4 ms·
It was mentioned in [0], it's actually the higher one of two different sources (I haven't looked at the sources to be honest because that would require actually
by _Microft 7y ago
It was mentioned in [0], it's actually the higher one of two different sources (I haven't looked at the sources to be honest because that would require actually finding them which I haven't yet):
A Carnegie Mellon University study concluded that the energy cost of data transfer and storage is about 7 kWh per gigabyte. An assessment at a conference of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy reached a lower number: 3.1 kWh per gigabyte.
[0] https://stanfordmag.org/contents/carbon-and-the-cloud https://stanfordmag.org/contents/carbon-and-the-cloud (2017)
- tjoff 7y agoIt's an absurd number that can't really be considered as is. Does that include storage for 100 years? Or just the few seconds needed for transfer. Do they count all of the datacenters energy usage as something needed to just transfer and store the data (with no other processing)? Unfortunately that article didn't answer anything.
- philipkglass 7y agoThose numbers are way off. The article cites a study claiming 5 kWh here: https://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2012/data/papers/0193-000409.pdf https://aceee.org/files/proceedings/2012/data/papers/0193-00... It's from 2012 and cites numbers from as long ago as 2009 to determine normalized energy intensity. It also combines different numbers in a way that mean you can't estimate how much energy is saved by downloading a gigabyte to local storage instead of repeatedly streaming it. The single largest energy segment in their estimate is actually desktop computers! And it counts the energy used by CPU-intensive scripts along with the energy required by actual data transfer. Sanity check: Cisco estimates "busy hour" internet traffic at around 3 petabits per second in 2019. https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-p... If it took 5 kWh/GB for data transfer during that busy hour, corresponding peak hour electricity use would be in excess of 6.5 terawatts. But that's more electricity than the world can generate in any given hour.
- hn23 7y agoEven if the numbers are way off it is obvious that watching TV or listening music over a packet based protocol is way more energy consuming than any UKW sender can be. UKW scales - streaming does not without more energy because you need more computers.