I’ve been doing little bits and pieces to help with our current global warming crisis.
Okay, I know not everyone thinks there is such a problem, and indeed, they could have a point, but I’d argue cutting back on emissions is still a good idea, regardless what the weather is doing.
A few months ago, I posted about a pump-shower that I was using to reduce my water consumption. Since then… especially as winter set in, I’ve been looking at other ways to cut down my power consumption and reduce my impact.
In our household, our major contributors would be:
- Transport: getting to/from uni/work
- Computers
- My bad habits (leaving lights/appliances turned on)
The transport situation is an interesting problem. Seeing as I don’t have my own driver’s license, I usually hitch a ride to the railway station of a morning when heading to uni. My father drives right past Mitchelton railway station on his way to work (in Enoggera). Until recently, we were using a 1982-model Subaru stationwagon to get us there. This car was getting quite old, and whilst running reasonably well, chews about 9~10L of petrol per 100km — quite a lot for a car of this size. Luckily we managed to score a 2007-model Holden Rodeo. Indeed, such a vehicle is overkill for most of the day-to-day trips we do, we got it with camping trips in mind. Around the city, it chews about 8~9L of diesel per 100km, so still quite a bit better than the Subaru considering the size difference.
I could ride my bike to uni, however there’s a catch. Brisbane traffic, particularly around the CBD, is not a nice place to be when you’re on two wheels and pedal-powered. This is ignoring the hilly terrain between The Gap (where I live) and the CBD. Thus it’s public transport for me until the traffic settles down a bit. (and I get a bit more fit)
The real challenge though, for reducing our resource consumption, has been the computers. In this house, there are 30 computers. Not all of them run all the time, in fact, typically the following must run 24/7:
- Web server: IBM Netfinity 5000 server running Gentoo 2007.0 on an Intel PIII 550MHz CPU ~300W PS
- Wireless Network server: Recycled desktop PC running Gentoo 2007.0 on an Intel Pentium MMX 166MHz CPU … ~200W PSU
So okay, worst-case scenario, we’re burning about 500W/hr just with those computers. I also like to run my desktop PC 24/7, since even if I’m not home, I can shell into it from uni/whereever and grab files/execute tasks. My desktop PC is almost 6 years old now… and has been upgraded a little bit since then. Its specs:
- CPU: 2×Intel Pentium III 1GHz
- RAM: 1GB PC133 SDRAM
- HDD: 3×18.2GB and 1×9GB SCSI disks
- Power Supply Rating: 400W
I have no idea whether it would actually hit 400W peak usage… but it could get close to that in some cases. In addition, there’s my file server (Cobalt Qube2) which runs on a 200W PSU. Add to this my bad habit of leaving the SGI boxes turned on, idling for days on end, we can be easily looking at 2kW every hour. It’s little wonder that we have been known to cop some astronomical figures on the power bill — as much as over $400/quarter.
This got me thinking about what I actually use my desktop PC for. I’m not a gamer, so high-end 3D performance is not a requirement, just accelerated 2D is sufficient. My desktop PC is normally an integral part of my sound system; plugged into the amp as a second tape deck. This allows me to record from tape, radio and vinyl records. I also like listening to my music on the computer (I have about 1200 songs in Vorbis format) and sometimes watch some TV shows (e.g. The Chaser vodcasts — note these aren’t available outside Australia). Then there’s the more mundane tasks: wordprocessing, spreadsheeting, presentations, software development…etc.
Back in February, Lemote donated two Fulong minicomputers to Gentoo so we could do a port of Gentoo to them. It didn’t take me long to get X, KDE, Firefox, Thunderbird and all the other typical luxuries one has on a standard Intel PC, fully operational. I soon came to a realisation however: these machines do just about everything I do for day-to-day tasks, and come with power supplies rated at 12v 4.1A. 50W is excellent for a machine that runs at 660MHz. The Wikipedia article about them claims that they’d rival a P4 CPU, which I’d dispute, but this aside, they’re one of the most responsive MIPS-compatible machines I’ve ever used. About the only things I can’t do:
- Run Java applications — Presently, there’s no Java environment for Linux/MIPS. I’m yet to figure out OpenJDK, and there’s also one rather interesting project on Lemote’s project site that seems to promise a JVM… but for now, I just use my x86-based laptop to work with the few Java apps that I need to use.
- Play Flash media reliably — Gnash can play some videos, but it can’t play them all. I have Gnash 0.7.2 installed at the moment (I just tried 0.8… it failed to compile) which can do some, but anything involving video is a no-go. But I so rarely come into contact with Flash, it’s enough to stop Firefox bitching about missing plugins — if I really need Flash, again, I’ve got my laptop.
- .NET apps — Now, I did see some MIPS-related code put in the recent versions of Mono. I think this is more targetted at IRIX, but still might be interesting to look into — especially for things like ikvm — but at present, I don’t use any .NET stuff. So this is a very low priority.
So I sacrifice these things, for a significantly smaller power bill. How much of a difference it makes, will be interesting. I’ve turned off and unplugged my desktop PC… it’s sitting on the floor under a table, silent. I’m using the 20″ CRT monitor and other peripherals from that box for one of the Lemote boxes, and thus use it as a primary desktop. The machine handles the job extremely well, especially since I upgraded it to 512MB RAM, and should do just fine when other devs want to shell in and test apps. Presently, I’m fiddling around with a n32 chroot environment, updating that (sys-libs/db-4.2.52_p4-r2 is in the test phase), and the desktop is still rather responsive.
As I sit back and listen to the Live Earth concert currently playing in Sydney (Triple M Brisbane has been playing highlights all day), this got me thinking about the impact the IT industry has on our power usage. Particularly in the Wintel community (Windows/Intel). Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen processing clock speeds multiply 20× and power consumption multiply about 2~3×. 10 years ago, we were looking at (what is now) the mid-range PII systems, between 300~400MHz, and requiring power supplies rated about 200~300W. We now talk of 2-3GHz CPUs, requiring 400~600W PSUs. Microsoft and co have been slowly upping the requirements of their latest operating systems — and at the same time, have been slowly forcing people to upgrade.
Windows Vista pretty much needs a state-of-the-art desktop PC at the moment before it runs properly. The same PC, which might be relatively responsive under Vista, often flies by comparison under Linux. Add to this the requirements of anti-malware packages, things soon balloon up. Also, Microsoft seems to assume we run our PCs 24/7… Notice how they default to updating at 3:00AM? Just how many home users do that?
Now, if turning Google black could possibly save 3GW/year, what would happen if either (1) Microsoft stripped some bloat out of their OS products, or (2) a sizeable portion of the IT industry were to move to more power-friendly alternatives? A more lightweight operating system and applications, could mean we could use more low-end computers to achieve our day-to-day tasks. In my case, I’ve switched to a machine that draws slightly over 10% of what my x86 desktop chews, and so far, has done everything I need to do.
The bonus, these Lemote machines are small enough to carry in my backpack to uni .. simply “borrow” a monitor and keyboard from a non-working university workstation, and bang, I’ve got a very convenient desktop that lets me get my uni work done — and simultaneously allows me to do any MIPS-development work on-the-run, whilst drawing less power than my laptop or any of the university workstations. It’s also amusing to watch IT students, many of whom have only ever known IBM clones or Apple computers, see the box, think it’s a USB HDD, then do a double take when they notice the monitor, network and peripherals plugged into this apparent “HDD”. Despite having a much slower CPU than the university workstations, the machine boots up faster, and gets the job done sooner, than many of the university machines, making me much more productive.
Surely if people’s workstations in the workplace ran with this sort of efficiency, productivity would go up. And if the PCs aren’t working as hard, this has got to have some kind of effect on a company’s power bill. I wouldn’t like to speculate, but I’d imagine that a company that recycles its old PCs using Linux … even to run them as thin clients off a much more powerful server (Windows or Linux) could save huge amounts of power, and conversely reduce a significant amount of CO2 emissions as a result.
I think the IT industry as a whole, truly needs to start looking into how to use the computing power we have more wisely, rather than producing operating systems that spend loads of CPU cycles DMA-loading fancy textures into video RAM so the power-hungry GPU can render some completely pointless and time-consuming flashy eye-candy effect, or make some pesky metal fiend jump about the screen whilst one is trying to write a letter (Yes machine, I am writing a letter, now sod off and let me get on with it).
Thankfully, I don’t have to put up with this… but it amazes me how many people do. To them, I ask: why? It’s about time big corporations realise how frivolous this whole counter-productive “beautification” project is, and start looking at making their software work better on the hardware we have now, rather than lumping these needless hardware upgrades on us and causing this excessive waste of our power resources.
