4 ms·

Isn't that more or less the same thing in the end? Storage at this point is plentiful. Most people can live just fine with 1 TB of it, which is trivially found

Isn't that more or less the same thing in the end? Storage at this point is plentiful. Most people can live just fine with 1 TB of it, which is trivially found in both HDD and SSD forms. Using less saves you nothing, as the media is still there. Bandwidth is also plentiful and available 24/7. It's also very bursty -- you only download your game once, while you may play it a lot. So saving 50% download time makes no difference energy-wise. What we can control a lot is CPU power usage. We now have 16 core consumer CPUs that are designed to sleep when not in use, so difference in power usage at runtime can be dramatic. So an algorithm that trades disk space for decoding efficiency is probably the best way to save power.

vintermann 4y ago
You only download a game once? I think the average game in my Steam folders updates itself with at least 2-300 MB between every time I play them.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  Okay, but that's a rounding error. Gigabit internet is widely available, I'm making preparations to upgrade to 10G. So on my current connection, that's maybe 2-5 seconds of download time. Meanwhile, the router is on constantly anyway, so whether it's 200 MB or 400MB makes next to zero difference energy-wise.
  - secondcoming 4y ago
    What about the rest of the world?
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      Doesn't make any difference either? Okay, say you're on a 10 Mbps connection. That update takes you what, 5 minutes? Yeah, that's an annoyance, but that's time for a coffee or a bathroom break. Most games don't update daily or anywhere close to it, so your download time is still going to be <1% of your play time for most people. If your hardware/connection is really awful, yeah, maybe downloading the latest DOOM isn't a great experience, but luckily there's no lack of smaller things to play. Either way, it's completely irrelevant carbon/energy-wise. Your power usage is going to be dominated by a game trying to render 3D graphics at 60 FPS, not by the tiny increase of the power draw of a router during an update download.
      - PaulHoule 4y ago
        I've seen very different numbers for the carbon cost of downloads/streaming vs physical media https://expressiveaudio.com/blogs/audio-advent/audio-advent-day-1-the-environmental-impact-of-listening-to-music https://expressiveaudio.com/blogs/audio-advent/audio-advent-... https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/189268-digital-game-downloads-are-worse-for-the-environment-than-blu-ray-discs https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/189268-digital-game-downl... https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/discs-vs-data-are-we-helping-the-environment-by-streaming/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/discs-vs-data-are-we... for one thing there is the question of how to attribute carbon emissions for all the "middleboxes" that are drawing tiny amounts of power throughout the whole process but could add up to a lot.
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    What is actually a rounding error is the amount of people with a connection like yours. This assumption that fast connections and computers are "widely available" sure makes our jobs easier but it's not true. I myself live in western Europe and I can't do cloud backups because it would take me about two weeks of 24/7 uploading which then constantly interferes with every other internet connection I want to use and makes things like streaming videos, zoom sessions or online gaming impossible. Game updates usually mean I won't be gaming that evening. And that's already the better connection after switching providers. The actual optimization here would be fewer updates and games releasing in a finished state.
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      I think you might be missing the point a bit. I'm answering the question "Why not optimize for CO2 emission instead ?" So, in what plausible scenario would a gamer's CO2 output (which is mostly power use) be significantly influenced by download time? The vast majority of people spend a lot more time playing than downloading. If your connection is really bad, then you're probably going to buy physical media or play something smaller. There's no plausible scenario I can think of in which a significant amount of people sits there waiting for an hour for a game to download, on a daily basis, and where the amount of power consumption caused by that is significant when compared to what's consumed by actual game play. Yeah, I get that giant updates might be annoying to you personally. But the discussion is about CO2.
      - PaulHoule 4y ago
        Can I force my telco to upgrade to fiber because it is a waste of carbon for my computer to be switched on for hours downloading content over ADSL? I have two ADSL connections that can download at 20 Mbits/s with a load balancer. With my XBOX ONE I don't really have a choice of physical media, even if I have physical media I'd expect to download between 2-40 GB of patches or additional content. It is definitely a hassle but not prohibitive, generally I install a game before I expect to play it and keep up on downloads ahead of time. For PC games it is similar except most of the games I play I get off Steam I don't even know if physical media is available at all.

vintermann 4y ago

You only download a game once? I think the average game in my Steam folders updates itself with at least 2-300 MB between every time I play them.

dale_glass 4y ago
Okay, but that's a rounding error. Gigabit internet is widely available, I'm making preparations to upgrade to 10G. So on my current connection, that's maybe 2-5 seconds of download time. Meanwhile, the router is on constantly anyway, so whether it's 200 MB or 400MB makes next to zero difference energy-wise.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  What about the rest of the world?
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    Doesn't make any difference either? Okay, say you're on a 10 Mbps connection. That update takes you what, 5 minutes? Yeah, that's an annoyance, but that's time for a coffee or a bathroom break. Most games don't update daily or anywhere close to it, so your download time is still going to be <1% of your play time for most people. If your hardware/connection is really awful, yeah, maybe downloading the latest DOOM isn't a great experience, but luckily there's no lack of smaller things to play. Either way, it's completely irrelevant carbon/energy-wise. Your power usage is going to be dominated by a game trying to render 3D graphics at 60 FPS, not by the tiny increase of the power draw of a router during an update download.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      I've seen very different numbers for the carbon cost of downloads/streaming vs physical media https://expressiveaudio.com/blogs/audio-advent/audio-advent-day-1-the-environmental-impact-of-listening-to-music https://expressiveaudio.com/blogs/audio-advent/audio-advent-... https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/189268-digital-game-downloads-are-worse-for-the-environment-than-blu-ray-discs https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/189268-digital-game-downl... https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/discs-vs-data-are-we-helping-the-environment-by-streaming/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/discs-vs-data-are-we... for one thing there is the question of how to attribute carbon emissions for all the "middleboxes" that are drawing tiny amounts of power throughout the whole process but could add up to a lot.
- alpaca128 4y ago
  What is actually a rounding error is the amount of people with a connection like yours. This assumption that fast connections and computers are "widely available" sure makes our jobs easier but it's not true. I myself live in western Europe and I can't do cloud backups because it would take me about two weeks of 24/7 uploading which then constantly interferes with every other internet connection I want to use and makes things like streaming videos, zoom sessions or online gaming impossible. Game updates usually mean I won't be gaming that evening. And that's already the better connection after switching providers. The actual optimization here would be fewer updates and games releasing in a finished state.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    I think you might be missing the point a bit. I'm answering the question "Why not optimize for CO2 emission instead ?" So, in what plausible scenario would a gamer's CO2 output (which is mostly power use) be significantly influenced by download time? The vast majority of people spend a lot more time playing than downloading. If your connection is really bad, then you're probably going to buy physical media or play something smaller. There's no plausible scenario I can think of in which a significant amount of people sits there waiting for an hour for a game to download, on a daily basis, and where the amount of power consumption caused by that is significant when compared to what's consumed by actual game play. Yeah, I get that giant updates might be annoying to you personally. But the discussion is about CO2.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      Can I force my telco to upgrade to fiber because it is a waste of carbon for my computer to be switched on for hours downloading content over ADSL? I have two ADSL connections that can download at 20 Mbits/s with a load balancer. With my XBOX ONE I don't really have a choice of physical media, even if I have physical media I'd expect to download between 2-40 GB of patches or additional content. It is definitely a hassle but not prohibitive, generally I install a game before I expect to play it and keep up on downloads ahead of time. For PC games it is similar except most of the games I play I get off Steam I don't even know if physical media is available at all.