5 ms·

“improves battery life by up to 0.5%” To me this line is quite ridiculous. We all know that Chrome is now the main responsible for battery consumption on any l

“improves battery life by up to 0.5%” To me this line is quite ridiculous. We all know that Chrome is now the main responsible for battery consumption on any laptop and could be optimized much more.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
I kinda want to see a standard deviation on those measurements.
moritonal 5y ago
Genuine question: In what kind of places?
yunohn 5y ago
At the scale that Chrome operates, 0.5% energy reduction globally is massive. All these small gains also add for individual devices as well.
- eru 5y ago
  It's massive in an absolute sense, so it makes sense to have a few people dedicated even to such small improvements. But it's still tiny in a relative sense.
- omnicognate 5y ago
  You mean the total energy saved across all devices? The only context in which anybody could give a fig about that is as it relates to total global energy consumption, of which it is an utterly neglible speck. Edit: Had a go at putting some numbers on that for fun, and will partially retract my comment (no I don't, see below). If it takes [1] around 0.01kWh to charge a smartphone, there are [2] around 6 billion smartphones, each is charged once a day and this saves 0.05 (wrong,see below) of that usage, the saving is on the order of 3GWh/day, i.e. around 125MW. Total global energy consumption is [3] around 20 TW, so the saving is around 0.0006% of it, and this is a very generous estimate (chrome isn't all the consumption of a smartphone, not all phones are in active use and charging once a day, etc). That said, in absolute terms it's more than I would have guessed - comparable to the electricity consumption of a small town (no, much less, probably less than the output of a single wind turbine - see below). [1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-in-kwh-does-it-take-to-charge-a-typical-cell-phone https://www.quora.com/How-much-in-kwh-does-it-take-to-charge... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartph... [3] https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/current_world_energy_consumption https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/current_world_energy_... Edit 2: On reflection, I think this is an big overestimate. I suspect the real saving is on the order of a few MW. Edit 3: As the reply says, I missed a zero, which brings it down to probably on the order of a MW.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    Yes, Google (and other global companies) actually cares about that. They work on fleet-level changes to make such differences worth it. It might not matter to you though.
    - omnicognate 5y ago
      What fleet-level changes are you referring to? The energy saving is certainly a nice thing (environmentally if nothing else) but it's not energy they are paying for. I don't see how it would change Google's operations in any way.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    Everything is neglible in comparison to global energy consumption though, because we use energy for so many different things. If everyone who is in a position to reduce the energy consumption of their small part significantly does their part then it will add up to a significant effort.
    - omnicognate 5y ago
      I don't disagree at all, but the comment I was responding to was saying that globally it's "massive" which it really isn't. Every little helps, but this is little.
  - WithinReason 5y ago
    You overestimated by 10x (0.05 should be 0.005)
    - omnicognate 5y ago
      Ah, well spotted.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BurnGpuBurn 5y ago
Yes and that was compared to... a previous version of Chrome. So v94 is 0.5% better on battery that v93. I don't even get why this is news.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

I kinda want to see a standard deviation on those measurements.

moritonal 5y ago

Genuine question: In what kind of places?

yunohn 5y ago

At the scale that Chrome operates, 0.5% energy reduction globally is massive. All these small gains also add for individual devices as well.

eru 5y ago
It's massive in an absolute sense, so it makes sense to have a few people dedicated even to such small improvements. But it's still tiny in a relative sense.
omnicognate 5y ago
You mean the total energy saved across all devices? The only context in which anybody could give a fig about that is as it relates to total global energy consumption, of which it is an utterly neglible speck. Edit: Had a go at putting some numbers on that for fun, and will partially retract my comment (no I don't, see below). If it takes [1] around 0.01kWh to charge a smartphone, there are [2] around 6 billion smartphones, each is charged once a day and this saves 0.05 (wrong,see below) of that usage, the saving is on the order of 3GWh/day, i.e. around 125MW. Total global energy consumption is [3] around 20 TW, so the saving is around 0.0006% of it, and this is a very generous estimate (chrome isn't all the consumption of a smartphone, not all phones are in active use and charging once a day, etc). That said, in absolute terms it's more than I would have guessed - comparable to the electricity consumption of a small town (no, much less, probably less than the output of a single wind turbine - see below). [1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-in-kwh-does-it-take-to-charge-a-typical-cell-phone https://www.quora.com/How-much-in-kwh-does-it-take-to-charge... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartph... [3] https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/current_world_energy_consumption https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/current_world_energy_... Edit 2: On reflection, I think this is an big overestimate. I suspect the real saving is on the order of a few MW. Edit 3: As the reply says, I missed a zero, which brings it down to probably on the order of a MW.
- yunohn 5y ago
  Yes, Google (and other global companies) actually cares about that. They work on fleet-level changes to make such differences worth it. It might not matter to you though.
  - omnicognate 5y ago
    What fleet-level changes are you referring to? The energy saving is certainly a nice thing (environmentally if nothing else) but it's not energy they are paying for. I don't see how it would change Google's operations in any way.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Everything is neglible in comparison to global energy consumption though, because we use energy for so many different things. If everyone who is in a position to reduce the energy consumption of their small part significantly does their part then it will add up to a significant effort.
  - omnicognate 5y ago
    I don't disagree at all, but the comment I was responding to was saying that globally it's "massive" which it really isn't. Every little helps, but this is little.
- WithinReason 5y ago
  You overestimated by 10x (0.05 should be 0.005)
  - omnicognate 5y ago
    Ah, well spotted.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

BurnGpuBurn 5y ago

Yes and that was compared to... a previous version of Chrome. So v94 is 0.5% better on battery that v93. I don't even get why this is news.