IT Energy

Which languages are the fastest and most energy efficient? The simple answer is: C, C++, Rust. The accurate answer is: it depends.

Website carbon calculators are not very accurate, especially if they only use data transfer as the metric.

Is it a good idea to make predictions about future energy consumption? Even mature public businesses typically only issue earnings guidance for the next quarter. Maybe it’s because predicting the future is hard?

Is cryptocurrency / Bitcoin bad for the environment? In 2019 crypto consumed 70-90 TWh of electricity globally, with 60-70 TWh of that from Bitcoin mining. What that means for carbon emissions depends on where the mining happens.

Why isn’t carbon aware workload scheduling more common? Data center level scheduling is infeasible, so what are the opportunities for developers to implement more granular functionality?

Customers should now be asking their suppliers for the carbon footprint of the software services they buy.

The methodology is invalid, which the authors acknowledge but ignore. This means the results of this article aren’t particularly useful.

The ultimate goal is a reduction in emissions, but we can’t analyze improvements without reporting energy per unit of work done.

Data centers are not 100% efficient, so they generate waste heat, which causes anthroprogenic heat flux, and can therefore be linked to global warming. But how much? And should we be concerned?