While I see the desperate need for more renewable energy farms built to replace western civilization's reliance on fossil fuels, I also see some computing circles think "if its renewable I can use as much energy as I want!" I strongly disagree with this notion!
As we rightly move more of our energy needs to electricity, the grid will need to grow. But the more we can minimize this the sooner we can get off fossil fuels.
Unfortunately the computing industry likes to impress...
1/2?
@alcinnz I think the 'can use lots of energy' will be a real phase, but doing it too early is bad.
Also, if your way to use excess energy can't be turned on and off dynamically (when green energy is creating a surplus) then it is never going to be good.
@alcinnz So if you want to claim your LLM's spending of energy is green, then the users need to accept that a reply might take ~36 hours to occur.
@alcinnz Or at least with enough latency for the provider to have spun up the service somewhere that has excess power right now. Which is probably a realistic way to do such things
Once we are actually in that all green energy future.
@LovesTha Yeah, that's an approach!
I still wish it wasn't such a struggle to get innovative software optimizations funded...
As can be seen by my threads over the past several days... We are actively learning how to make software more efficient! Including in regards to novel computer-graphics tech.
As a trained computer scientist I enjoy learning about this!
But this research goes largely unused because investors are impressed by how much compute we can waste rather than how much compute we can save.
Frustrates me...
P.S. I'm in a mostly hydro-powered nation. Which opposes nuclear, without being held back.
2/2!
@alcinnz Wait, efficient graphics?
@hackillu Well I'm not clear whether the tech I had in mind qualifies as more efficient graphics, it certainly uses a lot of Graphics RAM!
What I'm saying is that Gaussian Splatting has been getting more efficient over time.
I ended that thread fearing that the RAM shortage may be holding back further developments there.
@alcinnz I wonder if a 1GHz 1GB 1 core ARM computer without a GPU and only a graphics adapter could do all the modern stuff including YouTube at 1080p.
@hackillu I have thought through this somewhat! Though I was saying "RISC V" not "ARM".
I wouldn't want to do any 3D gaming on such a machine, video playback would require decent external-storage or streaming, & a framebuffer would really eat into that 1GB but... Otherwise that should be *just* enough for unassisted graphics!
@alcinnz
> But this research goes largely unused because investors are impressed by how much compute we can waste rather than how much compute we can save.
Yes, unfortunately, they are always asking for the next snake oil thing, and our industry is always here to provide it.
On this note: I can also complain about 20th-century urban design! I gather its particularly bad in North America, but I'm not proud of NZ either in this regard.
When our cities are built under the assumption that we're all driving cars everywhere, it can be difficult to do anything but. Redesigning our cities to move people rather than cars... Can go a long ways towards reducing our energy needs!
Btw: I don't drive. I like bussing & walking.
3/2!
At the very least, reducing one’s energy use until renewable is so cheap that all energy use is renewable
(There’s a consumer-goods habit of believing that buying something will make it mass-produced and therefore cheaper. Very convenient for our consumerist training.
It’s even true for some parts of the renewable energy system… but not all. Maybe none if the price is denominated in ecosystem boundaries and not in cash.
You know all this! I’m reminding myself.)
