Energy Efficiency

Developers need metrics that are consistent and easy to optimize, but carbon intensity varies in time and space. So when is it a useful metric for developers to consider?

Firefox 104 introduces power consumption measurement in the profiler. What does this mean for analyzing website energy consumption?

Which languages are the fastest and most energy efficient? The simple answer is: C, C++, Rust. The accurate answer is: it depends.

Is it better to replace powerful developer laptops with cloud dev environments? What is the carbon cost of my software development – builds, tests, deploys, code hosting, dev environments?

Is cryptocurrency / Bitcoin bad for the environment? In 2019 crypto consumed 70-90 TWh of electricity globally, with 60-70 TWh of that from Bitcoin mining. What that means for carbon emissions depends on where the mining happens.

The ultimate goal is a reduction in emissions, but we can’t analyze improvements without reporting energy per unit of work done.

Sustainable computing concerns the consumption of computing resources in a way that means such usage has a net zero impact on the environment.

What will drive computer performance after Moore’s law? Will programmers need to focus on performance or can ARM chips and the cloud save us?

As more applications are run through a web browser, even that is beginning to be streamed from the cloud. Is that the best use of our now highly efficient computers? How energy efficient is application streaming?

My notes on the paper: Syed et al (2021) An Analysis of Renewable Energy Usage by Mobile Data Network Operators. Sustainability. 13 (4), 1886.