Re: Short Vectors Versus Long Vectors

Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> schrieb:

Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
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Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> schrieb:
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Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
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John Savard <quadibloc@servername.invalid> schrieb:
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On Thu, 25 Apr 2024 05:39:55 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
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On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 23:10:47 -0600, John Savard wrote:
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One of the things that those supercomputers that _do_ include
GPUs are praised for is being energy-efficient.

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That I never heard before.  I heard it in relation to ARM CPUs,
yes, GPUs, no.

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Here's one example of an item about this:
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https://www.infoworld.com/article/2627720/
      gpus-boost-energy-efficiency-in-supercomputers.html

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Compared the late 1950s, was the total energy consumption by
computers higher or lower than today? :-)

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Total energy consumption by computers in the 1950s was lower
than today by at least a factor of 10.

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Undoubtedly true, but I think you're missing quite a few
orders of magnitude there.

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Probably not as many as you think. :)
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It wouldn't surprise
me to discover the energy consumption of just the servers in
Amazon Web Services datacenters exceeds the 1950s total, and
that's only AWS (reportedly more than 1.4 million servers).

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https://smithsonianeducation.org/scitech/carbons/1960.html states
that, in 1954, there were 15 computers in the US.  That seems low
(did they only count IBM 701 machines?), but it reportedly went up to
17000 in 1964.
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Even if you put the number of computers at 100 for the mid-1950s, at
100 kW each, you only get 10 MW of power when they ran (wich they often
didn't; due to maintenance, these early computers seem to have been
day shift only).

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Oh boy, numbers.
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First your question asked about the late 1950s, not the mid 1950s.
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I estimated between 10,000 and 20,000 computers by the end of
the 1950s, and chose 5 KW as an average consumption.  In those
days computers were big.  Probably the estimate for number of
machines is a bit on the high side, and the average consumption
is a bit on the low side.  I'm only estimating.

The number of computers is probably high, the power maybe somewhat
low, but let us take it as a basis - 2*10^4 computers with 5*10^3
Watt, total power if they are all on at the same time 10^8 Watt.
Let's assume an operating time of 4000 hours, so total energy
consumption would be around 1.44*10^15 J or 4*10^8 kWh, or
0.4 Terawatt-hours.

For today, we don't need to make an estimate
ourselves, we can use other people's.  Looking at
https://frontiergroup.org/resources/fact-file-computing-is-using-more-energy-than-ever/
one finds that data centers alone use around 240-340 Terawatt-hours,
so we have a factor of a bit less than 1000 alredy.  The total
sector, according to the same source, and also according to
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST-PN-0677/POST-PN-0677.pdf
is around three times that.