5 ms·

From what I saw, both Intel and AMD are trying to adopt hybrid CPUs that hopefully have a power consumption curve closer to M1 systems. So I hope that this impr

by est31 5y ago

From what I saw, both Intel and AMD are trying to adopt hybrid CPUs that hopefully have a power consumption curve closer to M1 systems. So I hope that this improves in the future.

lucb1e 5y ago
That would be very welcome from both a planet but also simply a normal end user perspective indeed!
southerntofu 5y ago
That's great, but from an ecological perspective, repurposing second-hand hardware will always have more benefits than producing new "green" hardware, as most of the energy spent across the lifecycle of a computer happens during production. Buying a raspberry pi for selfhosting is certainly not greener than repurposing your old desktop/laptop. Although i have to admit the economic incentives are skewed due to foundries and global supply chains paying energy orders of magnitude cheaper than we pay our electricity.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Where did you read that? It doesn't sound implausible, but if we're talking 70W idle for a 24/7 server, that does add up so I'd be interested in where the cut-off point is. Edit: just realized the 70W figure is in a sibling thread, not a (grand)parent, but I'm still interested regardless!
  - BeefWellington 5y ago
    From the environment perspective, it also really matters where that 70W comes from generation-wise. If you're in an area that primarily uses Nuclear or things like Wind, Solar, Hydro, or Geothermal, that 70W of electricity isn't going to be particularly bad for the environment compared to places where it comes from Oil, Coal, or Natural Gas plants.
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      Generally true, although it's still a very rare exception if your energy is both green and could not reasonably have been used to reduce ongoing CO2e-intensive consumption. We still have a green energy shortage basically everywhere in the world (Iceland might be a rare exception, having green energy while not being conveniently near other countries without low-CO2e energy sources of their own). I can use solar panels on my own roof to power an extravagant server, but it's still not really net zero (even if you would offset solar panel production and recycling) because they could have supplied to the still-very-fossil national grid if I hadn't been consuming it frivolously. (Edit: I should maybe add that we don't all need to be saints all the time. My guilty pleasure is long showers, I enjoy those despite the power consumption being 10kW. I do better in other areas and vote with my wallet and ballot. I of course have no insight into what other energy choices you / OP / the reader makes so my comments are not meant as criticism towards any person.)
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Some sources, not very recent but with great links to more detailed studies: https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/green-it-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/green-it-factsheet https://www.fcgov.com/climatewise/pdf/computers.pdf https://www.fcgov.com/climatewise/pdf/computers.pdf Arguably, none of these account for the pollution due to extraction/refinement of materials, which is another concern raised with building more stuff. Recycling is also a polluting process (usually less so than new extraction) but unfortunately most electronics is never recycled and R&D in the hardware world is mostly focused on raw performance and does not even try to optimize for recyclability. If any government cared at all about climate change, they would mandate hardware manufacturers to publish hardware sheets (for long-term maintenance and interoperability [0]), outlaw throwaway single-purpose computers (as opposed to flashable general-purpose computers [1]) and planned obsolescence, and invest massively in two key areas: - green IT R&D: there's very little universities around the world working on this, and they operate on a shoestring budget - public-service repair shops for electronics: it's ridiculously hard (or expensive) to find electronics repair services even in big cities, but having skilled people do a 1$ part change on a device that would otherwise be thrown away (eg. soldering a new micro-USB connector or changing a burnt capacitor) goes to great lengths to extend the lifetime of existing devices I'm interested if people have more links/resources to share on that topic! [0] https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-keynote https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-ke... [1] https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-...
    - beckman466 5y ago
      have you come across Harun Šiljak's fantastic piece in the Science for the People magazine titled 'Opening This Article Voids Warranty'? "Repair is not an auxiliary, optional part of the economy. Repair is care, at every stage of the supply chain, and at every scale. Those in dire need of repair for their devices are, just like Terry Pratchett’s Theory of Economic Injustice predicts, in the crosshairs of widening economic inequality.4 Already-impoverished consumers are encouraged to buy ever-newer products (and other planned obsolescence mechanisms have co-evolved with the boom of overproduction for the Global North). These products are notoriously hard to repair by design and require repeated purchases, exposing the long-term scheme of the manufacturers. Mineral extraction necessary for the manufacture of new hi-tech devices inflicts death and immiseration on surrounding populations.5 A community that sees no value to repair is a community that cannot respond to the crisis of capitalism, and is merely its hostage. Repair, as an act of reclaiming technology, is ongoing in the Global North and South with complementary driving forces and problems." [...] "A classic strategy of anti-repair design is avoiding modularity. If the parts of the device are strategically bundled together so that failure of one part requires replacement of a whole unit, it is not “repair” anymore. While it happens with mechanical components as well, the electronic version of this strategy is worthy of closer examination. Unlike a gearbox whose miniaturization still results in an assemblage of separate gears that might be smaller and harder to replace, miniaturization in electronics was driven by manufacture of monolithic semiconductor structures. Control systems that have previously been implemented with, for example, a collection of discrete transistors and diodes (basic electronic components that are easily replaceable) have been revamped as embedded systems: for the same functionality they now use a microchip with software running on it. Access to the software is not provided. Access to the chip itself is not provided as it is commonly “globbed” (covered with a black blob of epoxy). On top of this, the manufacturer takes precautions to prevent you from replacing the entire controller with a different, customized controller on your own. Here I return to the robotic arm: what kind of a controller do you want such a mechanism to have? The odds are that the same arm might be deployed in a myriad of different settings and scenarios, and needs tweaking of the controller. The “body without organs” controller under the blob of epoxy offers no modularity, no chance to expand, reduce, or in any other way customize inputs, outputs, or processing capabilities. The individual components that might be at a higher risk of damage (e.g. transistors) don’t exist anymore, so every failure takes the entire block of silicon down with it. And finally, if product support is discontinued, the manufacturer goes out of business, or chooses to change the business model into selling a service rather than a product, the controller is expected to become an unusable brick. To make things worse, by making non-standard interfaces with mechanics and/or placing restrictive licenses on its software, the brick is supposed to be irreplaceable, hence rendering the entire robotic arm unusable (even if the mechanics are perfectly sound). The loss of repairability is not a consequence of technological progress or increasing complexity—it should arguably be the opposite. Complex systems science pioneer W. Brian Arthur explains the two primary mechanisms of improving a technology: “internal replacement,” or changing the existing parts; and “structural deepening,” which means adding new components.10 Neither of these require that new parts and components cannot be modular, replaceable, and repairable. Complexity, in fact, is all about modularity and heterogeneity and can be an argument in favor of repair. The concepts of internal replacement and structural deepening, if anything, are the philosophy of repair as a creative process. New parts or mechanisms that come from repair contribute to an invention: potential new applications of the device, a new approach to manufacturing, and personalization of the item. A creatively repaired device is where the social network merges with the technological one. However, that is not in the interests of the manufacturing lobby: this network is one of capital accumulation. The other aforementioned strategy of disabling repair is the legal one. To keep this grip of capital on the technology and knowledge of manufacturing and repair, the opponents of repair create the illusion of illegality: Looking under the hood should be taboo, understanding how things work should be perceived as illegal, and the concept of patents and protection of intellectual property should be regurgitated as respect for science and protecting the world from anarchy. Big manufacturers such as Apple also grasp at other legal straws such as privacy concerns.11 Bogus legal barriers run against the basic principles of science and engineering. Take, for example, the concept of reverse engineering. Finding out how a piece of hardware or software works by observing its inputs and outputs is an essential part of repair in modern technological systems. Often portrayed as illegal, this activity does not go against trade secrets laws. Instead, it becomes an issue concerning terms and conditions agreed to by user and manufacturer.12 Among legal contracts, “terms and conditions” represent a world of their own, with clauses that are often void, unenforceable, or plain illegal.13 The “opening box voids warranty” stickers mentioned earlier are a blatant example, but not the only one. Through lobbying, manufacturers erect new legal barriers where previously there had been none: when the Unitron Mac 512, a Brazilian clone of the Apple Macintosh was developed in the mid-eighties, it infringed no laws in Brazil. Only after heavy lobbying from Apple and threats of sanctions from the US government did the Brazilian government introduce a completely new “software law” to stop the sale of the reverse-engineered Macintosh.14" source: https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/vol24-2-dont-be-evil/opening-this-article-voids-warranty/ https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/vol24-2-dont-be-evi...

by est31 5y ago

From what I saw, both Intel and AMD are trying to adopt hybrid CPUs that hopefully have a power consumption curve closer to M1 systems. So I hope that this improves in the future.

lucb1e 5y ago

That would be very welcome from both a planet but also simply a normal end user perspective indeed!

southerntofu 5y ago

That's great, but from an ecological perspective, repurposing second-hand hardware will always have more benefits than producing new "green" hardware, as most of the energy spent across the lifecycle of a computer happens during production. Buying a raspberry pi for selfhosting is certainly not greener than repurposing your old desktop/laptop. Although i have to admit the economic incentives are skewed due to foundries and global supply chains paying energy orders of magnitude cheaper than we pay our electricity.

lucb1e 5y ago
Where did you read that? It doesn't sound implausible, but if we're talking 70W idle for a 24/7 server, that does add up so I'd be interested in where the cut-off point is. Edit: just realized the 70W figure is in a sibling thread, not a (grand)parent, but I'm still interested regardless!
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  From the environment perspective, it also really matters where that 70W comes from generation-wise. If you're in an area that primarily uses Nuclear or things like Wind, Solar, Hydro, or Geothermal, that 70W of electricity isn't going to be particularly bad for the environment compared to places where it comes from Oil, Coal, or Natural Gas plants.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    Generally true, although it's still a very rare exception if your energy is both green and could not reasonably have been used to reduce ongoing CO2e-intensive consumption. We still have a green energy shortage basically everywhere in the world (Iceland might be a rare exception, having green energy while not being conveniently near other countries without low-CO2e energy sources of their own). I can use solar panels on my own roof to power an extravagant server, but it's still not really net zero (even if you would offset solar panel production and recycling) because they could have supplied to the still-very-fossil national grid if I hadn't been consuming it frivolously. (Edit: I should maybe add that we don't all need to be saints all the time. My guilty pleasure is long showers, I enjoy those despite the power consumption being 10kW. I do better in other areas and vote with my wallet and ballot. I of course have no insight into what other energy choices you / OP / the reader makes so my comments are not meant as criticism towards any person.)
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Some sources, not very recent but with great links to more detailed studies: https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/green-it-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/green-it-factsheet https://www.fcgov.com/climatewise/pdf/computers.pdf https://www.fcgov.com/climatewise/pdf/computers.pdf Arguably, none of these account for the pollution due to extraction/refinement of materials, which is another concern raised with building more stuff. Recycling is also a polluting process (usually less so than new extraction) but unfortunately most electronics is never recycled and R&D in the hardware world is mostly focused on raw performance and does not even try to optimize for recyclability. If any government cared at all about climate change, they would mandate hardware manufacturers to publish hardware sheets (for long-term maintenance and interoperability [0]), outlaw throwaway single-purpose computers (as opposed to flashable general-purpose computers [1]) and planned obsolescence, and invest massively in two key areas: - green IT R&D: there's very little universities around the world working on this, and they operate on a shoestring budget - public-service repair shops for electronics: it's ridiculously hard (or expensive) to find electronics repair services even in big cities, but having skilled people do a 1$ part change on a device that would otherwise be thrown away (eg. soldering a new micro-USB connector or changing a burnt capacitor) goes to great lengths to extend the lifetime of existing devices I'm interested if people have more links/resources to share on that topic! [0] https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-keynote https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-ke... [1] https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-...
  - beckman466 5y ago
    have you come across Harun Šiljak's fantastic piece in the Science for the People magazine titled 'Opening This Article Voids Warranty'? "Repair is not an auxiliary, optional part of the economy. Repair is care, at every stage of the supply chain, and at every scale. Those in dire need of repair for their devices are, just like Terry Pratchett’s Theory of Economic Injustice predicts, in the crosshairs of widening economic inequality.4 Already-impoverished consumers are encouraged to buy ever-newer products (and other planned obsolescence mechanisms have co-evolved with the boom of overproduction for the Global North). These products are notoriously hard to repair by design and require repeated purchases, exposing the long-term scheme of the manufacturers. Mineral extraction necessary for the manufacture of new hi-tech devices inflicts death and immiseration on surrounding populations.5 A community that sees no value to repair is a community that cannot respond to the crisis of capitalism, and is merely its hostage. Repair, as an act of reclaiming technology, is ongoing in the Global North and South with complementary driving forces and problems." [...] "A classic strategy of anti-repair design is avoiding modularity. If the parts of the device are strategically bundled together so that failure of one part requires replacement of a whole unit, it is not “repair” anymore. While it happens with mechanical components as well, the electronic version of this strategy is worthy of closer examination. Unlike a gearbox whose miniaturization still results in an assemblage of separate gears that might be smaller and harder to replace, miniaturization in electronics was driven by manufacture of monolithic semiconductor structures. Control systems that have previously been implemented with, for example, a collection of discrete transistors and diodes (basic electronic components that are easily replaceable) have been revamped as embedded systems: for the same functionality they now use a microchip with software running on it. Access to the software is not provided. Access to the chip itself is not provided as it is commonly “globbed” (covered with a black blob of epoxy). On top of this, the manufacturer takes precautions to prevent you from replacing the entire controller with a different, customized controller on your own. Here I return to the robotic arm: what kind of a controller do you want such a mechanism to have? The odds are that the same arm might be deployed in a myriad of different settings and scenarios, and needs tweaking of the controller. The “body without organs” controller under the blob of epoxy offers no modularity, no chance to expand, reduce, or in any other way customize inputs, outputs, or processing capabilities. The individual components that might be at a higher risk of damage (e.g. transistors) don’t exist anymore, so every failure takes the entire block of silicon down with it. And finally, if product support is discontinued, the manufacturer goes out of business, or chooses to change the business model into selling a service rather than a product, the controller is expected to become an unusable brick. To make things worse, by making non-standard interfaces with mechanics and/or placing restrictive licenses on its software, the brick is supposed to be irreplaceable, hence rendering the entire robotic arm unusable (even if the mechanics are perfectly sound). The loss of repairability is not a consequence of technological progress or increasing complexity—it should arguably be the opposite. Complex systems science pioneer W. Brian Arthur explains the two primary mechanisms of improving a technology: “internal replacement,” or changing the existing parts; and “structural deepening,” which means adding new components.10 Neither of these require that new parts and components cannot be modular, replaceable, and repairable. Complexity, in fact, is all about modularity and heterogeneity and can be an argument in favor of repair. The concepts of internal replacement and structural deepening, if anything, are the philosophy of repair as a creative process. New parts or mechanisms that come from repair contribute to an invention: potential new applications of the device, a new approach to manufacturing, and personalization of the item. A creatively repaired device is where the social network merges with the technological one. However, that is not in the interests of the manufacturing lobby: this network is one of capital accumulation. The other aforementioned strategy of disabling repair is the legal one. To keep this grip of capital on the technology and knowledge of manufacturing and repair, the opponents of repair create the illusion of illegality: Looking under the hood should be taboo, understanding how things work should be perceived as illegal, and the concept of patents and protection of intellectual property should be regurgitated as respect for science and protecting the world from anarchy. Big manufacturers such as Apple also grasp at other legal straws such as privacy concerns.11 Bogus legal barriers run against the basic principles of science and engineering. Take, for example, the concept of reverse engineering. Finding out how a piece of hardware or software works by observing its inputs and outputs is an essential part of repair in modern technological systems. Often portrayed as illegal, this activity does not go against trade secrets laws. Instead, it becomes an issue concerning terms and conditions agreed to by user and manufacturer.12 Among legal contracts, “terms and conditions” represent a world of their own, with clauses that are often void, unenforceable, or plain illegal.13 The “opening box voids warranty” stickers mentioned earlier are a blatant example, but not the only one. Through lobbying, manufacturers erect new legal barriers where previously there had been none: when the Unitron Mac 512, a Brazilian clone of the Apple Macintosh was developed in the mid-eighties, it infringed no laws in Brazil. Only after heavy lobbying from Apple and threats of sanctions from the US government did the Brazilian government introduce a completely new “software law” to stop the sale of the reverse-engineered Macintosh.14" source: https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/vol24-2-dont-be-evil/opening-this-article-voids-warranty/ https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/vol24-2-dont-be-evi...