5 ms·

If you run the math, you'll realize that's not even close to true.

by emmett 18y ago

mixmax 18y ago
have you run the math? It would be interesting to see some numbers.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867 According to this article, the IT industry matched the aviation industry for global CO2 emissions in 2007. A regular ol' desktop PC, with regular daily usage (9 to 5), uses about 400kwh of power per year. Servers, being larger/louder/faster than the average PC, and running 24/7, are obviously dramatically more consumptive. Does that mean there aren't bigger problems that need solving? No, of course not. Automobiles are a huge source of problems and need to be dealt with. But, like CFLs, small changes to high quantities can make a real difference. If we wanted to be in denial, or assume that only the biggest producers of waste need to change, then one could just write off the carbon footprint of your PC and servers as unimportant. I don't know enough about carbon offsets and such to know what the right thing is here, but I think it's a novel approach to a real problem. Companies with large data centers really are burning a lot of coal and pumping a lot of crap into the air. Sure, their employees are doing even worse on the drive to work...but people need to work on all of those problems, not just the most obvious. And, of course...before I judge someone who is working on the smaller problem of server carbon footprint, I would have to ask myself what I'm doing that's more useful.
  - d0mine 18y ago
    Imagine you are trying to optimize your program. Some questions: What percentage (LOC-wise) of your program consumes the most time? (hint: it could be really small) What do you accomplish if the part of your program that takes 1% of total time will run instantly? (hint: not so much) What are your goals (10% faster, 2 times faster, 100 times faster)? What cost/benefits has each goal? Are you using the right algorithm? What is time complexity of it; could it be better? ... Similar speculations could bring light to the question: Are we right to assume that only the biggest producers of waste need to change.
  - dejb 18y ago
    > Servers, being larger/louder/faster than the average PC I'm not sure about larger or faster. A lot of web servers are physically smaller (i.e. they fit into 1 rack unit) and less powerful. Have a look at web hosting options. I believe google in particular uses a large number of quite moderately powered units.
    - SwellJoe 18y ago
      Perhaps, and graphics cards in high end boxes are power hogs (on top of the dual and quad core CPUs...though there's a reason why dual, quad, and more, core CPU came to the server market first, and always have...there are many servers working today that are dramatically larger and faster than even the fastest desktop machine from Dell)...but, servers still run 24/7, while PCs are mostly off or in low power modes for 14-16 hours out of each day. So, a desktop machine could be chewing twice the power per hour of uptime, while still using less overall. And, of course, servers are a more efficient use of power. A modestly loaded server is doing work for hundreds or thousands of users every day, while a desktop PC is only working for one, maybe a handful if it's a communal machine. Anyway, I don't know the precise numbers, but I would strongly suspect that the average server is using more power per year than the average desktop computer. Could I be wrong about that? Sure. I don't think I am...but even if I were, it doesn't alter the reality of environmental impact of data centers (though I suspect the production stage may be the computer industries real environmental shame).
- d0mine 18y ago
  One meter in your car equals one Google search. In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don't reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches. </quote> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-search.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-searc...

If you run the math, you'll realize that's not even close to true.

by emmett 18y ago

If you run the math, you'll realize that's not even close to true.

mixmax 18y ago

have you run the math? It would be interesting to see some numbers.

SwellJoe 18y ago
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867 According to this article, the IT industry matched the aviation industry for global CO2 emissions in 2007. A regular ol' desktop PC, with regular daily usage (9 to 5), uses about 400kwh of power per year. Servers, being larger/louder/faster than the average PC, and running 24/7, are obviously dramatically more consumptive. Does that mean there aren't bigger problems that need solving? No, of course not. Automobiles are a huge source of problems and need to be dealt with. But, like CFLs, small changes to high quantities can make a real difference. If we wanted to be in denial, or assume that only the biggest producers of waste need to change, then one could just write off the carbon footprint of your PC and servers as unimportant. I don't know enough about carbon offsets and such to know what the right thing is here, but I think it's a novel approach to a real problem. Companies with large data centers really are burning a lot of coal and pumping a lot of crap into the air. Sure, their employees are doing even worse on the drive to work...but people need to work on all of those problems, not just the most obvious. And, of course...before I judge someone who is working on the smaller problem of server carbon footprint, I would have to ask myself what I'm doing that's more useful.
- d0mine 18y ago
  Imagine you are trying to optimize your program. Some questions: What percentage (LOC-wise) of your program consumes the most time? (hint: it could be really small) What do you accomplish if the part of your program that takes 1% of total time will run instantly? (hint: not so much) What are your goals (10% faster, 2 times faster, 100 times faster)? What cost/benefits has each goal? Are you using the right algorithm? What is time complexity of it; could it be better? ... Similar speculations could bring light to the question: Are we right to assume that only the biggest producers of waste need to change.
- dejb 18y ago
  > Servers, being larger/louder/faster than the average PC I'm not sure about larger or faster. A lot of web servers are physically smaller (i.e. they fit into 1 rack unit) and less powerful. Have a look at web hosting options. I believe google in particular uses a large number of quite moderately powered units.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    Perhaps, and graphics cards in high end boxes are power hogs (on top of the dual and quad core CPUs...though there's a reason why dual, quad, and more, core CPU came to the server market first, and always have...there are many servers working today that are dramatically larger and faster than even the fastest desktop machine from Dell)...but, servers still run 24/7, while PCs are mostly off or in low power modes for 14-16 hours out of each day. So, a desktop machine could be chewing twice the power per hour of uptime, while still using less overall. And, of course, servers are a more efficient use of power. A modestly loaded server is doing work for hundreds or thousands of users every day, while a desktop PC is only working for one, maybe a handful if it's a communal machine. Anyway, I don't know the precise numbers, but I would strongly suspect that the average server is using more power per year than the average desktop computer. Could I be wrong about that? Sure. I don't think I am...but even if I were, it doesn't alter the reality of environmental impact of data centers (though I suspect the production stage may be the computer industries real environmental shame).
d0mine 18y ago
One meter in your car equals one Google search. In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don't reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches. </quote> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-search.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-searc...