Re: Carbon Efficiency of Semantic Web and Linked Data Queries

And here’s a frothy commercial sector industry report on data center
concentration (including AWS) in N.Virginia (DC metro area) citing MWattage
consumption numbers, drawn from standard grid sources:

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/amazon/why-northern-virginia-data-center-market-bigger-most-realize

Point is, carbon efficiency has to address the backbone infrastructure
dimension; edge/end-user profiles are feel-good but dwarfed in comparison.

On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 4:57 PM David McDonell <david@iconicloud.com> wrote:

> 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
>
-- 
David McDonell Co-founder & CEO ICONICLOUD, Inc. "Illuminating the cloud"
M: 703-864-1203 EM: david@iconicloud.com URL: http://iconicloud.com