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Internet's Energy Needs Growing Faster Than Efficiency Gains

Posted by timothy on 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."

10 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Electrons may not weigh anything

    You lost me there.

  2. What about the Energy offset? by NFN_NLN · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What about the energy offset?

    How much energy is consumed by driving to blockbuster, picking up a physical tape that had to be produced and shipped to the store Vs. streaming from Netflix?
    How about paying bills online vs mailing an envelope.

    I'm not sure what the number is but it may be possible that for every increase in energy 'x' by computers there was '5x' amount of energy saved in other areas???

    1. Re:What about the Energy offset? by mellon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you're going to go there, it's probably worth noting that one really big consumer of CPU cycles online is encryption. This isn't a big deal for regular stuff, but when you're encrypting a 4Gbyte video stream, that's a big deal. IOW, DRM is the next new carbon polluter...

  3. 270 terrawatt hours by Zcar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In how long?

    Could be 30 gigawatts for a year, 300 megawatts for a decade, 370 gigawatts for a month or even 16.2 petawatts in a minute.

    Units matter!

    1. Re:270 terrawatt hours by gman003 · · 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.

    2. Re:270 terrawatt hours by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Which of course, raises the question, why couldn't you just bloody SAY "31 Gigawatts" instead of tangling yourself in this foofaral of extraneous time units that you didn't even get right?

  4. Re:Is that per hour ? by noh8rz10 · · Score: 3, Informative

    it's probably per year. don't you think? doubtful that they consume 270 TW of power.

  5. Best Author/Title correlation ever. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Did anyone notice the meaning in Italian of the paper author's last name is "re-forged recycling"?

  6. Re:Seriously! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your post advocates a

    ( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante ( ) form-based

    approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work ...

    Yada yada yada ...

    (X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money^W^Whis head

    Yada yada ...
    (X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
    (X) Open relays in foreign countries
    (X) Asshats
    (X) Jurisdictional problems
    (X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
    (X) Extreme profitability of spam
    (X) Technically illiterate politicians
    (X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
    (X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
    (X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering

    Yada Yada

    (X) I don't want the government reading my email
    (X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

    Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

    (X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
    (X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
    ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down

  7. Re: Electrons may not weigh anything by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, the mass of an electron is: 9.10938291(40)×10^31 kg :-)

    I think you might have missed a minus sign there. Unless the Sun is an electron.