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Peak applications require the latest and most powerful tech. With it’s colossal trail of pollution from manufacturing. For the rest I often wonder if would not

Peak applications require the latest and most powerful tech. With it’s colossal trail of pollution from manufacturing. For the rest I often wonder if would not be better for the environment to re-purpose older, already made tech. Plenty of embedded systems grinding on for a long time. And user facing applications lack one thing: public stats of peak system usage. When confronted with a new purchase we should be handed over a sheet of our own and peers statistics. Producers and service providers have them anyway.

WantonQuantum 3y ago
Agree 100%. In an ideal world, the cost of everything we buy would include the real costs of pollution (including greenhouse gases), depletion of common resources such as water, and recycling or otherwise accounting for the environmental impact after use. As you say, suddenly those 5 year old phones and computers would be economically attractive again. With a knock-on effect that websites and software would cater more for older devices. But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a literal Tragedy Of The Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). Note that I'm not at all saying that we shouldn't have companies like ASML researching processes like this - more efficient chips are good for the environment and the economy.
oezi 3y ago
Lots of old foundries are still producing old chips.
- wuming2 3y ago
  But we are not reusing them.
  - dermesser 3y ago
    Just putting chips into things that didn't have them before and still don't need them
RetroTechie 3y ago
Try & view compute power as order of magnitude, vs. what useful things can be done with it. Something containing ~100k transistors, ~10KB RAM & flash, running at a few MHz in a power envelope measured in milliWatts, has production cost (and environmental footprint) of practically 0 these days. But still enough brains to control your washing machine, monitor solar panel or open garage door w/ remote. A few steps up & you have epaper equipped tablet that allows you to read books, simple games or check weather forecast, doing so for days or weeks on battery power. On the other end of the scale you have datacenters, supercomputers & their energy + manufacturing footprint. With desktop PC's, laptops & game consoles somewhere in between. When choosing between: a) Apply budget, see how much CPU, GPU, RAM etc. that buys you, and deal with physical size + power draw / thermals, these days I go for b) Pick physical size + power budget, see what kind of CPU / GPU / RAM etc you can shoehorn in there @ what cost, and just deal with the limitations of such device (if perceived as limiting, that is). It's amazing what a Raspberry Pi sized computer (or further down, a modern uC) can do these days. Lean software does exist. No clunky desktop needed if you just want to play PacMan. :-)
Qwertious 3y ago
>For the rest I often wonder if would not be better for the environment to re-purpose older, already made tech. It is. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stoppe...

WantonQuantum 3y ago

Agree 100%. In an ideal world, the cost of everything we buy would include the real costs of pollution (including greenhouse gases), depletion of common resources such as water, and recycling or otherwise accounting for the environmental impact after use. As you say, suddenly those 5 year old phones and computers would be economically attractive again. With a knock-on effect that websites and software would cater more for older devices. But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a literal Tragedy Of The Commons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). Note that I'm not at all saying that we shouldn't have companies like ASML researching processes like this - more efficient chips are good for the environment and the economy.

oezi 3y ago

Lots of old foundries are still producing old chips.

wuming2 3y ago
But we are not reusing them.
- dermesser 3y ago
  Just putting chips into things that didn't have them before and still don't need them

RetroTechie 3y ago

Try & view compute power as order of magnitude, vs. what useful things can be done with it. Something containing ~100k transistors, ~10KB RAM & flash, running at a few MHz in a power envelope measured in milliWatts, has production cost (and environmental footprint) of practically 0 these days. But still enough brains to control your washing machine, monitor solar panel or open garage door w/ remote. A few steps up & you have epaper equipped tablet that allows you to read books, simple games or check weather forecast, doing so for days or weeks on battery power. On the other end of the scale you have datacenters, supercomputers & their energy + manufacturing footprint. With desktop PC's, laptops & game consoles somewhere in between. When choosing between: a) Apply budget, see how much CPU, GPU, RAM etc. that buys you, and deal with physical size + power draw / thermals, these days I go for b) Pick physical size + power budget, see what kind of CPU / GPU / RAM etc you can shoehorn in there @ what cost, and just deal with the limitations of such device (if perceived as limiting, that is). It's amazing what a Raspberry Pi sized computer (or further down, a modern uC) can do these days. Lean software does exist. No clunky desktop needed if you just want to play PacMan. :-)

Qwertious 3y ago

>For the rest I often wonder if would not be better for the environment to re-purpose older, already made tech. It is. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stoppe...