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Most companies don't have control over their data centers (except to maybe use energy efficiency as a selection criteria). But you have a point about CPU. But

by throwaway2016a 5y ago

Most companies don't have control over their data centers (except to maybe use energy efficiency as a selection criteria). But you have a point about CPU. But regarding incentive alignment, making those data centers more efficient is not just more green but also saves the companies a boatload of money. Since cloud providers don't charge extra for your utilization percentage I've always told my teams: if the CPU is running cold either the software can use it more efficiently or we're overpaying by renting more capacity than we need.

mfer 5y ago
A lot of companies still have control their data centers or some portion of them. At least to an extent to control how things are scheduled on hardware. Kubernetes is similar enough to Borg (the datacenter/cluster OS that Google uses) to efficiently schedule workloads over a cluster. There are ways to use it anyplace one has a cluster for that purpose. This is just to provide an example.
- throwaway2016a 5y ago
  I agree, you can architect your system to make better use of hardware for sure. What I meant was: I can't tell AWS to make more efficient power switching or design an ASIC that is lower power. Best I can do is say that if they don't I'll move to another provider. It's been a long time since I've worked with a company with any significant number of physical racks they rent/own where they can put their own hardware on them. Though, I admit, I may be suffering bias here and it could be they are more common and I just happen to work with companies that are cloud based. Edit: I used to work for Lycos in the mid 2000s and we were just starting to do that (run our workload on VMs instead of metal so we could make all the servers multi-tenant. That was the last time I've worked with a physical server and the Lycos network (across all their sites) was the equivalent of a top 50 website at the time.
  - lupire 5y ago
    > What I meant was: I can't tell AWS to make more efficient power switching or design an ASIC that is lower power. Best I can do is say that if they don't I'll move to another provider. Sure, but Amazon is already doing that, because more energy efficient hardware is more profitable for them, since they'll save on electricity they aren't charging you for. Even without a competitor, they'd be incentivized.

mfer 5y ago

A lot of companies still have control their data centers or some portion of them. At least to an extent to control how things are scheduled on hardware. Kubernetes is similar enough to Borg (the datacenter/cluster OS that Google uses) to efficiently schedule workloads over a cluster. There are ways to use it anyplace one has a cluster for that purpose. This is just to provide an example.

throwaway2016a 5y ago
I agree, you can architect your system to make better use of hardware for sure. What I meant was: I can't tell AWS to make more efficient power switching or design an ASIC that is lower power. Best I can do is say that if they don't I'll move to another provider. It's been a long time since I've worked with a company with any significant number of physical racks they rent/own where they can put their own hardware on them. Though, I admit, I may be suffering bias here and it could be they are more common and I just happen to work with companies that are cloud based. Edit: I used to work for Lycos in the mid 2000s and we were just starting to do that (run our workload on VMs instead of metal so we could make all the servers multi-tenant. That was the last time I've worked with a physical server and the Lycos network (across all their sites) was the equivalent of a top 50 website at the time.
- lupire 5y ago
  > What I meant was: I can't tell AWS to make more efficient power switching or design an ASIC that is lower power. Best I can do is say that if they don't I'll move to another provider. Sure, but Amazon is already doing that, because more energy efficient hardware is more profitable for them, since they'll save on electricity they aren't charging you for. Even without a competitor, they'd be incentivized.