SUSTAINABILITY SEMINAR SERIES: 

ABSTRACT: 

Database systems underpin nearly every modern datacenter, yet we know surprisingly little about the energy cost of the work they perform. For decades, database research has been driven by performance metrics such as latency and throughput, with energy consumption largely overlooked. In this talk, I will argue that energy must become a first-class consideration in database system design. Drawing on our recent experimental studies of PostgreSQL, MariaDB, and SQLite, I will demonstrate how seemingly routine design decisions can change energy consumption by more than an order of magnitude, exposing the limitations of traditional evaluation practices and revealing substantial opportunities for energy-aware optimization. These findings raise fundamental questions about the future of database systems: How should energy considerations influence the algorithms, data structures, and system architectures we choose? And how can we rethink database design to make sustainability a first-class objective alongside performance and correctness?

SPEAKER BIO

Michal Friedman is an Assistant Professor at the Systems Group at the department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich. Her research interests include systems, concurrent computing, programming languages and sustainable computing. Her research focuses on designing system fundamentals, across software and hardware, to improve the performance and efficiency while guaranteeing correctness of next-generation computing platforms and emerging technologies. Prior to that, she did a postdoc at the System Group. She completed her Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Technion, and was generously supported by the Azrieli Foundation Fellowship. During her Ph.D she developed concurrent data structures for non-volatile memories. She completed her BSc summa cum laude at the Computer Science Department at the Technion.

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