CaptainExplosion said:
Zkuq said:
For computers in general, it would be either more optimized software or more powerful/power-efficient hardware. Of course the issue with either is that they both allow more computations to be run, which in turn negates either some or all of the improvements in power consumption. I'm guessing the hardware will end up running at its limits anyway to maximize cost efficiency, or at least that'll be the target. Another interesting aspect at data center scale is cooling. I don't know how much energy that consumes, but if it's a significant portion of the total, some environmental factors can possibly be utilized (e.g. building data centers in colder climates - my understanding is that my home country, Finland, is quite attractive for data centers because of the cool climate). Judging by a quick search, it sounds like cooling plays a significant part in data center noise levels. If that's the case, improvements in cooling/reduction in cooling needs ought to improve the noise situation as well. I don't know if data centers typically do usual common mitigation measures, but if they don't, that might also be an option. I imagine it might have a detrimental effect on cooling though, because what doesn't let a lot of noise through probably doesn't let heat through all that well either. I'm no expert on data centers though, so this is just some things I've run into or thought. tl;dr: The easiest way is probably building data centers in cooler environments if possible, but I'm not sure how much exactly it helps with power consumption. |
But with the heat island effect those climates won't stay cooler. |
Maybe my sense of scale is wrong, but I seriously doubt data centers could affect climate in any meaningful way. Maybe in some dystopian scenario they could, but that would probably require at least decades, or more likely centuries - and with the current climate awareness (as flawed as it is), I doubt we're ever going to go that far.
