Like any major endeavour, designing and fabricating semiconductor chips requires compromise. As well as trade-offs between cost and performance, designers also consider carbon emissions and other environmental impacts.

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Margaret Harris reports from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum where she spoke to two researchers who are focused on some of these design challenges.

Up first is Mariam Elgamal, who’s doing a PhD at Harvard University on the development of environmentally sustainable computing systems. She explains why sustainability goes well beyond energy efficiency and must consider the manufacturing process and the chemicals used therein.

Harris also chats with Andrew Gunter, who is doing a PhD at the University of British Columbia on circuit design for computer chips. He talks about the maths-related problems that must be solved in order to translate a desired functionality into a chip that can be fabricated.