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Principles of Green Software Engineering

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Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#31

Post by mk89 »

jasoncabot wrote: post #13
krono wrote: post #3

None of the websites or posts on this topic that I've come across contain any numbers. Would it really make a difference for the average project? Honest question.

https://lowimpact.organicbasics.com/eur Is an example website that I enjoyed that shows you how much carbon you’re effectively saving by viewing their low impact version for each request.

That's a really interesting product/website. I just looked at:

https://lowimpact.organicbasics.com/eur/collections/all-mens...

You have to click on the images to actually see the real clothes you'd like to buy. I understand green/eco but I wonder who would ever use a website like this to buy any kind of (physical) goods? It kills entirely the UX and obviously it saves the company money in terms of cpu/memory/bandwidth used.

What about the costs of me having to go back and forth to see all the items one by one, therefore triggering more pages views? What about the mobile experience?

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#32

Post by whbrown »

sseagull wrote: post #16
BoxOfRain wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how many kW of power things that HN generally disparages as bloated (Electron being the main one people talk about) actually adds up to versus more efficient technologies?

My guess is not much. However, there is also the cost of consumers needing to upgrade hardware when things start getting slow again because of these developer choices. There’s a figure floating around that if consumers kept their phone for 1 more year, that is the equivalent of taking 100,000s of cars off the road. Not sure how reputable that study was though.

That simply reflects the fact that 5.5 billion is 55,000 times larger than 100,000.

Anything you do to have even the tiniest effect on the consumption of nearly the entire world's population is going to have a large impact.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#33

Post by mfer »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #4

It seems most of these boil down to: build more efficient software. Software that is more efficient with the network and CPU is also cheaper to run. So the incentives are generally aligned. When I deploy a system I want it to run on 5 servers not 50 for cost reasons not because I'm being green. If I'm being green by accident, that's a bonus. I'm glad on the "measure" side it gives examples of how to measure (though I…

I think there's something missing here. In how we operate applications.

It's not unusual to run an application on a server where that server is using only 25% of its resources (e.g., ram and/or cpu). Then, there are many different servers running many applications all of which are under utilized.

There are more efficient ways to operate these applications that drive up power efficiency. Google brags about the power efficiency of their data centers[1]. They do a bunch of things worth copying.

There are ways to operate software better... not just develop the apps themselves.

[1] https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/

edited to add missing link

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#34

Post by horsawlarway »

anonymoushn wrote: post #26
horsawlarway wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're firmly into the realm of diminishing returns by the time you're trying to optimize code that runs on a laptop that has a total power draw of 60ish watts. Frankly - Using my kettle to make coffee twice a day (~15 minutes of runtime) is the same as running my laptop at full power draw for 5 hours. Just switching a single lightbulb in your house from standard (~100w) to LED (~20w) more than offsets your w…

How many laptops does it run on all day, and does anyone run it on desktops instead?

Even a desktop only runs about 100w unless you're doing something like gaming. Admittedly, a desktop guarantees you're using another screen, so tack on 60w for the external monitor.

You'd still be better off turning off the lights in a single room, in most cases, or simply toggling the AC up literally 1 to 2 degrees.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#35

Post by Torwald »

PoissonVache wrote: post #19

My mom keeps bothering me to turn off the light before I leave home while any of the Youtube video she watch costs as much energy as keeping my light on for days/months. If only people were more aware of the energy cost of Internet.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think saving energy is the wrong overall way to go. Better is to be 100% renewable (or otherwise "green") when generating energy, so that consumption ceases to be an issue.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#37

Post by mfer »

I'm reminded of the waste many CI sets do. Where they download the same set of dependencies at the same versions for each run. No effort put into caching thing.

There is so much bandwidth used because of that (I've seen the numbers for some projects and it's HUGE).

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#38

Post by throwaway2016a »

mfer wrote: post #33
throwaway2016a wrote: post #4

It seems most of these boil down to: build more efficient software. Software that is more efficient with the network and CPU is also cheaper to run. So the incentives are generally aligned. When I deploy a system I want it to run on 5 servers not 50 for cost reasons not because I'm being green. If I'm being green by accident, that's a bonus. I'm glad on the "measure" side it gives examples of how to measure (though I…

I think there's something missing here. In how we operate applications. It's not unusual to run an application on a server where that server is using only 25% of its resources (e.g., ram and/or cpu). Then, there are many different servers running many applications all of which are under utilized. There are more efficient ways to operate these applications that drive up power efficiency. Google brags about the power e…

Most companies don't have control over their data centers (except to maybe use energy efficiency as a selection criteria). But you have a point about CPU.

But regarding incentive alignment, making those data centers more efficient is not just more green but also saves the companies a boatload of money.

Since cloud providers don't charge extra for your utilization percentage I've always told my teams: if the CPU is running cold either the software can use it more efficiently or we're overpaying by renting more capacity than we need.

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#39

Post by throwaway894345 »

ericb wrote: post #25

I wonder if this might be penny wise and pound foolish. Hypothetically, if it takes even a single week longer to make code much more efficient and only 20% of that workforce is driving to work, making coffee, running their laptops, etc, do you come out ahead?

Unless we have systemic change (e.g., border adjusted carbon tax), anything we try to do as individuals is going to be penny wise and pound foolish. Most of our carbon footprint comes from industry (including transporting goods). Much of that presumably comes from our trade with China both in terms of their lax pollution laws and then transporting goods across the Pacific. None of that is going to change unless we stop pretending that pollution is free, which is to say we need to pass some carbon pricing scheme so that companies have an incentive to reduce the amount of pollution in the goods they sell us. Greener items will inherently be cheaper, and it will give local manufacturing a competitive advantage (bringing back jobs).

Re: Principles of Green Software Engineering

#40

Post by throwaway894345 »

anyonecancode wrote: post #24
throwaway2016a wrote: post #4

It seems most of these boil down to: build more efficient software. Software that is more efficient with the network and CPU is also cheaper to run. So the incentives are generally aligned. When I deploy a system I want it to run on 5 servers not 50 for cost reasons not because I'm being green. If I'm being green by accident, that's a bonus. I'm glad on the "measure" side it gives examples of how to measure (though I…

> So the incentives are generally aligned. When I deploy a system I want it to run on 5 servers not 50 for cost reasons not because I'm being green. If I'm being green by accident, that's a bonus. I think that's the whole game right there -- figure out how to make sure negative externalities stop being external and become part of the cost. Then incentives will naturally align, as opposed to being at odds. In the case…

Honestly, the number one thing any of us can do for the climate is to contact our representatives regularly about climate pricing. Absent that, we’ll never slow our pollution enough to stop runaway warming. Everything else is a micro optimization that may even distract us from the only thing that will get us over the line.
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