Earlier quoted context omitted.
teach them one international language from the start of their life
Esperanto uses characters outside of ASCII.
that's probably why its not the international language I meant lol
Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
161–170 of 174 posts
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#162> Also, to foster research on this topic we have built a wiki, combining lists of papers, websites, events pages, etc. We highly encourage people to visit it, sign up, and start improving it; the more scientists get involved, from the more fields, the better!
Thermodynamics of Computation Wiki https://centre.santafe.edu/thermocomp/Santa_Fe_Institute_Col...
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#163The reason computers use energy is because transistors have a finite signal rise time and are bound by ohms law. This is unlikely to ever change.
Isn't zero also finite?
That’s true and as long as current is coursing through those poorly conducting components there will be resistive losses of some kind. The resistivity of silicon is way worse than copper. Its just that ramp on the way from nothing to everything the resistance is a lot worse. But even at zero for the gate there is going to be some leakage I think.
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#164The reason computers use energy is because transistors have a finite signal rise time and are bound by ohms law. This is unlikely to ever change.
Indeed, but smaller transistors (less capacitance, thus less charge transfer) and lower voltages can reduce the power consumption of digital circuits. Also, more efficient software could reduce the amount of switching that has to occur. And I suppose one has to consider the power consumption of some peripherals such as LCD back-lighting. Long ago I had an internship where we were developing a battery powered micropro…
Is there such a thing as clockless parts of a cpu that only get io on a signal by signal basis?
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, but smaller transistors (less capacitance, thus less charge transfer) and lower voltages can reduce the power consumption of digital circuits. Also, more efficient software could reduce the amount of switching that has to occur. And I suppose one has to consider the power consumption of some peripherals such as LCD back-lighting. Long ago I had an internship where we were developing a battery powered micropro…
Is there such a thing as clockless parts of a cpu that only get io on a signal by signal basis?
Yes, especially in the embedded world, you can shut down portions of the system that you aren't using, or have them only wake up when some sort of event occurs.
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
For anyone heating their home/office in the winter, the energy consumed by their computer effectively has zero cost. The computing done is value added to energy-use that would otherwise dissipate through the walls and ceiling. Those of us in northern latitudes should be lucky enough to have a couple of servers in the closet helping to pay for heating.
Yeah, but who moves their computers outside of the closet in the summer? Then we have a larger AC bill to cover, and that's less efficient than heating.
AC is almost always more efficient than heating because AC systems use heat pumps.
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#167> Precise estimates vary, but currently about 5 percent of all energy consumption in the U.S. goes just to running computers 30% goes on transport. > the human brain is a computer. This particular computer uses some 10–20 percent of all the calories that a human consumes So society's computer uses 5 percent and our own, evolved over millions of years, uses up to 20. I'm not saying computers can't or shouldn't be made…
For anyone heating their home/office in the winter, the energy consumed by their computer effectively has zero cost. The computing done is value added to energy-use that would otherwise dissipate through the walls and ceiling. Those of us in northern latitudes should be lucky enough to have a couple of servers in the closet helping to pay for heating.
Compared to a heat pump, that computer is still costing money, cause a heat pump can add more heat to the house then an electric heating element using the same amount of energy.
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Phones are much less powerful than PCs, but they feel comparably fast I beg to differ. My Droid Turbo is powered by a 2.7 Ghz quad-core CPU, yet often is incredibly slow. If I want to open Waze and enter and address to navigate to, it's often 10-15 seconds from the time I tap the Waze icon on the launcher until the apps is loaded and the on-screen keyboard has presented itself for typing. There are significant stut…
There’s a lot to blame — the software bloat, delivery mechanisms, user-hostile decisions that prioritize ads, and all the rest. But clock rate is truly meaningless as a performance measure when the underlying architecures are different...
> software bloat
This came up on another thread here from a blog/article titled "software disenfranchisement". I mentioned that I think a lot of it is an unhealthy obsession with writing re-usable code that results in abstractions on top of abstractions piled onto more abstractions to the point where we get the infamous FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition [0] that I'm sure nearly everyone at HN has seen. We also have a problem of people statically linking massive libraries when they only need a small fraction of its code.
> user-hostile decisions that prioritize ads
Definitely a problem in mobile web browsing. Ridiculous that on a data-limited connection, ad networks still try to push video ads or ridiculous JavaScript code.
> But clock rate is truly meaningless as a performance measure when the underlying architecures are different...
Definitely true. ARM gets a lot less done per clock tick than x86. But I imagine a lot of the performance differences are done on purpose as a compromise to reduce power consumption, since ARM is so big on mobile platforms. This is entirely speculation on my part, though.
[0] https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
For anyone heating their home/office in the winter, the energy consumed by their computer effectively has zero cost. The computing done is value added to energy-use that would otherwise dissipate through the walls and ceiling. Those of us in northern latitudes should be lucky enough to have a couple of servers in the closet helping to pay for heating.
Only if you’re heating your house with electric resistance heat. Heating with natural gas or heat pump is more efficient (in terms of BTU per dollar) than using the waste heat from computing (which is resistance).
True, for those lucky enough to afford that option (what % of homes have HP's?). Then there's this caveat:
Heat pumps are not great in cold climates. They are most effective at saving energy when in the heating mode. In a cold climate, however, your house needs more heat as the temperature outside goes down—but the heat pump works less efficiently at lower outdoor temperatures. Below a temperature known as the “balance point,” normally from between 30 and 45 degrees F., supplementary heat is required—and that means expensive electrical heating kicks in. https://www.hometips.com/buying-guides/heat-pumps.html
My home town seldom reached 30 degrees from November to April.
Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you’re heating your house with electric resistance heat. Heating with natural gas or heat pump is more efficient (in terms of BTU per dollar) than using the waste heat from computing (which is resistance).
True, for those lucky enough to afford that option (what % of homes have HP's?). Then there's this caveat: Heat pumps are not great in cold climates. They are most effective at saving energy when in the heating mode. In a cold climate, however, your house needs more heat as the temperature outside goes down—but the heat pump works less efficiently at lower outdoor temperatures. Below a temperature known as the “balan…
That reference is outdated or incomplete, imo. Several manufacturers have air-source heat pumps that work well into the teens and Fujitsu has one rated to -7*F without resistance heat.
Lots of so-called hyper-heat or low-temp heat pumps (often mini-splits) in cold New England. Affording a heat pump is not a high hurdle. You can get a single zone mini-split (heat/cool) for under $1500 with an install typically well under $1000 without a lot of shopping in most of the US.