Abstract
High performance computing makes many contemporary pervasive computing interactions possible such as increasingly accurate weather forecasts, market-scale financial services on demand, and big data analysis for highly personalized services. However, access to high performance computing resources is not necessarily equitable. Not everyone is uplifted by this computational power. Rather, high performance computing access can be seen as another aspect of the digital divide.
We acknowledge the ways in which equitable access to high performance computing resources has improved over time while also identifying potential threats to access of these resources. We provide considerations from the perspective of two popular ethical theories (contractarianism and utilitarianism) for reasoning about how these threats may be overcome or prevented from coming to pass. These perspectives can be extended to inform policy created by high performance computing providers.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abiona, O., Onime, C., Cozzini, S., Hailemariam, S.: Capacity building for HPC infrastructure setup in Africa: the ICTP experience. In: 2011 IST-Africa Conference Proceedings, pp. 1–8 (2011)
Dutot, P.F., Georgiou, Y., Glesser, D., Lefevre, L., Poquet, M., Rais, I.: Towards energy budget control in HPC. In: 2017 17th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGRID), pp. 381–390. IEEE (2017)
Greengard, S.: Cloud computing and developing nations. Commun. ACM 53(5), 18–20 (may 2010). https://doi.org/10.1145/1735223.1735232, https://doi-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/10.1145/1735223.1735232
Hollman, A.K., Obermier, T.R., Burger, P.R.: Rural measures: a quantitative study of the rural digital divide. J. Inf. Policy 11(1), 176–201 (2021)
Hong, L., Zhong-hua, L., Xue-bin, C.: The applications and trends of high performance computing in finance. In: 2010 Ninth International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Applications to Business, Engineering and Science, pp. 193–197 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1109/DCABES.2010.45
Imhof, M., Vollmeyer, R., Beierlein, C.: Computer use and the gender gap: the issue of access, use, motivation, and performance. Comput. Hum. Behav. 23(6), 2823–2837 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2006.05.007, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756320600077X, including the Special Issue: Education and Pedagogy with Learning Objects and Learning Designs
Jeong, H.J., Jeong, I., Lee, H.J., Moon, S.M.: Computation offloading for machine learning web apps in the edge server environment. In: 2018 IEEE 38th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), pp. 1492–1499. IEEE (2018)
Katal, A., Dahiya, S., Choudhury, T.: Energy efficiency in cloud computing data centers: a survey on software technologies. Cluster Comput., 1–31 (2022)
Keegan Eamon, M.: Digital divide in computer access and use between poor and non-poor youth. J. Soc. Soc. Welfare 31, 91 (2004)
Kitchens, F.: High performance computing as an educational experience well suited to developing nations. In: Fourth IEEE International Workshop on Technology for Education in Developing Countries (TEDC’06), pp. 38–43 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1109/TEDC.2006.18
Meuer, H.W., Strohmaier, E., Dongarra, J., Simon, H., Meuer, M.: https://www.top500.org/
Michalakes, J.: HPC for weather forecasting. In: Grama, A., Sameh, A.H. (eds.) Parallel Algorithms in Computational Science and Engineering. MSSET, pp. 297–323. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43736-7_10
M’rhaouarh, I., Okar, C., Namir, A., Chafiq, N.: Cloud computing adoption in developing countries: a systematic literature review. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Technology Management, Operations and Decisions (ICTMOD), pp. 73–79 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1109/ITMC.2018.8691295
Payton, F.C.: Rethinking the digital divide. Commun. ACM 46(6), 89–91 (Jun 2003). https://doi.org/10.1145/777313.777318
Rong, H., Zhang, H., Xiao, S., Li, C., Hu, C.: Optimizing energy consumption for data centers. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 58, 674–691 (2016)
Van Dijk, J.: The digital divide. John Wiley & Sons (2020)
Wang, M., Fu, W., He, X., Hao, S., Wu, X.: A survey on large-scale machine learning. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. (2020)
Zenios, S.A.: High-performance computing in finance: the last 10 years and the next. Parallel Comput. 25(13–14), 2149–2175 (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kremer-Herman, N. (2023). Ethical Considerations of High Performance Computing Access for Pervasive Computing. In: Streitz, N.A., Konomi, S. (eds) Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14036. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34668-2_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34668-2_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-34667-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-34668-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)