Green Computing

I have been using computers for the last 22 years, so I know a thing or two about them. Here is my own guide to green computing.

• If you have a single core 90nm P4 Prescott or an Athlon XP, now might be a good time to replace your processor/computer.
• Choose a green operating system that is low on CPU usage and has good power management features. For servers, Red hat Linux is an excellent choice.
• If you are just an occasional gamer who does not mind playing games at lower quality settings, chose a computer with integrated graphics. At the time of this writing the best integrated graphics chipset is AMD's 780G.
• Chose a computer with an energy efficient processor, this costs only 10-20$ more.
• If your CRT monitor is 5yrs old, now is a good time to replace it with a lower power LCD. However, resist the temptation to oversize your LCD, unless your work demands it. For most people a 17-19" LCD should be fine.
  
• Chose a medium end dual core CPU or a low end quad core CPU. Unless you run scientific software, or games, these processors should be more than adequate for years to come.
  
• Set the power management on your computer to max. Have the shut down of the monitor occur only after 5-10min of no usage.
• If you can wait to buy a new computer, wait until early next year. By then all CPUs from Intel and AMD should be built using a more power efficient 45nm process. Furthermore DD3 should be cheaper, but more importantly should consume less power than DD2.
• Get a laptop instead of a desktop if your work does not require a lot of horse power.
• Chose software that is low on CPU utilization. This would require some trial and error, as currently there is no standard that tells you how many CPU cycles each program consumes on each processor model or the total average energy in watts per task(for example a virus scan or watching a movie.)
• If you have multiple servers, go for virtualization and server consolidation. Additionally, make sure that the platform you purchase will have socket/memory type longevity.
• Chose computer RAM that has a low voltage rating.
• If money is not an issue, go for a high efficiency power supply.
• Buy computers and LCD panels with an energy star compliant rating.
• Choose a chipset or graphics card that can do HD(HD and Blu ray) decoding. GPUs are more efficient at HD video decoding than CPUs. Nvidia and AMD offer very efficient decoding in this regard.
  

Cars

Every green/enviro site has their own set of recommendations for car energy saving, so I wanted to mention a few of my own:

*Nitrogen tire filling. This is somewhat controversial, some studies show it does not work while others do, it is really hard to tell, but on the off chance that it might work, I would recommend it.

*Energy saving tires, these can actually work. Not sure if there would be any additional savings if these are combined with nitrogen tire filling. But if there is, the total would be 7-10% more mileage.

*I have seen very few sites mention the change of spark plugs, but with current fuel prices, it might not be a bad idea to change them before they are due for change.

*If your car is 10 years old, and you drive in the city more than you do on the highways, then now might be a good time to get either a compact car with a small 1.4-1.6ltr engine or a hybrid. Hybrids from Toyota and Honda are an excellent choice.

From a few article I read, I have already seen a shift in demand to smaller engine cars and Hybrids. I hope that car factories can keep up with this shift.

Car Longevity

Say that I buy a computer today, for example an Athlon 64 5200+ x2, I can upgrade it in a couple of years with a somewhat faster CPU that consumes less power. Similarly I can replace the graphics card inside the computer within 12-18 months with a twice as fast card that consumes less that what I currently have in terms of energy. The only worthy component that I can not replace is the chipset, and I really think that replacing it should be an option.

Anyway, what I would like to see is a similar upgrade path for cars, the ability, every 5-7 years, to replace the engine with a 15-30% more efficient engine. And I think this retrofitting should cost something like 1000-2000$ max. Such an upgrade path would be welcomed by a lot of people because they would not need to dump their "old" car every so many years or sell for peanuts.

Such an approach would also be helpful for the environment as the number of new cars produced would decrease. In this scenario the only people who would be slightly unhappy would be the automakers. But I do not think their profit margins would decrease much because they probably depend more on the spare parts business, and an older car is likely to need more spare parts than a new one.

Overpopulation

The estimates vary from source to source, but there is generally an agreement that earth can not support more than 5 billion people, however most estimates fall between 1 and 3 billions. I put my own estimate at 1 billion.

How do I arrive at this 1 billion figure? For starters, I want everyone to have a good living standard and to have an amount of unemployment of no more than 5%; currently world wide unemployment is 30%, so based on unemployment alone, the number of people on planet earth should be less than 4.5 billions. Further more, not only do I want a very low rate of unemployment, but also I would like to eliminate meaningless jobs, these are easily more than 50% of the jobs in the market. Another 20% of the jobs can be eliminated due to a smaller market when humanity down sizes and also due to technical innovations.

So how will we get from almost 7 billion people to just 1 billion? Well, I doubt that any thing can be done about China in the short run, as it already has a one child per family law. As for India, I think a lot can be done; a combination of financial incentives, family planning programs, education, and a two child per family law might be able to slow down the population explosion. If this is successful, maybe 10 years later a one child per family law can be enacted.

As for the muselm world, the same tactics can be used as I suggested for India, however a big problem is the opposition of religious authorties to family planning and abortion. From an Islamic jurisprudence point of view, there is a loophole that can be exploited, exceptions and reverasl of fatwas can be done if the clerics are convinced that humanity is heading for distatser and that there is no otherway but to issue new fatwas that not only allow family planning but encourage it. Once this is done, the various governements can start a two child per family limit program, or financial incentives for people not to have more kids, or to have them later than sooner.

Similarly, in south america and other areas under the hold of the catholic church, the catholic church needs to see the light and reconsider it positions in view of the iminemnt threat. I think the pope is a reasonable person and someone might be able to talk the him out of his position.

Reducing the population of humans is not a hopeless case, at least a dozen countries with a good living standard are having their populations decrease(not on purpose,) so clearly it is doable.

So once the population starts to decrease, it would be a great opportunity to redraw the map of the world in an envirnemtally smart manner; most people would live in areas with moderate climates. To me it makes no sense that people live in countries were you need to have the AC on 24/7, or where you need to keep the heating on most of the year. The greatest hurdles are natinalism and the fact that people would not be happy about leaving their own country, just for envirnmental reasons.

Can Microsoft save the day? part 2

Previously I wondered if Microsoft would ever save the day for humanity by supporting none x86 CPU architectures, and today in a similar vein I will argue that it should include GPGPU support for acceleration of current/future applications and create some sort of longevity for computer owners.

Just a week after I wrote my "Can Microsoft save the day" post, this article was published on toms hardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-cuda-gpu,1954.html

The article is very interesting in that a) was skeptical of the claimed performance gains B) did not have high expectations c) the expectations were exceeded d) it showed that even with a crude quick test, that there is tons of juice to be milked from the GPU.

Basically, according to the article, in some cases making use of a mid range GPU for application accelartion can even beat an upgrade from a 2 core CPU to a 4 core CPU. Now what is more interesting is it that might be achieved with higher energy efficiency and performance per watt.

If this is implemented at the OS level, I see the possibility of saving of millions of Kilowatts per year. I can imagine a situation where a single or dual with a 30-45W TDP would be offloading all sorts of stuff to a 45 W midrange GPU and beating a 4 core 130 W CPU.

Then What?

I could not help but write this blog post despite it's political nature; the solution provided by the presumptive republican nominee senator John McCain for decreasing oil prices got me fuming on the inside.

McCain's solution for the short to medium term relief from high oil prices is to increase the supply side by drilling in Alaska and offshore while doing nothing on the demand side. This is a partially flawed proposal in several ways.

First of all, increasing the supply would shift the short and medium term focus away from renewable energy and improvements in efficiency and other related research. This will produce devastating results in the medium and long term.

Secondly, drilling in Alaska and off shore would almost surly harm the ecosystem, and drive many species extinct.

Finally, and this can not be stressed enough, this is only a short term solution, a quick fix if you will, that will last for the next 10-20years. Then what? What will happen when the oil dries up? It would seem that just like with social security, Iraq or the budget deficit, the modus operandi here is to leave the problem for the the next president or next generation to deal with.

A CRT monitor ban

The doom of incandescent lamps is almost certain, thanks to laws passed in various states and countries to prohibit their sale starting 2010-2012. Alas, no similar proposal is on the table for CRT monitors.

And while the long term demise of CRT monitors is all but assured, I think that legislation to ban these monitors by 2012-2014 should be put on the table for discussion in various countries as soon as possible.

Not only do CRTs consume three times the energy of comparable LCD monitors during operation, but they also consume 5-10 times more when they are idle. Additionally, the cost of the space that is required in industrial countries can be in the 100$ range per CRT monitor.

So if the demise of CRT is certain, why am I proposing an accelerated death sentence, why not let them die off "naturally"?

For two reasons, the first is because of the current state of affairs with regard to global warming and the second reason is that such a death sentence would sure drive the price of LCDs to more affordable levels.

What to read

In the not so distant future, I have no doubt that e-book readers will replace traditional books. Which is very good for the environment on several fronts, including less trees cut for paper making, less chemicals used for paper making, no ink used, less space required for books, no fuel required for shipping or distribution, etc.

However in the mean time the vast majority of us are still stuck with ink and paper books made in hard or soft cover. So what is my advise for "environmentally friendly" reading:

*Avoid hardcover books. These tend to weight 40-70% more than paperbacks, require more paper to produce, more energy to transport, more space to store, and are generally twice as expensive as their paperback counter parts.
*Buy a book with more pages, it will keep you entertained for longer, would require less trips to the library or the book store.
*Buy nonfiction, it takes longer to read.
*Get books from the library, and avoid owning books all together. This will come in handy on several fronts including space saving etc.
*Get as many books from the library as you can in one trip(assuming you read at home)
*Make a switch to e-books if you can.
*Give away or sell books that you do not want to keep.
*Buy used books.
*exchange books with friends.
*If you can read it, get the tinny pocket book edition that is around 2.5"x 4".

Now let me look in my crystal ball and tell you what I see; I see e-book readers starting to take off in about 3-5 years. This is assuming the same kind of price drop that most electronic gadgets follow.

Choosing a city to live in?

I guess most people do not take the environment as an important factor when they decide to move into a city. Some of the things they consider are night life, weather, friends, family, cost of living.

However, I think it is also important to take into consideration some environmental factors:

• Traffic. A city with too much traffic can not only waste 1000s of hrs of your lifetime, but also can be harmful for the environment, because cars consume fuel even when idle.
• Flat terrain. In a city with a flat terrain, it is possible to ride a bike. Not only is this good for the environment but also good for one's health and pocket. Also cars are more fuel efficient in flat terrains.
  
• Climate. A city with moderate climate will allow you to drive with the AC off during the summer. And would have minimal usage of both heating and cooling in your home or office.
• Building codes. A city with good building codes would help cut your electricity/heating bill.
• Public transportation. A city with good public transportation would save a lot of energy and would be very good for your pocket.

So I guess everyone living in Arizona and New Mexico would have to move out.

Environmentally Friendly Travel

The most environmentally friendly travel is no travel at all. However, this is not practical as people need to travel for work, for pleasure, to visit family and friends, or even to prevent burn out and depression( a form of travel for pleasure) and so on a so forth.

So what is my advise for environmentally friendly travel:

*Travel with an airline that is known to have the latest model planes, these tend to be more fuel efficient by 10-18%.
*Carry as little luggage as possible.
*Travel to closer destinations. For example, if you live in the east coast it makes more sense to travel to other places in the east coast instead of the west coast.
*Travel less frequently to further away destinations. Also try to do as many destinations in one trip as you can. For example, if you live on the east coast, it makes some sense to visit LA, SF and Seattle in one trip.
*Use a sail plane, hehe
*Use a "bullet" train, where available

This could be very problematic for people with the travel bug, but who ever said that one can have the cake and keep(eat) it. Some form of sacrifice is needed in the short to medium term to protect the longevity of the planet.

I am well aware of the fact that people actually, especially in America, need to travel more not less, and to further way places to learn about other people and other cultures. At this point in time, all I can provide are the suggestions I made above. I guess exploring the world for many people can wait for a few more years until there is an alternative fuel for planes and planes are more efficient.

Finally I suspect that if travel costs keep rising, that some social habits might change. People will visit parents and family in other states(countries) less frequently and will make more use of other distance technologies like voice and video chat. It is even possible that TG and Christmas will transform themselves from "family" events to friends events, who knows.

Cloths and the environment

What you wear and how much you wear can affect the environment.

This might come to some people as a surprise, but from a strictly environmental point of view, the less cloths that one wears the better. For instance, shorts are better than a pair of full length trousers; they require less materials, less energy to transport, take less space to store, require less packaging to wrap, and require less water and detergent to wash.

Also, the choice of materials for clothing can have an effect on the environment. Some materials(probably synthetic) require more energy to produce. Furthermore, some materials and certain colors require lower temperatures to wash, which is a good thing.

One last thing that I wanted to mention about cloths is disposable of torn or stained cloths, do not throw them away in the garbage, instead "recycle them" by giving them away to poor people, they can make use of them, even if they are stained or have a small tear.

Cup of coffee.

As I was drinking my cup of coffee, I remembered a few things that I did not mention in my cup of tea post.

For starters, there is the instant coffee vs. fresh brewed coffee question. Not only does fresh brewed coffee taste better, but from what I read, it would seem that the production of instant coffee is energy intensive. So unless you do not have access to a coffee maker, it might be better to use fresh brewed coffee.

Besides the need for a coffee maker and the extra 60 seconds it takes to prepare fresh brewed coffee, there is one additional down side, and that is the use of a filter paper. I would suggest that this be of the made from recycled materials variety. Also it might be a good idea to change the filter paper every other time if you are brewing twice within a short period.

One other issue that might affect the environment is decafination. Decafination as a process is very intense on energy usage, so unless you can not cut your coffee intake in the 1st place or you can not drink caffeine, for the sake of the environment, avoid decaffeinated coffee.

Finally, while I do to some degree hate coffee chains, they do actually make your favorite coffee available within a short distance; no need to drive for 10miles to get your favorite coffee.

Can Microsoft save the Day?

Previously I talked about the role of M$ in the x86 CPU mess. Today I am here to argue that M$ can atone for its "sins" and in a way help save the day for humanity.

It is a well known fact that an inferior product can become the world standard, despite it's inferiority. The reasons can vary from being first to market, superior marketing, stupid competition, deep pockets, etc. M$'s Windows can be a case in point.

Another more relevant case in point is the x86 CPU architecture; x86 is not the best CPU architecture to program for and neither is it the best in terms of performance per watt or energy efficiency. However almost all personal computers use it. Why? Because it is the only architecture that can run Windows XP and Vista.

If windows were to become CPU agnostics, I think that humanity would benefit on at least two fronts: cheaper computers, and better energy efficiency. If only 1/3rd of personal computers ran on none x86 CPUs, 13-36 million KWatts could be saved annually.

The problem with Tic Toc

Both Intel and AMD have decided separately that they would produce a new CPU architecture every 2years and that a process shrink of this architecture would take place one year after introduction in what is know as a Tic Tock strategy.

Their target is to increase or double performance with the same thermal envelop every two years or so. This is all fine and dandy if not for the fact that the TDP sealing "agreed" on by both Intel and AMD is around 135Watt.

If you look at the average mainstream CPU TDP in 2000, the max TDP was in the sub 30Watt range, compare this with today's 65Watts.

While the competition between Intel and AMD has produced magnificent increases in both performance and performance per watt, I think that both companies should aim to bring down the 135Watt TDP limit to 85-95Watts within the next 3 years, and to around 65-75 Watts within the the following two years, irrespective of what the enthusiasts want. Additionally, they should aim to bring down the TDP of the average mainstream desktop back down to it's pre 2001 levels of less than 30watts.

Of course an exception can be made in the cases of server and HPC applications that require the maximum amount of performance. IMHO, games should not qualify for this kind of thing.

One other party to blame for this mess is M$ and its OS design philosophy. M$ should make it a target for itself to have its latest OS version run on hardware that is at least 2-3 years old at the time of release. Such a move would prevent people from rushing to replace their hardware. And would allow CPU manufactures to focus on creating more elegant designs. This is very doable as most Linux distros run at close to half of the requirements of Vista.

The same goes for game developer's, they too can write their code in a way that makes better use of existing hardware. For example, support for Intel's SSE4 and AMD's SSE4a is still very limited, though these can in some cases double the performance.

Roll on Deodrant

This has been bothering me for almost a year, and it happens every day as I use my roll on deodorant .

You see, almost all liquid roll on deodorant comes in a 50ml size package and nothing else. I checked the bottle and found that you can actually put 55-60 mls in the current bottle. If you do such a thing ,the whole world can save 1300000 bottle every year. This would help the environment in many ways including less petroleum used and less energy required to produce it, etc.

In a similar vein, having a 75ml bottle in addition to the 50ml one is not only good from a marketing point of view(versioning,) but also from an environmental point of view. This 50% increase in the liquid volume would only require a 10-15% increase in the material used for the package. So the savings in the long run would be even more at around 26000000 million plastic bottles per year.

This second proposal applies to both the made from glass deodorant packages as well as the plastic one.

Mobil CPUs

At the time when the Pentium 4, based on the netburst microarchitecture was Intel's fastest and hottest chip, many smart Intel fans decided to build a desktop system using Intel's Pentium M CPU which was designed for use in laptops.

However, with the advent of Intel's Core micro architecture this practice was completely abandoned, due to two factors, socket compatibility and the fact that the Core microarchitecture solved many of the problems inherent in the P4 design including a very high TDP.

In a previous post, I said that both Intel and AMD should bring down the max TDP to below 100 watts, and the TDP of the average desktop to it's Sub 30 watts level of 2001 and before. Then it dawned on me, that notebooks, all along, had a TPD average of 25-30watts.

So why not use these mobil CPUs in a Desktop, this would save hundred of millions of Watts per year and would result in a (near) silent PC.

My cup of tea.

I must confess, tea is not my cup of tea, coffee is. But I am not here to promote tea(s) over coffee or vise versa. I am here to point out some of the environmental factors that might be affected when drinking coffee.

The first factor, is the where does your coffee from question? There are many places that have really good coffee, including south America, Africa and Arabia. It makes a lot sense to chose a coffee that is grown closer to your country. Yes this does produce a small decrease in international trade but it does reduce transportation costs and the fuel consumed in the transportation process.

Another factor is the roasting process. I love both dark roast and medium roast coffees. However, it is a proven fact that at least in the US most coffee is medium roasted. In any case, a darker roast does consume more energy, so if you can try to purchase a medium roast.

A third area where one can help the environment is terms of what you add to your coffee. This can be one of those "two birds and one stone" situations that I so love to document in my other blog. By adding less sugar, not only are you helping the environment, but also decreasing your chances of diabetes and other diseases related to sugar consumption. Also, if you can take your coffee black, all the better as milk/cream production has a somewhat high global warming potential.

Finally, and this has to do with time, if you have the time, sit at the cafe and drink the coffee in a mug, glass, or a none plastic cup. Every single day, 100s of millions of cups are thrown in the trash after usage and only a small percentage is recycled.

Hair and The Envirnoment

While for guys this a somewhat straight forward issue because long hair is not currently the fashion of the day, it is a totally different issue for women.

Yes short hair is more common among women today than it was 20 or 30years ago. However, this is the case largely because of stylistic and practical choices, not a conscious environmental choice.

So how does shorter hair help the environment? Let us do a rough sample calculation, let us say that a half length hair requires 1/3rd less shampoo than full length hair, this means the amount of shampoo that gets used or dumped in the sewers every year would be reduced by 624375ltrs(assuming 14 x 250ml bottles of shampoo per year, and half a billion women.)

The other important part, and this is helpful on the global warming front in terms of CO2 emissions, is in the packaging used, which is usually made from HDPE or other some other plastic materials. Using the same calculation from above, 2310000 bottles of shampoo can be saved per year.

A third area where shorter hair my contribute to energy saving is the fact that it takes less time to wash shorter hair, meaning less hot water used and in turn less energy consumed.

A final area where shorter hair might help the environment is in the fact that shorter hair requires less energy for drying.

These calculations do not take into consideration the fact that many women already have short hair, many woman are happy with their long(er) hair, or the fact that long can be advantageous in cold weather.