I chatted with Steve Lohr of the NY Times yesterday about the implications of the last six decades of progress in computing efficiency, and his blog today reflects our conversation nicely. He also talked about my new book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, which will be
Read moreLast Halloween (October 31, 2011) I gave a talk on the long-term trends in the efficiency of computing at Stanford, and I’m finally getting around to posting the link. On a related note, the trends I talk about in the Stanford talk were listed as #5 in the Popular
Read moreThe EPA today announced stricter rules on mercury emissions from power plants, which is an important development for those interested in greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because many of the older coal plants have no pollution controls and have social costs much higher than the value of the electricity they
Read moreMy book, Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, will be released on February 15, 2012. In Chapter 6, I discuss the power of mobile information and communication technology, and I reproduce that section below. The Power of Mobile ICT The performance of electronic computers has shown remarkable
Read moreSteve Lohr wrote a great article for the NY Times today titled “The Internet Gets Physical”, where he explores what he thinks is the next big thing (and I think he’s right). The article states: “…the protean Internet technologies of computing and communications are rapidly spreading beyond the lucrative
Read moreClimate Progress points to a Yale University study on adoption of photovoltaics (PVs) in residences, in which the time lag between installations falls as the number of installations increases. The authors call this a “peer” effect, in which a greater concentration of PV panels makes it even more likely that
Read moreThe NY Times.com article yesterday on the deluge of data from DNA sequencing raised a a couple of interesting issues for me. Here’s one important item I noticed: “The cost of sequencing a human genome — all three billion bases of DNA in a set of human chromosomes — plunged
Read moreThe Canadian Broadcasting Company just posted my interview for their “Spark” radio show, which is “an ongoing conversation about technology and culture, hosted by Nora Young”. It talks about our work on trends in the energy efficiency of computing over the past six decades, which I wrote about here and
Read moreThis interview followed a news piece reporting on why many companies are considering building data centers in Colorado Springs. The interviewer asked some good questions and the discussion illuminates some important aspects of data centers and electricity use. It’s a good non-technical introduction to these issues. Listen to it
Read moreAn article on our computing efficiency trends paper just came out in Technology Review today at noon ET. Here’s the headline, subhead, and first couple of paragraphs: “A New and Improved Moore’s Law: Under "Koomey’s law,” it’s efficiency, not power, that doubles every year and
Read moreMy interview on Intel’s Chip Chat was just posted. It’s about 7 minutes long, and we talked about my recent study on electricity used by data centers. I think it’s a good introduction to the topic, so please forward to interested colleagues as you see fit. Here’
Read moreThis week Google announced more details on their efficiency, electricity use, and carbon emissions. This is a big deal because it will give much of the rest of the industry efficiency targets to which they can aspire. Most of the other cloud computing companies have figured out clever tricks to
Read moreVivek Kundra, formerly the Chief Information Officer in the Obama Administration, argued today in a NYT op-ed that the economic benefits of cloud computing for government agencies will encourage more and more of them to adopt this innovation instead of running their own IT facilities (except in special cases). As
Read moreTPM DC reports on a CBS news study that made the following claims: “The debt was $10.626 trillion on the day Mr. Obama took office. The latest calculation from Treasury shows the debt has now hit $14.639 trillion. It’s the most rapid increase in the debt under
Read moreThis is an outrage to data lovers everywhere: The Statistical Abstract of the US (as well as other compendia of statistics created by the census department) is on the chopping block and will be eliminated after the 2012 edition is published. Robert J. Samuelson, economics columnist for the Washington Post,
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