THE COMPUTER EFFICIENCY TREADMILL
I didn't feel like watching a movie tonight, but neither like doing
anything productive. I felt like writing a phlog post, but I don't
really have much to say, and Aussies.space isn't back to accepting
my SFTP log-in yet either. But as you've observed by now I decided
to yabber away at you anyway.
I'm listening to The Best of Ravel on my stereo. I sorted out my
cassette tape collection last weekend - like so many things it's
mainly made up from the two collections of my grandparents,
although one of those is actually mostly copies of national anthems
for reasons I won't go into. I have picked up some classical tape
sets at op-shops myself as well. Then on Sunday I went to a
hamfest, the first I've been to since 2019, and failed to find much
of the electronics stuff on my list of stuff to look out for (I
think what's left on there has become a list of electronic things
that don't show up very much at hamfests). But instead I came back
with a bootload of IT gear that was too cheap to turn down. There's
something quite impressive about suddenly having 16TB of storage
ready to plug into my network, not to mention the all the other
former contents of someone's old server cabinet, but I don't really
have a use for it so it's destined for Ebay. The server itself, and
UPS, are going to be tricky though because they're too heavy to
post. But as I got the lot for only $150, it's not such a worry if
I can't shift everything quickly. :)
Of course I have been thinking again about keeping it all to run my
big website idea, but then that brings me back to the first server
I bought as a teenager. It was an old HP ML370 G3 that was being
sold for under $100 because it was way out of date. I had an idea
for using it as part of one of my first business ventures, which in
typical fashion didn't attract any customers and never went
anywhere. I did have good fun setting it up with Linux, while at
the same time being deafened by its fans and probably running up my
mother's electricity bill. In a practical sense its full-height
rack-mount case was really most useful as a sort of low table to
put things on next to where I sat at my PC. Along with the
relatively saleable server, I also got an older HP G6 at the
hamfest, so it's becoming a collection.
I wonder how the performance of that HP G3 server of mine would
compare to modern SBCs such as the Banana Pi BPI-R3, which has a
24W power supply rating rather than 800W* (
https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R3 )? What do regular
offices (I think the stuff I just bought came from a truck hire
business) really do with computers now that they didn't do in 2003
(roughtly when my HP G3 server was introduced), and which
conceptually forbids continuing to run computers with equivalent
processing/storage capability that are now vastly cheaper and lower
power? I know there are practical issues with software support and
the the Banana Pi boards aren't designed for server-like
reliability, but in theory all the technology is there, it just
hasn't been adopted because it's not the direction that IT hardware
and software manufacturers want things to go. The endless upgrade
cycle continues.
Then there's the fact that everyone carries around battery powered
computers in their pockets with better specs than an office PC from
2003, yet still has fast i7 or whatever PCs on their desks at work,
probably to do the same things that they would have done with them
in 2003. Or if they use thin clients, then new thin client models
are actually as powerful as a computer from 2003 themselves!
Anyway it seems funny how this is so overlooked while there's so
much focus on stuff like LED lighting, office buildings designed
for efficient climate control, and so on. Old-fashioned climate
control and lighting would chew through a lot more power than the
server room in many workplaces, but I doubt that people think
there's an option for more efficient computer use to compare with
those things in the first place. Or if there isn't, it's only
because software developers have needlessly forced the issue
through the inefficiency of their own products.
Or maybe I'm just annoyed that I've got all this cool server gear
but I don't want to run it myself because _I_ care too much about
the power consumption. I don't know. But maybe when Moore's law
completely wears out things will start going down the efficiency
route because computer companies won't have anything else new to
offer.
- The Free Thinker
* While playing around with the stuff later, I found that the UPS
claims that the server only draws about 120VA at idle, which is
actually pretty good with 5xHDDs, 2xSSDs, 2xCPUs, and 112GB RAM
(I'm unsure about the accuracy of the UPS's measurements though).
Still, it's a long ahead of the power consumption for modern
SBCs now offering about the average performance of such servers
from the early 2000s.
