Communications of the ACM
Datacenters Use Less Energy Than You Think
A recent analysis found that global datacenter energy consumption has not spiked over the last decade, but remained relatively flat.
Credit: David Lohner
An analysis by researchers at Northwestern University, the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Koomey Analytics determined that global datacenter energy consumption remained relatively flat across the last decade.
Previous analyses forecast rapid energy consumption growth in sync with increasing demands for data, but the new model also accounted for industrial efficiency advances by factoring in datacenter equipment stocks, efficiency trends, and market structure.
Said Northwestern’s Eric Masanet, who led the study, “We think there is enough remaining efficiency potential to last several more years. But ever-growing demand for data means that everyone — including policy makers, data center operators, equipment manufacturers and data consumers — must intensify efforts to avoid a possible sharp rise in energy use later this decade.”
From Northwestern Now
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Abstracts Copyright © 2020 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA
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