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While the article is interesting I would be more interested in details about carbon footprint and cost reduction. Also how would this impact more typical node,

While the article is interesting I would be more interested in details about carbon footprint and cost reduction. Also how would this impact more typical node, Java loads?

Hizonner 4y ago
You know, if you wanted to improve carbon footprint, a better place to look might be at software bloat. The sheer number of times things get encoded and decoded to text is mind boggling. Especially in "typical node, Java loads".
- tyingq 4y ago
  Logging and Cybersecurity are bloaty areas as well. I've seen plenty of AWS cost breakdowns where the cybersec functions were the highest percentage of spend. Or desktops where carbon black, or windows defender were using most of the CPU or IO cycles. And networks where syslog traffic was the biggest percentage of traffic.
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    Norton, Symantec, and McAfee contribute greatly to global warming in the financial services sector. At least half of CPU cycles on employee laptops are devoted to them.
    - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      But do they actually work? For years I've been of the opinion that most anti-virus solutions don't actually stop virusses, instead they give you a false sense of security and their messaging is intentionally alarmist to make individuals and organizations pay their subscription fees. In my limited and sheltered experience, the only viruses I've gotten in the past decade or so was from dodgy pirated stuff or big "download" button ads on download sites.
      - MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
        At best they don’t work, in reality they are an attack vector themselves and a performance nightmare. They should (mostly) not exist.
    - MaxBarraclough 4y ago
      Presumably then they're knocking hours off the laptops' battery lives?
  - Dunedan 4y ago
    As AWS doesn't price services based on carbon footprint, you can't infer the carbon footprint from the cost. I agree however that certain AWS services are disproportional expensive.
    - maxerickson 4y ago
      Presumably the price provides some sort of bounds. (Unless they are doing something like putting profits towards some sort of carbon maximization scheme)
      - tyingq 4y ago
        Well and a fair amount of cybersec oriented services are a pattern of "sniff and copy every bit of data and do something with it" or "trawl all state". Which is inherently heavy.
- ip26 4y ago
  This has been looked at; the electricity savings of more efficient programming are too small to be worth it with a fixed compute capacity. However, if you can reduce the amount of machines or machine-time you require, that can become material.
jeffbee 4y ago
Virtually 100% of cloud operating expenses are electricity, so you can pretty much assume that if it costs less it has a lower carbon footprint.
- _joel 4y ago
  + Rent, support staff, development costs, regulation and compliance, network, maintenance (cooling, fire suppression + lots more), marketing. Speaking as someone who did sys admin for a small independent cloud provider, it definitely isn't virtually 100% of operating costs
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    No offense intended to your personal experience, but I don't think "small independent cloud" is terribly important in the global analysis. This paper concludes that TDP and TCO have become the same thing, i.e. power is heat, power is opex. https://www.gwern.net/docs/ai/scaling/hardware/2021-jouppi.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/ai/scaling/hardware/2021-jouppi.p...
    - ranman 4y ago
      One key call out re: power from that paper - "Most OpEx cost is for provisioning power and not for electricity use [2], so saving power already provisioned for doesn’t improve TCO as much as one might hope."
- ranman 4y ago
  I'd peg it closer to 75%. There's some significant opex on the endpoint connectivity side as well. That's why a lot of these providers are buying stakes in some of the transoceanic cable projects (and some terrestrial ones as well). Or they're agreeing not to charge each other (kind of sort of- see open bandwidth alliance).
- mr_toad 4y ago
  Depreciation is an operating expense. Not a cash expense, but if you ignore depreciation you’ll end up like Detroit.
shepherdjerred 4y ago
AWS is pushing to move its internal services (most which are in Java) to graviton, so I would expect it to be excellent for “normal” workloads/languages

While the article is interesting I would be more interested in details about carbon footprint and cost reduction. Also how would this impact more typical node, Java loads?

Hizonner 4y ago

You know, if you wanted to improve carbon footprint, a better place to look might be at software bloat. The sheer number of times things get encoded and decoded to text is mind boggling. Especially in "typical node, Java loads".

tyingq 4y ago
Logging and Cybersecurity are bloaty areas as well. I've seen plenty of AWS cost breakdowns where the cybersec functions were the highest percentage of spend. Or desktops where carbon black, or windows defender were using most of the CPU or IO cycles. And networks where syslog traffic was the biggest percentage of traffic.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Norton, Symantec, and McAfee contribute greatly to global warming in the financial services sector. At least half of CPU cycles on employee laptops are devoted to them.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    But do they actually work? For years I've been of the opinion that most anti-virus solutions don't actually stop virusses, instead they give you a false sense of security and their messaging is intentionally alarmist to make individuals and organizations pay their subscription fees. In my limited and sheltered experience, the only viruses I've gotten in the past decade or so was from dodgy pirated stuff or big "download" button ads on download sites.
    - MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
      At best they don’t work, in reality they are an attack vector themselves and a performance nightmare. They should (mostly) not exist.
  - MaxBarraclough 4y ago
    Presumably then they're knocking hours off the laptops' battery lives?
- Dunedan 4y ago
  As AWS doesn't price services based on carbon footprint, you can't infer the carbon footprint from the cost. I agree however that certain AWS services are disproportional expensive.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    Presumably the price provides some sort of bounds. (Unless they are doing something like putting profits towards some sort of carbon maximization scheme)
    - tyingq 4y ago
      Well and a fair amount of cybersec oriented services are a pattern of "sniff and copy every bit of data and do something with it" or "trawl all state". Which is inherently heavy.
ip26 4y ago
This has been looked at; the electricity savings of more efficient programming are too small to be worth it with a fixed compute capacity. However, if you can reduce the amount of machines or machine-time you require, that can become material.

jeffbee 4y ago

Virtually 100% of cloud operating expenses are electricity, so you can pretty much assume that if it costs less it has a lower carbon footprint.

_joel 4y ago
+ Rent, support staff, development costs, regulation and compliance, network, maintenance (cooling, fire suppression + lots more), marketing. Speaking as someone who did sys admin for a small independent cloud provider, it definitely isn't virtually 100% of operating costs
- jeffbee 4y ago
  No offense intended to your personal experience, but I don't think "small independent cloud" is terribly important in the global analysis. This paper concludes that TDP and TCO have become the same thing, i.e. power is heat, power is opex. https://www.gwern.net/docs/ai/scaling/hardware/2021-jouppi.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/ai/scaling/hardware/2021-jouppi.p...
  - ranman 4y ago
    One key call out re: power from that paper - "Most OpEx cost is for provisioning power and not for electricity use [2], so saving power already provisioned for doesn’t improve TCO as much as one might hope."
ranman 4y ago
I'd peg it closer to 75%. There's some significant opex on the endpoint connectivity side as well. That's why a lot of these providers are buying stakes in some of the transoceanic cable projects (and some terrestrial ones as well). Or they're agreeing not to charge each other (kind of sort of- see open bandwidth alliance).
mr_toad 4y ago
Depreciation is an operating expense. Not a cash expense, but if you ignore depreciation you’ll end up like Detroit.

shepherdjerred 4y ago

AWS is pushing to move its internal services (most which are in Java) to graviton, so I would expect it to be excellent for “normal” workloads/languages