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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: Grid computing vs energy conservation |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 38
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I'm just going to crawl back into my hole. I thought the numbers looked too good to be true. The figures are for total US usage - dvfvs = me.
----------------------------------------Let's try this guy's stats instead PC electricity usage Assuming 250 watts per hour that would be 2,190 kwhours per year. So, you'd have to walk over 4,000 miles in place of driving to balance out your carbon foot print. I really should learn to let the meds kick in before I post. Anyway, that's a lot of carbon so it makes it a tough call. To bad there aren't any alternate energy projects that require grid computing. That might help to balance things out.   |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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One other note - if the new figures are correct (I'm still red from the last faux pas) then if I run 6 computers 24/7/365 then I'm using 13,140 (13.140) kilowatt hours per year. Since the marginal rate (rate for each additional unit) for 1 kw hour of electricity from my utility is $0.17/kw hour, that means that my donation to WCG on an annual basis is $2,234 (2.234) or nearly $200 per month.
----------------------------------------Maybe I could get an IBM t-shirt or something? |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
This is why WCG deliberately don't ask people to keep their computers on 24/7. Still, that's not going to stop us crunching ;-)
And I think you can offset the carbon easily enough by getting the train instead of flying, or by using public transport to commute, or by carpooling, or by switching off the lights. Actually, you'll save far more that way than WCG could ever use. |
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JmBoullier
Former Community Advisor Normandy - France Joined: Jan 26, 2007 Post Count: 3716 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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JmBoullier, that's freaky - we picked the same example. So many people on either side of the Channel think that British and French people are much different... Not that much apparently!  I should learn to type faster. More probably you should have started earlier. Because I have not been that fast on this one. I was so amazed that I have read twilyth at least three times to be sure I was reading correctly. Then I triple checked my reply and the computations to not make another error. Cheers all. Jean. PS: I am glad I am leaving in France. Electricity here is about 92 % carbon-free. That helps me to feel less guilty crunching 24/7/365. And with only one machine. ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by JmBoullier at Aug 16, 2007 9:11:45 PM] |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Jm - I'm really sorry about that. I must have assumed that the search results were what I wanted rather than checking to make sure that they were. Also, I never seen the abbreviation TWh (terawatt hour) before. I was just sloppy.
----------------------------------------I wanted to do the research though because I've been curious for quite some time about how much energy all my machines use. So I think I finally got it right with the second post. Even so, the 250 watt figure is still a guestimate. I have a kill-a-watt meter and I've been meaning to hook it up to a machine to see what result I get. I've already turned it loose on the dehumidifier. I just have to put it someplace where I'll see it and remember to hook it up next time I reboot. I'll be sure to report back - assuming people are interested. Right now my gut feeling is that 250 is a little low. I know that one machine with a 500 watt power supply was unstable with more than 4 internal SATA drives connected to it. I can't be sure that I was overloading the power supply but it was a little bit of a coincidence. On the other hand, most of the machines have LCD monitors (or share one with a KVM switcher) and one computer is a laptop. It's hard to believe that the computers contribute $200 to my monthly bill. |
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olympic
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jun 12, 2005 Post Count: 156 Status: Offline |
I hooked up a Kill-a-Watt to my main computer and jotted down some numbers. The rig consist of:
----------------------------------------24" wide-screen LCD QX6700 3.5GHz Water cooling Atleast 12 fans 3 HDD's BFG 8800GTX 2 PCI devices Power useage: CPU idle, monitor off: 306w CPU idle, monitor on: 374w Monitor on, CPU loaded with BOINC: 481w Monitor on, CPU loaded with BOINC, GPU running 3DMark05: 533w So my computer uses 107w more power when the CPU is loaded compared to running idle. The equivalent of 1 light bulb for 14GHz of processing power. The average single or dual core computer running at stock speed would use much less than that. Of course the most environmentally friendly thing to do would be for everyone to turn their computer off when not in use. But we all know that doesn't happen or it's not feasible. That's where grid computing comes in. A computer sitting idle is wasting 2 resources, electricity and CPU processing time. Atleast grid computing makes use of one of them(CPU time) at a very small cost of the other(electricity). Another argument one could use is that energy is still relatively cheap and plentiful. In the future, using large amounts of energy to crunch for cures may be cost prohibitive. We'll just have to hope that CPU's continue to become more energy efficient at an equal pace so we can continue with this worthwhile effort.  |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Excellent info!!!!
----------------------------------------I'm going to find my kill-a-watt as soon as I post this. I don't think that single and dual cores are that much more efficient though - but we'll see. I'll run it first on my fastest dual core with 4 7200rpm drives. Thanks again. |
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olympic
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jun 12, 2005 Post Count: 156 Status: Offline |
Here's another one:
----------------------------------------AMD Opteron 165 (dual core) 2.7GHz air cooled onboard video 4 fans 1HDD idle: 130w load: 202w This one kind of surprised me with a 72w rise in power usage, I was expecting a little less. But it just goes to show how improvements in CPU design can squeeze out more performance per watt. The QX6700 uses 50% more power than the Opteron, idle vs load, but it has several times the processing power. |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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I just realized that the qx6700 is the 2.6ghz Intel quad core - you lucky dog.
----------------------------------------If you feel like it , could you post your bios tweaks and temperature readings for the chip and m/b? Maybe in a new thread? I'd be very interested. I'm very surprised at the difference in power used. I found my kill-a-watt meter and will hook it up next reboot - probably tomorrow. If anyone is interested, a 45 pint (maybe 60 pint - not sure) dehumidifier uses at least 750 watts. It jumps around quite a bit but seems to hover in the 780's or 790's. I have the water outlet empty into a huge plastic bin. Inside is a submersible sump pump which pumps most of the water to the basement sump hole. Once the stream is started, the rest of the water is siphoned out - since the sump hole is lower - so the bin is almost completely emptied on each cycle. It's kludgy, but connecting a drainage hose directly never worked on this particular unit, so I had to come up with something else. |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
IBM was bitten by the energy cost bug, so they're replacing an army of servers with 30 mainframes estimating savings of 80% just on the power bill. Soon BOINC will have features to allow the true 'idle crunching' objective. Seen in in places as a requested feature. Picture, looking at that job that has an 1:30 to go but you want to go home or to bed. You want to let it finish and than go into power down or hibernate.... it's coming.... i see a few support posts on the event horizon.
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WCG
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