Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?

#171

Post by ex3ndr » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

gvb wrote: post #22

pizzakiller85 wrote: post #2

What i don't understand is how a phone can be so powerful with so little watt usage. especially compared to a PC

1) Your phone is mostly sleeping (extremely low power state). Your laptop also uses very little power when sleeping. That is why your laptop can sleep for a week++ but can only run for 3-8 hours. 2) Your phone is not nearly as powerful as your laptop despite similar specifications of the CPU speeds. Pretty much everything other than the base CPU clock rate is much, much slower. In addition, your phone CPU down-clocks…

JS on iOS is probably not jitted since writing to executable memory is prohibited on iOS. This is not the case for desktop.

Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?

#172

Post by jvanname » Sat, Oct 06, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

We can try to make more efficient computers by using cryptocurrency mining algorithms that help incentivize the development of these energy efficient reversible computers instead of algorithms like SHA-256 which happen to be quite buggy (Some bugs include ASIC-boost and approximate mining) when we use it as a mining problem instead of just a regular hash function (I have developed one of these reversibility friendly mining algorithms myself). Maybe it is better to actually give some thought into the cryptocurrency mining algorithm that you are using before the government bans you for foolishly wasting energy.

-Joseph Van Name Ph.D.

Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?

#173

Post by lousken » Sun, Oct 07, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

software should be more efficient, not computers

Re: Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?

#174

Post by phyzome » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 8:09 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #151

phyzome wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say that you could write just fine by candlelight instead, but it turns out a candle uses about as much energy as that light bulb (based on random internet spot-checks).

The increase in energy-to-services efficiency of lighting has been stupendous. If you go all the way back to brands or torches (the burning sort), candles, oil lamps, gas mantles, incandescent, fluorescent, and now LED. I have to keep reminding older concerned family members that a light might consume a dollar's worth of electricity per year, or that the bright overhead floods actually consume half the power of the '…

Actually, thinking back on this, I need to do a different calculation. The candle is directly converting hydrocarbons into heat and light. If you burned those hydrocarbons in a power plant, how many watt-hours would be produced? (For that matter, how long will that candle burn for?) Ignore delivery/transmission costs: I'm curious what kind of losses there are in burning (say) oil for electricity vs. just setting it on fire, in the context of lighting.