Internet's Energy Needs Growing Faster Than Efficiency Gains

Posted by timothy on Friday March 29, 2013 @06:32AM from the more-dilithium-obviously dept.

Electrons may not weigh anything, but it takes some heavy lifting, both literal and figurative, to point them in the right direction. Reader terrancem writes with this excerpt: "Energy efficiency gains are failing to keep pace with the Internet's rapid rate of expansion, says a new paper published in the journal Science. Noting that the world's data centers already consume 270 terawatt hours and Internet traffic volume is doubling every three years, Diego Reforgiato Recupero of the University of Catania argues for prioritizing energy efficiency in the design of devices, networks, data centers, and software development. Recupero highlights two approaches for improving efficiency: smart standby and dynamic frequency scaling or CPU throttling."

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Re: Electrons may not weigh anything by paradigm82 · 2013-03-29 06:37 · Score: 1, Informative

Actually, the mass of an electron is: 9.10938291(40)×1031 kg :-)
Re:Is that per hour ? by noh8rz10 · 2013-03-29 06:41 · Score: 3, Informative

it's probably per year. don't you think? doubtful that they consume 270 TW of power.
Re:270 terrawatt hours by gman003 · 2013-03-29 07:01 · Score: 3, Informative

I believe it was implied that this was per annum (270 TW-h/year).
If Wolfram Alpha is correct, that comes out to 31GW, which it notes is about 1/75th the world's power consumption. This seems relatively reasonable, more so than if you interpret it as per-month (16% the world's power) or per-decade (roughly the power of the Hoover Dam).
Still very confusing, though. Bad science.