS, a general-purpose experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), makes use of a large internationally-distributed computing infrastructure, including over 106 TB of managed data on disk and tape and almost one million simultaneously running CPU cores. Upgrades for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) will increase the required computing resources by a factor of 3–4 by the beginning of the 2030s, and by an order of magnitude before the conclusion of data taking at the beginning of the 2040s. These resources are spread over around 100 computing sites worldwide. Efforts are underway within the experiment to evaluate and mitigate various aspects of the environmental impact of the sites, with the additional long-term goal of making... (More)
ATLAS, a general-purpose experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), makes use of a large internationally-distributed computing infrastructure, including over 106 TB of managed data on disk and tape and almost one million simultaneously running CPU cores. Upgrades for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) will increase the required computing resources by a factor of 3–4 by the beginning of the 2030s, and by an order of magnitude before the conclusion of data taking at the beginning of the 2040s. These resources are spread over around 100 computing sites worldwide. Efforts are underway within the experiment to evaluate and mitigate various aspects of the environmental impact of the sites, with the additional long-term goal of making recommendations to the sites that will significantly reduce the total expected environmental impact in the HL-LHC era. These efforts take several forms: building awareness in the experiment community, adjusting aspects of the computing policy, and modifications of data center configurations, either in ways that take advantage of particular features of ATLAS workloads or in generic ways that reduce the environmental impact of the computing resources. This paper describes the ongoing investigations and approaches that have already provided useful and actionable outcomes. © CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS Collaboration 2025. (Less)
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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Distributed computer systems, Environmental impact, High energy physics, Microstrip devices, Sustainable development, ATLAS experiment, Carbon emissions, Computing infrastructures, Computing resource, Computing sites, CPU cores, Large Hadron Collider, Large-hadron colliders, Long-term goals, Orders of magnitude, Carbon
in
European Physical Journal C
volume
85
issue
12
article number
1397
publisher
Springer Nature
external identifiers
  • scopus:105027441308
ISSN
1434-6044
DOI
10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14976-3
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
e88703ea-811d-4366-9b8e-a42c7688d4f7
date added to LUP
2026-04-09 07:41:58
date last changed
2026-07-01 13:22:40
@article{e88703ea-811d-4366-9b8e-a42c7688d4f7,
  abstract     = {{ATLAS, a general-purpose experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), makes use of a large internationally-distributed computing infrastructure, including over 106 TB of managed data on disk and tape and almost one million simultaneously running CPU cores. Upgrades for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) will increase the required computing resources by a factor of 3–4 by the beginning of the 2030s, and by an order of magnitude before the conclusion of data taking at the beginning of the 2040s. These resources are spread over around 100 computing sites worldwide. Efforts are underway within the experiment to evaluate and mitigate various aspects of the environmental impact of the sites, with the additional long-term goal of making recommendations to the sites that will significantly reduce the total expected environmental impact in the HL-LHC era. These efforts take several forms: building awareness in the experiment community, adjusting aspects of the computing policy, and modifications of data center configurations, either in ways that take advantage of particular features of ATLAS workloads or in generic ways that reduce the environmental impact of the computing resources. This paper describes the ongoing investigations and approaches that have already provided useful and actionable outcomes. © CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS Collaboration 2025.}},
  author       = {{Aad, G. and Åkesson, T.P.A. and Astrand, K.S.V. and Calic, L. and Doglioni, C. and Ekman, P.A. and Hedberg, V. and Herde, H. and Konya, B. and Lytken, E. and Poettgen, R. and Smirnova, O. and Sur, N. and Wallin, E.J. and Zwalinski, L.}},
  issn         = {{1434-6044}},
  keywords     = {{Distributed computer systems; Environmental impact; High energy physics; Microstrip devices; Sustainable development; ATLAS experiment; Carbon emissions; Computing infrastructures; Computing resource; Computing sites; CPU cores; Large Hadron Collider; Large-hadron colliders; Long-term goals; Orders of magnitude; Carbon}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{12}},
  publisher    = {{Springer Nature}},
  series       = {{European Physical Journal C}},
  title        = {{The environmental impact, carbon emissions and sustainability of computing in the ATLAS experiment}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14976-3}},
  doi          = {{10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14976-3}},
  volume       = {{85}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}