Internet's Energy Needs Growing Faster Than Efficiency Gains 158
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."
What about the Energy offset? (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???
Best Author/Title correlation ever. (Score:4, Interesting)
Did anyone notice the meaning in Italian of the paper author's last name is "re-forged recycling"?
Re:What about the Energy offset? (Score:5, 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...