Computers have dominated humans at chess for a number of years. They’re getting better, too (although they are still completely reliant on us squishy humans for improvements). But however good they are right now, we’re not completely licked, yet, as I realized while reminiscing about one of the extracurricular events I participated in during high school.
Energy-proportional computing
The following post is an excerpt from a subsection of my Ph.D. depth paper, less citations, which exist in the original document. This post deals with the concept of energy-proportional computing.
Continue reading “Energy-proportional computing”
Towards better energy-efficiency labels
The following post is a collection of excerpts from a draft of my Ph.D. depth paper, less citations, which exist in the original document.
Few computer systems spend all of their time at full utilization; even in always-on situations such as servers, a properly provisioned system will be spend almost all of its time at less than 50% utilization. Since most personal computers remain idle for extended periods of time ((In the context of this document, idle systems are ones that are on but performing no useful work.)), consumers should be considering a computer’s idle power draw when purchasing a computer. However, performance per watt is often the number that is compared.
iPad? How bad?
Update: So it looks like my estimates for the carbon dioxide emissions were way off. I guess iPad’s components must be particularly carbon-unfriendly per unit mass; if I had to speculate, it’s due to a higher component weight to frame weight than on the computers considered here. Updated results at the end of this post; you can follow along using the original text, substituting in the new values for manufacturing. It looks like my estimates for power adapter efficiency and power consumption are pretty much spot on, though.
Jorge Aranda tells me his brother is considering one of those newfangled iPads to reduce his environmental footprint:
His reasoning is that it will help him pay for “content” without damaging the Earth –specifically, he’s talking about reading the newspaper, magazines, and e-books in the iPad, instead of buying them in paper version.
I suspected, and told him, that on the whole this would probably mean an *increase* in environmental damage, rather than a decrease. He’s not convinced.
Jorge then adds the question that prompted the creation of this blog: “Who is right?”
So will buying an iPad to replace print materials reduce carbon emissions or just result in more iWaste?