A collection of 12 posts
The modern data center lies at the heart of today’s digital global economy, performing computing tasks like e-commerce, communications, search, financial modeling, and artificial intelligence (AI). Data centers undergo constant change, both in the workloads they run 24x7 and the hardware that runs those applications. Lack of adequate
Read moreOur new article in Joule on data needs for understanding AI electricity use came out online today in Joule (link will be good until October 8, 2024). Here’s the summary section: As the famous quote from George Box goes, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Bottom-up
Read moreMy friend and colleague Danny Cullenward and I were on KQED Forum this morning, talking about the environmental impacts of our digital lives. Lesley McClurg was the host. You shouldn’t worry at all about your digital footprint, as we discussed in the show. It’s small and constantly improving,
Read moreThe frenzy over new projections of electricity growth continues to escalate. This excellent episode of the Energy Transition Show is the best counterweight to that crisis mentality that I’ve found. The show notes themselves are extensive for those who want to dig in further. Short summary: There are many
Read moreI worked with a stellar team of the world’s top experts on computing’s effect on energy and emissions to craft this commentary for Nature, which came out today (April 22, 2024): Luers, Amy, Jonathan Koomey, Eric Masanet, Owen Gaffney, Felix Creutzig, Juan Lavista Ferres, and Eric Horvitz. 2024.
Read moreOur article on global data center electricity use is out today (February 28, 2020) in Science Magazine as a Policy Forum article. The intro of the article gives context: 123556 Key findings: • Total global data center electricity use increased by only 6% from 2010 to 2018, even as the number
Read moreOne of the most surprising things about the data center industry is how cavalier it is about the number of servers sitting around using electricity but doing nothing. We call such servers “comatose”, or more colorfully, “zombies”. In 2015 we did our first study of this issue using granular analysis
Read moreCern datacenter Photo credit: By Hugovanmeijeren (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons I’ve been struggling for years to convince executives in large enterprises to fix the incentive, reporting, and other structural problems in data centers. The folks
Read morejgkoomey: Cern datacenter Photo credit: By Hugovanmeijeren (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons I’ve been struggling for years to convince executives in large enterprises to fix the incentive, reporting, and other structural problems in data centers. The
Read morePhoto credit: Jonathan Koomey, taken at Stanford University, October 14, 2015. Data Center Knowledge published my essay today titled “The three pillars of modern data center operations”. Here the intro: Modern enterprise data centers are some of the most technically sophisticated business activities on earth. Ironically enough, they are also
Read moreImage: Critical data centre at University of Hertford. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Unported 3.0 license. The Wall Street Journal today has an article by Bob McMillan highlighting my work with Anthesis and TSO Logic on zombie servers (those that are using electricity but delivering no
Read moreI’ve been working with Jon Taylor of Anthesis Group and Aaron Rallo of TSO Logic to compile data on servers in enterprises that are using electricity but generating no useful computing output (we call these comatose servers). Until now, it has been difficult to compile data on idle servers
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