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222 Comments
- FizzanoMatrix, on 05/11/2008, -3/+100In a word: No.
- rentmitchum, on 05/11/2008, -3/+54I didn't realize how much energy is in these internets. I imagined all the hamsters from hampsterdance were enslaved years ago to run in wheels to power it. It's the only way they can atone for their sins of annoyance.
- CC440, on 05/11/2008, -2/+45And yet they don't say how the internet saves energy. It is a consolidated source of information and an electronic economy in its own right. It is cheaper to search Google use the power of an 11 watt bulb than to drive to a library or a store to check prices. Without Amazon and online retailing millions of people would be forced to drive to stores, more stores would be forced to keep larger inventory (burning more gas for delivery of inventory). Yes shipping still costs money but it is more efficient to use demand shipping than to stock 20 couches in your store for 2 years.
The internet may use huge amounts of energy, and this should be reduced, but never at the cost of the speed or abilities that this service rpovides. To do that would just cause the energy used to be moved to a more innifiecient and older economic model. - dukeeeey, on 05/11/2008, -24/+67"Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period."
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article17 ...
I keep wondering if my car did that. I am sure Al Gore's solution of a global government and a global tax will fix it. Cause that's just what we need, bigger government ! - CC440, on 05/11/2008, -1/+35This metric is also crap. They took the energy used by the servers for an entire day then divided by the amount of searches they recieve in a day. The servers do more than just process searches. Google may use this much energy on a daily basis, but one search would maybe use enough energy to power a .0001 watt bulb for a minute if you base your search's energy on the amount of processing power that is used.
- thechosen, on 05/11/2008, -1/+32If the internet does go down, all we have to do is unplug it and plug it back in, right?
- Scaryclouds, on 05/11/2008, -7/+40Well one solution for cooling data centers is to build them under ground. I think at 6+ feet the temperature is a constant 50 degrees Fahrenheit. You might loose during the winter (depending on where you have the data center located) but you would definitely come out ahead during the summer. Of course not all parts of the US allow for this and building under ground is, I'm sure, a good bit more expensive.
- bincoder, on 05/11/2008, -3/+29And this is important why? I can light an 11 watt bulb for an hour by sneezing in its general direction. Here abouts we have nuclear, hydro, and solar power all available at once. They can power the same 11 watt bulb for the next 20 trillion years and google as well. Is the power running out? Um, no. Have the prices tripled like gasoline? Again, no. High oil prices do not equal global energy crisis. Don't worry about electricity, worry about how to drive a car using a big horse in front to tow it with. You can have infinite electricity for free but that isn't going to help with the issue of getting an SUV to go 300 miles non-stop at 85 mph, refueling in 10 minutes, then driving another 300 miles. Worrying about the grid is a waste of time.
- atgmac, on 05/11/2008, -3/+31Who uses 11 watt light bulbs?
- Look4Truth, on 05/11/2008, -8/+28More taxes and pretending the net is in trouble so they can get rid of our free speech. God bless America and it's forming tyrannical police state.
- borez, on 05/11/2008, -13/+32Next up: Political activist send the world into a downward Co2 conspiracy spiral.
Ooops, already happened. - otis12, on 05/11/2008, -0/+19Put them in an ice cream cooler. Noting better than ice cream and the internet.
- Enron, on 05/11/2008, -2/+22It's not a big truck. It's not something you just dump something on, the Internet is a series of tubes.
- rentmitchum, on 05/11/2008, -0/+18I know, I got sent an Internet the other day and it got backed up in the tubes.
- goscript, on 05/11/2008, -3/+21"Every time you search Google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour…"
It's Google who's using this power, not me ! - inactive, on 05/11/2008, -12/+29Global Warming is so real that it's actually been cooling for the last 10 years and is expected to cool for another 10 years.
- Troy64, on 05/11/2008, -1/+15It me was about global warming and the internet, how could Al Gore's name not be mentioned.
- inactive, on 05/11/2008, -23/+41Buried until global warming happen
- Foofoofoofoobar, on 05/11/2008, -0/+14Because if they release exact numbers and it goes down from month to month, people will go "OMG GOOGLE IS DYING" and its stock price will fall. By keeping it nebulous, they don't need to have as much quarter to quarter pressure.
- manitoba98xp, on 05/11/2008, -0/+13Move them to Canada. Why are all of the big data centers (hyperbole, I know) in San Francisco, Dallas, or somewhere warm? If it's cooler out, it should cost less to cool, eh?
Okay, maybe I just want the big sites to load slightly faster for me. :) - FoxFaction, on 05/11/2008, -0/+11Why would they do that? What advantage would it give to them to release those numbers?
- krnldmp, on 05/11/2008, -0/+11Dedicated servers have no use for a graphics card and don't have them.
- MtheoryX, on 05/11/2008, -0/+11No, he should know because he has at least half a brain and the power of reason and critical thinking.
- doshindude, on 05/11/2008, -2/+13No.
- Ksg89, on 05/11/2008, -5/+17What a load of rubbish
- inactive, on 05/11/2008, -2/+14It helps more not to blindly accept the warm-mongering hysteria. 1. It has been cooling for 10 years. 2. It is expected to cool for another 10.
- yaosio, on 05/11/2008, -1/+12Not only are there no sources, but the writer thinks that the computers at google are only on when somebody does a search, and then shuts down!. Buried!
- MtheoryX, on 05/11/2008, -0/+10I, too, think there should be some more exact mathematical breakdowns given when writers assert such bold claims as this.
- Lionhart, on 05/11/2008, -1/+11Source??
- AlexBellisBrown, on 05/11/2008, -0/+10 People who watch porn on the web don´t need heating, which uses a lot of energy.
- localzuk, on 05/11/2008, -0/+9My house is full of them. I use a mix of 11W and 9W bulbs.
- thorseth, on 05/11/2008, -0/+9Sorry, but the main power loss in a computer comes from the processor and other active components. If your PSU have a huge fan it is most likely an inefficient one. But more efficient power converters would be a way to bring down power consumption. Remember solar panels only work when the sun is up...
- statstudent, on 05/12/2008, -0/+9considering they then moments later say
"So you now know one single Google search query consumes 2 to 8 watt-hours of energy."
wait, 11 watt-hours or 2 to 8 watt-hours? first fact i checked was wrong. buried as inaccurate. - liuite, on 05/11/2008, -0/+11Using underground heat exchanger should do the trick...the ground becomes the heatsink
- kylere, on 05/11/2008, -3/+11Mathematically incorrect drivel
- carpespasm, on 05/11/2008, -1/+12that would only account for the heat the DC would gather from the ambient outside temp. The problem of all the heat generated by the servers themselves wouldn't be affected. If you built the cooling system to run through a large underground radiator to help dissipate the heat into the earth then you might get somewhere, but I have a feeling the heat load would just build up to be too much unless you had a pretty massive subterranean cooling system. If you have a body of water near the DC you could divert some of that through a cooling system, but DCs aren't usually built near waterways to help minimize flood damage. The only way to get better power consumption is more efficient use of the systems you have, since most of the time you're machines will be in a wait state. Virtualization and better power management are more attainable answers IMHO.
- sfacets, on 05/11/2008, -1/+9I wish I could bury this submission as "*****" but Digg hasn't incorporated that option yet.
- kowalzki, on 05/11/2008, -1/+9How much CO2 did it take to write this ***** article?
The author is so green that he didn't even bother to search for references... 11 watt my ass... - inactive, on 05/11/2008, -3/+11"Every time you search Google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour". Every time you fart you could power a "11 watt" bulb for 6 hours! STOP FEELING GUILTY LIBTARDS! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT BESIDES WHINING AND COMPLAINING ABOUT EVERY SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY! Let them build nuclear power plants! Build more refineries!
- inactive, on 05/11/2008, -2/+10My access to online porn is more important than the status on the planet.
- scamper22, on 05/11/2008, -0/+7This article is really lacking any context.
1. How much energy do the data centres save
googling vs driving to libraries or having something mailed to you...
watching online video instead of driving to blockbuster...
centralized data centre versus every random company having their own ineffecient servers
...
2. ease of change
It's much easier for a large data center to implement energy saving techniques than if things were not so centralized.
They can use virtualization on a massive scale.
They have the resources to even relocate the datacentre to a new location (somewhere cooling is not as much needed)
they could institute heat capture techniques...
3. The very utility of it all
I'm not giving up my googling/youtubing regardless of the 'global warming' implications.
4. $$$ more powerful than green
I've worked in a networking lab before. Suffice to say, the cooling resources are massive. The last thing on our mind was carbon emissions. The first thing on our mind was cost.
5. No, the web won't crash
we can cool what we have, and away we go.
But the overall message 'save power in data centres' is good...and obvious. - rand0mm0nkey, on 05/11/2008, -2/+9If we get to that amount of warming, will we actually care about web? Won't it be more about killing your neighbor for food for your family at that point?
- alexforcefive, on 05/11/2008, -2/+15My dad's job involves researching energy conservation, alternate fuels etc for local government. So, he's my source for this one. I may not be 100% accurate =D
The heat from a computer comes mostly from the power supply, which transforms the 240 volts (in europe) to the 12v needed for most PC components. HOWEVER one interesting thing is that solar panels actually produce 12v by design. So if computers were solar powered, you wouldn't need a PSU (or, you'd need a different design of PSU), and you wouldn't be generating excess heat. Problem solved at minimal expense and effort. Hooray! - ryan83189, on 05/11/2008, -0/+7cfl's use about 11 watts.
- MtheoryX, on 05/11/2008, -0/+8Maybe it's gonna be a new variation on Godwin's Law.
- Goodanswer, on 05/11/2008, -1/+8Every time you search Google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour...and everytime I step on a crack I break my mothers back.
- Mard, on 05/11/2008, -1/+8This is nonsense. Not a single source for all of these random factoids? How exactly have they determined the energy consumption of a single Google search? I'm supposed to trust a random blog on the internets which assumes their readers are idiots and don't know the web address for Youtube, yet fails to add links for the really relevant bits? Get this off the front page.
- cr4wl3r, on 05/11/2008, -0/+6This is the dumbest ***** i've ever heard.
- FoxFaction, on 05/11/2008, -1/+8Was that a joke?
- krnldmp, on 05/11/2008, -0/+6The power supplies in computers are very efficient. Quality varies, but input to output efficiency is usually over 85 percent. 90-95% is not unrealistic, but requires top grade parts and is more expensive. New motherboards have secondary core voltage regulators that run off 5 volts from the main power supply and step down to whatever the core requires, for an additional loss. Most of the power burned in a computer goes to the CPU and hard drive spindle motors. In hard drives that are read/writing like crazy, the head positioning drive requirements can get pretty high. In any case, whether the system mains voltage is 120VAC or 12VDC, the supplies of +-12V and 5V needs to be tightly regulated electronically. There is no way to simply run a computer straight off a solar array. All in all building data centers underground is not a bad idea. You would never have an additional heating bill.
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