Re: Carbon Efficiency of Semantic Web and Linked Data Queries

I think those latter three G-locations have abundant nuke power from the
‘local’ grid; whole different set of issues there;-)

On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 12:06 PM Marco Neumann <marco.neumann@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I like the way Google is going almost carbon neutral here in Hamina
> Finland by way of using cold seawater to cool systems. I hope they will
> also hook up the onsite sauna* to use excess HPC heat soon ;)
>
> I am still surprised they continue to run supercomputer clusters in places
> like Texas (Frontera), Tennessee (Summit) and Livermore, CA (Sierra)
>
>
> https://medium.com/arcticstartup-news/saunas-to-use-data-centres-excess-heat-c552e70946b
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 2:17 PM David McDonell <david@iconicloud.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Thought this might be of relevance to the discussion, re global data
>> infrastructures (from my LinkedIn feed):
>>
>>
>> https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/06/the-world-s-most-creative-data-centers-infographic.html
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 6:34 AM Marco Neumann <marco.neumann@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> While we in the Semantic Web / Linked Data community don't seem to fall
>>> into the category of worst offenders in energy consumption, (I am just
>>> looking at the forecast and data traffic breakdown on the internet[1] and
>>> the remarks made by the data-centre expert in Cheltenham[2] that digital
>>> mobile camera phone sobriety could reduce data traffic in Europe by 40%
>>> immediately) current federated SPARQL queries seem to be less efficient
>>> than one would have hoped for 20 years ago.[3] You are probably doing more
>>> for your carbon footprint by turning off your monitor completely rather
>>> than leaving it in stand-by mode [4] than by optimizing your federated
>>> SPARQL queries or going way of Solid Pods. It seems to be still difficult
>>> to estimate the number of deployed SPARQL solutions in industry and their
>>> footprint in terms of resource allocation. One of the best known projects
>>> but still heavily centralized SPARQL services the wikidata WDQS has a
>>> rather modest footprint if you go by the numbers published recently [5]..
>>>
>>> Still and since this is my subject interest here the support and
>>> implementation for federated SPARQL query solutions is surprisingly
>>> underdeveloped [3] . Looking forward to learn more about updates here from
>>> QuWeDa 2019 [6]
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html
>>> [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y
>>> [3] https://svn.aksw.org/papers/2017/FedEval-summary/public.pdf
>>> [4]
>>> https://www.energuide.be/en/questions-answers/how-much-power-does-a-computer-use-and-how-much-co2-does-that-represent/54/
>>> [5]
>>> https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata_query_service/ScalingStrategy
>>> [6] https://sites.google.com/site/quweda2019/home
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 8:31 PM Zachary Whitley <
>>> zachary.whitley@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I wanted to add some perspective. The principal components of aluminum
>>>> refining are electricity and carbon and takes a significant amount of
>>>> electricity and produces large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Most of the
>>>> electricity consumed is produced by coal. Yes, we should be concerned about
>>>> energy consumption for computing but I wouldn't be surprised if you would
>>>> save more electricity and produce fewer greenhouse gasses by *expending*
>>>> computing resources on making aluminum production and recycling more
>>>> efficient.
>>>>
>>>> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting
>>>> [2]
>>>> http://www.world-aluminium.org/statistics/primary-aluminium-smelting-power-consumption/#histogram
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 3:09 PM Steffen Staab <staab@uni-koblenz.de>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I don’t believe that a case can be made for physically decentrallized
>>>>> p2p being more energy efficient.
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. Compute centers can be placed where energy is cheap and cooling
>>>>> inexpensive.
>>>>> Indeed this has been done a lot.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. Cooling reduces energy needs. Generated warmth could even be
>>>>> re-used. Not thinkable for a DSL-box.
>>>>>
>>>>> 3. Modern CPUs use less energy when unused. There is less need to
>>>>> re-use unnecessary compute cycles
>>>>> in DSL boxes (well, I guess these modern CPUs are only in laptops so
>>>>> far - still).
>>>>>
>>>>> 4. decentralized energy production is good. Globally, however, people
>>>>> increasingly live in cities. This is not where most
>>>>> energy is or will be produced (though it can become more than today).
>>>>>
>>>>> For sure, there is a lot of fruitful, middle ground between going for
>>>>> DSL boxes vs all using the same centralized compute center.
>>>>> I don’t believe in the extremely decentralized scenarios very much.
>>>>>
>>>>> Steffen
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Am 17.06.2019 um 17:38 schrieb Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net>:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 17 Jun 2019, at 01:14, Marco Neumann <marco.neumann@gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I would agree Henry. I think p2p networks are provably more cost
>>>>> efficient than centralized services in particular for small data providers.
>>>>> I think there now could be made a case with regards to energy efficiency.
>>>>> Taking your example of underused resources I would not be surprised to
>>>>> finding big tech already taking advantage of this network infrastructure of
>>>>> the underutilized nodes (aka your browser) rather than benefiting the
>>>>> individual end-users directly.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> also good point with regards to using local resources,  similar to
>>>>> modern energy networks where most of the budget is not consumed by its
>>>>> production but its transportation, storage and infrastructure.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there work on p2p search for solid pods underway? I need to look at
>>>>> HTTP/2 and solid pods more closely I guess. my pod on solid.community is
>>>>> currently not in a good shape and I am not really having the feeling of
>>>>> being in control of my own data. Is it more advisable to run my own solid
>>>>> pod?
>>>>>
>>>>> https://neumann.solid.community/public/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It depends on how much you want to involve yourself in these early
>>>>> stages.
>>>>>
>>>>> In 1993 I installed Linux on my father’s 40Mhz Laptop to see how well
>>>>> it fared,
>>>>> but it required quite a lot of knowledge to do that. Now everybody
>>>>> runs Linux
>>>>> on their phone and calls it Android.
>>>>>
>>>>> At this point the cloud version would be less work to get going I
>>>>> guess :-)
>>>>>
>>>>> I think of the web when deployed on individual instances as peer to
>>>>> peer,
>>>>> and with Solid it really is so, since for example you authenticating
>>>>> to a server,
>>>>> requires the Guard to become a client to fetch data from another
>>>>> server.
>>>>> Each node can be in one and the other role at different times - which
>>>>> is not
>>>>> to say that some nodes like browsers won’t specialize.
>>>>>
>>>>> P2P file sharing with duplication of content across nodes should
>>>>> really be
>>>>> named something else, more like distributed content sharing. Adding
>>>>> such features
>>>>> on Solid pods would be possible, but I think they are trying to
>>>>> restrict to keep focus.
>>>>> Adding it the right way - with RDF data to link to other copies on
>>>>> other pods - would
>>>>> be a nice research project. Perhaps the most important place to add
>>>>> that for
>>>>> Solid servers would be as distributed (encrypted) backups of one's pod
>>>>> on friends pods.
>>>>>
>>>>> Henry
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 5:25 PM Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> My guess is that such studies have not been done, mostly because
>>>>>> widespread
>>>>>> deployment as would happen if Solid became widespread has not happened
>>>>>> yet.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But there are some reasons one could be optimistic.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1. everyone has a DSL box at home currently that is on and not doing
>>>>>> much
>>>>>> a lot of the day, so consuming energy for nothing. Instead with Solid
>>>>>> Pods
>>>>>> those would be doing something useful, and could use electricity from
>>>>>> solar
>>>>>> energy produced locally. So you don’t increase local electricity costs
>>>>>> that much, you can use locally produced electricity, but you increase
>>>>>> some
>>>>>> consumption of data.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2. It is likely that most people communicate with local friends, and
>>>>>> in
>>>>>> most case don’t cross frontiers due to language barriers. This may
>>>>>> not be
>>>>>> the case for the W3C community, but for the wider populations this is
>>>>>> a
>>>>>> lot more likely.  So in a way Solid pods communicating with local
>>>>>> friends
>>>>>> would use less energy, since packets would not need to be sent around
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> world.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 3. There are a lot of optimization strategies that can be made by
>>>>>> having
>>>>>> widely deployed pods. For example used in p2p networks, by fetching
>>>>>> copies
>>>>>> of data heavy media in the nearest cache.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 4. With the internet of things growing, having the packets stay as
>>>>>> far as
>>>>>> required in the home rather than go to large service providers, should
>>>>>> also improve data costs as well as privacy. That is the role of a
>>>>>> local DSL
>>>>>> box turned into a data pod is in any case going to grow in
>>>>>> importance, so
>>>>>> one may as well use this growing infrastructure.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Since producing energy locally is more efficient, and communicating
>>>>>> locally
>>>>>> when that is needed is better, there are reasons to think that some
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> the advantages of large providers may be offset in other ways. That is
>>>>>> without counting the huge improvements in efficiency in communication
>>>>>> that come with HTTP2, reactive frameworks, and cpu efficiencies.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Henry
>>>>>>
>>>>>> > On 16 Jun 2019, at 12:41, Marco Neumann <marco.neumann@gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Has anybody done work on Carbon Efficiency of Semantic Web and
>>>>>> Linked Data Queries?
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > The very nature of distributed data sets has to come with a
>>>>>> substantial computational footprint every time a query is issued to a
>>>>>> single node or a cluster of nodes for a federated query. On the other hand
>>>>>> decentralization might actually outperform more centralized services in the
>>>>>> future.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > I can find a number of papers and articles related to carbon
>>>>>> efficiency in general computing and cloud computing environments and data
>>>>>> centers but nothing specifically related to the improvement of operational
>>>>>> efficiency introduced by Semantic Web and Linked Data infrastructures.
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > There is CO2GLE which attempts to estimate the CO2 emissions per
>>>>>> second released by web search engines like Google as a reference here:
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> https://qz.com/1267709/every-google-search-results-in-co2-emissions-this-real-time-dataviz-shows-how-much/
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Regards,
>>>>>> > Marco
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > --
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > ---
>>>>>> > Marco Neumann
>>>>>> > KONA
>>>>>> >
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Marco Neumann
>>> KONA
>>>
>>> --
>> David McDonell Co-founder & CEO ICONICLOUD, Inc. "Illuminating the cloud"
>> M: 703-864-1203 EM: david@iconicloud.com URL: http://iconicloud.com
>>
>
>
> --
>
>
> ---
> Marco Neumann
> KONA
>
> --
David McDonell Co-founder & CEO ICONICLOUD, Inc. "Illuminating the cloud"
M: 703-864-1203 EM: david@iconicloud.com URL: http://iconicloud.com