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During the last minute of the talk, he says: "Computers are becoming a big environmental threat. They're using more energy than air traffic." Is this actuall
by p1mrx 12y ago
During the last minute of the talk, he says:
"Computers are becoming a big environmental threat. They're using more energy than air traffic."
Is this actually true? Sure, the average person spends a lot more time on a computer than in a plane, but still it seems crazy that they'd be comparable. Or at least the comparison isn't very relevant, because the Internet can significantly reduce people's need to travel.
- tcopeland 12y agoHow much energy is used by inefficient government systems that are running on old minicomputers and such? I bet government data centers have hundreds of old clunkers that could all be run on one modern rack of 1U boxes.
- adamnemecek 12y ago"Save the environment, code in C."
- corysama 12y agoYou are getting downvotes, but energy efficient computation has been a large driver in the recent upsurge in interest in C++.
- adamnemecek 12y agoWait C++ is has been getting more popular? I'm not complaining (I mostly like C++), I guess I just didn't get the memo.
- pjmlp 12y agoLets see. - Symbiam was coded in C++ - GCC moved to C++ - Clang and LLVM are done in C++ - Mac OS X drivers are written in Embedded C++ subset - Windows team is moving the kernel code to be C++ compilable - JPL is moving to C++ - AAA game studios have dropped C around PS3/XBox 360 timeframe - It is the only common language available in all major mobile OS SDKs
- adamnemecek 12y agoI mean I was confused by the word 'recent', which to me means the last 2-3 years.
- pjmlp 12y agoA few items on my list cover your 'recent'. Decision to move Windows to C++ was announced by Herb Sutter in one of his Microsoft talks and the Windows 8 DDK was the first to support C++ in kernel code. JPL going C++ was covered at their CppCon 2014 talk. GCC switched to C++ as implementation language in 2012. In any case, I would say, all languages with native code compilers can be used in relation to energy efficient computation. It is just that C and C++ are the only ones on the radar of developers (and managers) looking for mainstream languages with native compilers.
- adamnemecek 12y agoTrue. Facebook has also been doubling down on C++ development it seems.
- pjmlp 12y agoThere is a talk from Andrei Alexandrescu at Going Native 2013 where he mentions one of Facebook KPIs is request per watt.
- pjmlp 12y ago"Save the environment. Make black hat hackers, anti-virus tool vendors jobless. Code in Ada."
- johan_larson 12y agoAnd run it on OS/370.
- johan_larson 12y agoThere's a lot to be said for keeping things as simple as possible. Although what qualifies as simple varies from application to application. I was doing some preliminary analysis for a small project recently, and considering various frameworks and tools. Eventually I realized I could implement what was needed using four JSPs producing static html, with a bit of styling in CSS. No AOP, no injection framework, no JavaScript. And no explicit differentiation between device types. The resulting application will start up quickly -- which is important when running in a PaaS environment -- and should work on any browser, including weird old stuff like Lynx. Less butterfly. More rat.
- rdtsc 12y agoWell modern aircraft are pretty efficient and probably not the top offender. However he also mentions we probably can't do a lot more with computer to reduce their power consumption.
- davidw 12y ago> Well modern aircraft are pretty efficient and probably not the top offender. It depends entirely on how much they get used! An SUV that gets driven once a year contributes less carbon than a Prius that is driven all day every day. Comparing the aggregate numbers is obviously the only way to compare computers and airplanes anyway.
- Turing_Machine 12y agoI don't know whether it's true or not, but the computer you're typing on is far from the only one likely you have running. Think of all the microprocessors in TVs, microwave ovens, thermostats, cars (I think most cars have about 30-50 MPUs nowadays)... Let's ballpark it (fill in better numbers if you have them). Assume that a person takes an average of one 5,000 km trip by plane per year. ATW, a Boeing 737-900ER uses 2.59 liters of fuel per 100 km per seat, so that would be about 130 liters of fuel. Also ATW, Jet A-1 fuel has an energy density of 34.7 MJ/l, so about 4,500 MJ for the trip. A watt is one joule per second, and there are about 31 million seconds in a year, so the continuous power output equivalent for the plane flight would be about 145 watts. So, if all your computers put together are consuming more than ~150 watts, they're consuming more than the equivalent of a 5,000 km plane flight over the course of a year. This is a very rough estimate, but it doesn't appear unreasonable on its face that his statement could be true.