====  CALL FOR PAPERS: WELCom 2027 ==== 

WELCom: Workshop on Efficiency, Longevity, and Circularity for more sustainable cOMputing

https://welcom27.insa-rennes.fr/

To be held in conjunction with HiPEAC 2027
January 18-20, 2027
Glasgow, UK

==== Important Dates (AoE) ====

Paper Submission: November 3, 2026, ΑοΕ

Paper Notification: December 1, 2026, ΑοΕ

==== Workshop Scope ====

Computing systems are often replaced long before their physical end of life because of software evolution, discontinued firmware and security support, changing deployment requirements, or economic incentives favoring replacement over maintenance and repair. In large-scale infrastructures, security constraints and the end of vendor support can force the decommissioning of otherwise functional hardware. At the same time, the environmental cost of manufacturing new equipment — including embodied energy, raw materials, and supply chains — is increasingly recognized as a major component of the overall impact of digital systems. While energy efficiency has long been a primary objective in computer architecture and systems research, and is still a key consideration in reducing operational emissions, the environmental impact of manufacturing, maintenance, premature replacement, and end-of-life processing is becoming equally critical. WelCOM aims to explore sustainability in computing from a lifecycle perspective, bridging hardware, software, systems, and circular economy approaches. It will address the trade-offs between operational energy efficiency and embodied environmental costs, with particular attention to software-induced obsolescence and strategies to prolong the useful life of computing equipment.

==== Topics of Interest ====

WELCom is intended as an interdisciplinary forum. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Evaluation of the environmental impacts of hardware and software across the whole lifecycle

- Trade-offs between operational energy efficiency, embodied energy, and hardware longevity

- Methods and decision models to determine when systems should be upgraded, retrofitted, reused, or decommissioned

- Software obsolescence, long-term software maintenance, and sustainable system software

- Security support, firmware availability, and the sustainability impact of hardware end-of-support policies

- Retrofit, refurbishment, repairability, and second-life use of computing equipment

- Reuse of servers, accelerators, embedded systems, edge devices, and mobile devices

- Circular economy approaches for computing systems and datacenter infrastructure

- Business models and policies encouraging long-term support and “as-a-service” approaches

- Sustainability metrics, methodologies, and lifecycle assessment (LCA)

- Regulation, standards, and governance for sustainable computing infrastructures

==== Submission Guidelines ====

Submitted manuscripts may not exceed 6 pages in the ACM conference proceedings style (single-spaced, double-column, 8.5 × 11-inch pages), including figures, tables, and references. If you use the ACM template, please remove the ACM copyright information and CCS concepts.

All submitted research papers will be peer-reviewed. 

All submissions must be original and must not be simultaneously submitted to another conference or journal.

Please refer to ACM policy on Authorship, notably in terms of accountability: https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/new-acm-policy-on-authorship

Accepted papers will be published as Arxiv Proceedings.

Submission site: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=welcom27

==== Organizers ====

Christian Herglotz, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg
David Bol, UCLouvain
Marie-Anne Lacroix, Univ Rennes, CNRS, IRISA
Maxime Pelcat, INSA Rennes
Nikela Papadopoulou, University of Glasgow
Sébastien Rumley, HES-SO Fribourg, Switzerland
Wim Vanderbauwhede, University of Glasgow
Yehia Elkhatib, University of Glasgow


==== Program Committee ====

Sergi Abadal, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Hadi Amirpour, AAU Klagenfurt, Austria
Vasilios Andrikopoulos, The University of Groningen, Netherlands
Louise Aubet, Resilio SA, Switzerland
Vincent Corlay, Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe, France
François-Xavier Coudoux, UPHF Valenciennes, France
Lieven Eeckhout, Ghent University, Belgium
Adrian Friday, Lancaster University, UK
Gage Hills, Harvard University, USA
Romain Jacob, ETH, Switzerland
Laurent Lefèvre, ENS Lyon, France
Steven Le Moan, NTNU Gjovik, Norway
Syed Waqar Nabi, University of Glasgow
Daniel Palomino, University of Pelotas, Brazil
Jean-Pierre Raskin, UC Louvain, Belgium
Gauthier Roussilhe, Hubblo, France
Ulla Saari, University of Tampere, Finland
Cristian Urea, University of Glasgow, UK
Michèle Weiland, Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, UK

==== Location ====

WELCom will be held at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, UK, on January 20th, as part of the HiPEAC 2027 conference.

==== Questions ====

Please send any queries about paper submissions to Nikela Papadopoulou (nikela.papadopoulou@glasgow.ac.uk).