Cloud computing "steals" huge energy

Zhang, the former director of the National Energy Bureau, said in the first public that the current very popular cloud computing model is a high-energy project. It is not difficult to imagine that in the "cloud" era, which is opened by computer search engines, "cloud" represents speed and massive amounts of data and information. The rapid expansion of the "cloud" is soaking up huge energy every day. So where does this energy come from? Perhaps an old geological expert accidentally replied to this question, he said: "All things, including the clouds in the sky, to undertake the earth, otherwise it will become a dead cloud." ”

"Cloud" can not be separated from electricity

Recently, the reporter learned from the relevant departments, Tencent is Chongqing's two rivers new area to build cloud computing center, the center of the future server will reach 300,000 units, the scale will exceed its cloud computing center in Tianjin. As a milestone, Chongqing will build a "cloud zone" in the future. 2 million-3 million of the 10 million servers outsourced to Asia and Europe will be placed in Chongqing. It is also reported that Quanzhou in the effort to build the Hercynian cloud computing industry Park.

Relevant reports indicate that as of December 2011, the Cloud Computing Center, which was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology, has been built or is being built, which include Shenzhen, Changsha, Tianjin and Jinan. The Shanghai Supercomputing Center, previously built in 2000, has also begun to deploy the dawning supercomputer.

Visible, "cloud" has settled in the land of China. Zhang Yuhiu, a technology executive at Microsoft's Greater China region, likens the application of cloud computing to People's lives: "The future of ordinary people using cloud computing services is as convenient as using tap water at home: just unscrew the ' faucet ' in cloud computing, what cloud computing services are needed, choose according to their needs, and pay only for the part they use. ”

No one dares to underestimate these "clouds". Unlike the clouds in the sky, "cloud computing" for energy throughput and consumption to an alarming degree every day: The Cloud in Chongqing is still under construction, for example, assuming that the future outsourcing servers in Europe and the United States will reach 3 million units, according to the industry's usual estimate standard, The power of each server is roughly 400W (the power consumption required to dissipate heat) as the basis for calculation, That is to say, each cloud computing server consumes 0.4 degrees (kwh) per hour, 24 hours a day, 9.6 degrees a day, and 3 million cloud computing servers with a power consumption of 28.8 million degrees, which consumes more than 10 billion kwh of electricity a year.

It can be seen that the energy consumed by cloud computing comes entirely from coal, electricity, wind power, solar power and so on. What we can understand is that the "atmosphere" that the old geologist refers to is the energy that these Earth mothers give.

China Cloud computing Experts committee member Peng to reporters calculate, "single from the energy aspect, we have done a statistic, a cloud computing server probably consumes 5000 yuan of electricity bill, if constructs a 1 million machine cloud computing Center, the electricity bill will be 5 billion yuan, This is a big problem in the energy-intensive China. ”

Zhang, the former director of the National Energy Bureau, said the energy consumption data of China Unicom's data center showed that the center consumes 9.9 billion-kilowatt times a year. With China's current coal efficiency, 920,000 tonnes of coal will be needed to provide enough power for China Unicom's data center to consume energy. Corresponding to China Unicom, the Chinese Telecom Data Center in the annual consumption of 11.2 Billion-kilowatt, total annual consumption of 1.0295 million tons of coal.

According to the University of Bristol scientists, the current cloud computing is mainly represented by cloud media services, each day of cloud computing needs 3200 megabytes (MB), 4 watts per megabyte of power consumption, the global cloud computing power 1.175 trillion watts per day, the equivalent of 100 Beijing.

The cloud is eating carbon.

When people sit in a spacious office building and enjoy the Low-carbon office of a search engine, it may not be possible to imagine that the low carbon footprint of a modern office environment is actually at the expense of more coal burning. According to Zhang's statistics, in 2011 China's electricity structure, the proportion of thermal power generation still reached 83%, a total of 9.8 billion tons of coal burning. It can be seen that most of the power consumption of cloud computing is still generated by the traditional coal combustion thermal power supply.

We still take Google as an example to see how much energy the process needs to consume. According to Gart-ner, an American IT industry research firm, Google's data center has nearly 1 million servers, each of which consumes about 1000 watts of electricity per hour. In other words, Google's search engine consumes 1 million-kilowatt of its electricity per hour. The search engine generates nearly 10 million search results per hour, and each search consumes energy that allows a 100 watt bulb to work for an hour.

Such a result, I believe many people have not heard. In the United States, for example, the average American searches 1.5 times a day. According to the US National Environmental Protection Agency, data centers account for 1.5% of U.S. energy consumption. If the average American searches hundreds of times a day, what will happen to this percentage? How much energy will be consumed if 6 billion people worldwide use the search service?

Cloud computing will be the future of the information architecture, but the goal is to achieve it at the expense of a lot of carbon emissions, the future waiting for us may be a huge "carbon dioxide cloud." In the future to truly realize the Low-carbon cloud computing office, a long shoulder. Greenpeace has even blamed Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Apple for thinking that the IT giants are heavily reliant on coal-powered and are behind the warming.

"Cloud" looks forward to healthy new energy

Low-carbon cloud computing is not far away, as new energy is being used heavily in power generation. In other words, in the next twenty or thirty years, the improvement of the atmosphere will directly affect the health and sustainable development of cloud computing. Francois Ajenstat, senior director of the Microsoft Environmental Sustainability Division, made a public response to Greenpeace's report: Data centers and cloud computing services can help people reduce their impact on the environment. For example, unified communications technology can reduce people's travel, the use of Home energy management Services can help users reduce resource consumption, such as Microsoft Hohm. Through its actions, Microsoft is maximizing energy efficiency and supporting environmental sustainability through innovation. Our data centers in Quincy and Washington have used hydropower as a major source of energy to reduce carbon emissions. In Dublin and Ireland, we use external natural cold air to regulate the temperature of the data center, which is 50% energy saving.

In China, Southern power Grid Company's former deputy general manager Zhou Jitai recently said, will gradually reduce the proportion of thermal firepower, in 2020, thermal capacity will be reduced from the current 64.8% to 44.7%. In addition, Du, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the proportion of coal in total energy should gradually decline. "Coal is China's overwhelming leading energy, contribution is very large, but relatively extensive, inefficient, pollution, insecurity, if done well, by 2050 now 70% of the proportion may be under 40%, the absolute amount of coal consumption in the last ten or twenty years will still increase." Peaking in about 2030, the total energy added will be replenished by clean energy. ”

In addition, in the current situation where coal electricity still dominates, the efficient use of surplus power can not only improve the efficiency of coal-electricity use, but also provide a reliable power guarantee for cloud computing and reduce coal consumption effectively. In the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, for example, there are nearly 6 months of frost every year, and 1300多万千瓦 ' nest electricity ' is wasted. Cloud Computing Center "take electricity on the spot", let Inner Mongolia's surplus power to find an optimal way out, realize the best quality and efficient use, but also save the long-distance transmission and bring the power loss, is a typical win, for the country to save a lot of power resources. The journalist counted the accounts, such a data center, a year of demand for about 3 Billion-kilowatt, and according to media reports, the amount of "nest electricity" in Inner Mongolia is about 70 Billion-kilowatt, if coupled with several other companies such as China Mobile Investment data center, it can solve more than 20% of the "nest electricity."

Cloud computing will be the future of the information architecture, but the goal is to achieve it at the expense of a lot of carbon emissions, the future waiting for us may be a huge "carbon dioxide cloud"

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)