Streaming, bitcoin, AI: the energy gluttony

9 min readMar 28, 2019

By VINCENT NOUYRIGATOn March 22, 2019 at 00h00 update March 22, 2019 at 18h28 10 min of reading

The text below is a Google Translate of “ Streaming, bitcoin, IA : le délire énergétique ! https://www.science-et-vie.com/technos-et-futur/streaming-bitcoin-ia-le-delire-energetique-48593 via @science_et_vie “
(so Google Translate = rough but readable, to get the big picture of the story)

Technos / Future

Watch Netflix, use a voice assistant … Behind these unimaginable hides are huge data centers and a network whose calculations absorb 8% of the world’s electricity. And that’s only the beginning.Thanks to the streaming, the AI, the blockchain, their needs could exceed our energy production by 2040! An untenable situation, alert specialists.

CALCULATING NEEDS THAT EXPLODE

1,000 MW This is the power that will be pumped by the largest data center in the world, planned in Norway. The operation of this record-breaking 60-hour installation located at the Arctic Circle will thus mobilize the equivalent of a nuclear reactor.

10% This is the share of electricity consumed in France by digital activities, around 40 terawatt hours per year (a quarter of which is due to data centers). The equivalent of the consumption of electric heating in the Hexagon.

2040 This is the date at which, in view of the growth of the digital world,the energy required for computing needs could exceed global energy production … if nothing is done to limit this consumption (report by Cédric Villani on IA, March 2018).

2,000 TWh It is, in terawatt hours, the electricity consumption due to the operation of digital in the world every year, which corresponds to the total electricity demand of Russia and India combined; if it were a country, the internet would be the third largest consumer behind the United States and China.

MORE THAN HALF THE CONSUMPTION OF THE DIGITAL IS DEDICATED TO ITS OPERATION
SOURCE: ANDRAE & ELDER, 2015

These are seemingly innocuous gestures: watching a series on Netflix, posting a selfie on Facebook, paying in bitcoin, giving instructions to a voice assistant (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, etc.). So many behaviors that we imagine willingly light, ethereal, completely virtual and without material consequences … Serious mistake.

A “TSUNAMI OF DATA”

Because the latest studies are formal: our digital activity currently consumes about 8% of global electricity production and is responsible for nearly 4% of the 2 — significantly exceeding the maritime or air transport. And that’s only the beginning. “The energy consumption of digital is currently increasing by 9% per year, despite significant progress in terms of efficiency,” said Hugues Ferreboeuf of The Shift Project think tank . Our current trajectory is flirting with the disaster scenarios envisioned a few years ago. “

Internet boxes, which are never extinguished, represent 1% of French electricity consumption! — ANNE-CÉCILE ORGERIE, Researcher at the Institute for Research in Computer Science and Random Systems

The prospects are staggering: according to researchers of the Chinese manufacturer Huawei, the digital could mobilize 20% of the global electricity in 2025. In only 6 years, our online activities would solicit the equivalent of more than 400 nuclear reactors … Pis, according to Cédric Villani’s recent report on artificial intelligence, “by 2040, the energy required for computing needs should exceed global energy production” . Suffice to say that the rampant digitization of our societies leads us to an energetic and climatic impasse.

STREAMING OVERHEATING NETWORKS
15%
This is the share of Internet traffic monopolized by Netflix. Absorbing these large data transfers requires new energy-intensive infrastructure.

How did we get here ? Simple the number of connected people in developing countries is exploding, our uses are intensifying and, above all, new practices are emerging. Like streaming video, which now accounts for nearly 60% of global internet traffic; the growing use of artificial intelligence; the emergence of blockchain technology likely to revolutionize the world of the economy. Each mobilizes a whole infrastructure invisible to the general public, but very greedy energy: the data centers that host the data (ie the cloud), but also the network that transmits them to our computers, our tablets, smartphones, etc.

Several studies had already alerted us to the fact that browsing the internet or sending an e-mail was not neutral at all for the environment. The French electricity network manager RTE is now asking individuals to limit the sending of emails accompanied by a voluminous attachment, in times of high demand … But the current phenomenon of streaming all over the place — whether on Netflix, YouTube, WhatsApp, Skype, Face-Time — is a whole new dimension: watching just 10 minutes of high-definition video means using your 2,000-Watt domestic oven at full power for 5 minutes.

AN INTENSIVE SITUATION

An energy chasm that nobody seems to be aware of. “These new video practices call for continually increasing the size of the infrastructures in order to be able to absorb the peaks of traffic, as customers can no longer withstand the slightest interruption in service,” explains Anne Cécile Orgerie, researcher at the Institute for Research in Computer Science and Systems. random (Irisa). However, these oversized infrastructures are very voracious: even when it is not requested, a router in the heart of the network operates at 90% of its maximum consumption, and the servers that store the videos do not do much better. Also think that our internet boxes, which are never extinguished, represent in the end 1% of the French electricity consumption! “

BLOCKCHAIN SATURE ALREADY DATA CENTERS
49 TWh
Either the annual electricity consumption already devoted to (still confidential) Bitcoin: the equivalent of the demand of Portugal and its 10.3 million inhabitants!

A situation that seems untenable in the long run, while each year traffic on networks swells by 25% and data volume swells by 40% in data centers. “The digital infrastructure is invisible, miniature, it serves growth, so we go happily. It is urgent to make users aware of the impacts of this industry, “ argues Françoise Berthoud, research engineer in computer science at the University of Grenoble.

If the quidam is still in ignorance, the giants of the Net, they, no longer hide their embarrassment and go in search of areas of the world with abundant electricity, cheap, very reliable, renewable if possible, and where the coldest climate possible to dissipate the monstrous heat emitted by their computer servers. Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon are multiplying their efforts to install huge data centers in Nordic countries such as Iceland, Canada, Norway and Sweden. A way also to prepare for the “data tsunami” expected in the coming years with the billions of connected objects that are invited on the network. “Unfortunately, the raw and uncompressed data from these new applications consumes even more energy to be transported to the cloud,” saidDenis Du-roof, Department of Architectures, Design and Embedded Software CEA.

TRACKS OF SAVINGS?

In addition to their storage and transport, these big data call for increasingly sophisticated treatments based on artificial intelligence: the famous deep neural networks, already used for the classification of photos, automatic recommendations, recognition Facial, voice assistance … Now, the training of these machines of a new kind engulfs a lot of energy, notes Matthieu Courbariaux, Institute of Algorithms of Learning in Montreal: “We must train these algorithms on millions of different cases, each requiring billions of operations. Manufacturers are starting to mobilize huge supercomputers in parallel, equipped with thousands of 300 W graphics cards, to make these adjustments! “

Dependent on the digital world, our company could, in the long term, favor access of data centers to energy to the detriment of other sectors — ANDERS ANDRAE, Researcher at Huawei

With the promise, however, of a significantly lower consumption, once the algorithm calibrated. In any case, for small, succinct applications … because the autonomous car begins to pose painful energetic questions: the on-board computers of the current prototypes would consume between 2,000 and 2,500 W, more than an air conditioning system. While managing the data generated by these vehicles could represent the emission of over 2 extra per kilometer.

A considerable figure at a time when automotive engineers are tracking the slightest gram of greenhouse gases — the average 2 of new vehicles sold in France today is around 110 g / km.

Last alarming trend: the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, whose operation is based on a real race to the power of calculations between industrial players called “minors”; a cryptographic contest is launched every 10 min, the winner receiving 12.5 bitcoins. “For the past year and a half, we have received more than 300 proposals for the installation of block-chain data centers on our territory,

testifies Jonathan Côté, at the operator Hydro-Quebec. Realize: these projects represent a power of 28,000 megawatts (MW), which is half the electrical capacity of our country built in a century … “

US engineers have estimated that “mining” a dollar of bitcoins requires 3.4 times more energy than extracting a dollar of gold ore — enough to boil over 50 liters of water!

“The high energy consumption is what makes Bitcoin tamper-proof,” says Hans Joachim Dürr of Northern Bitcoin. “This is a heartbreaking property of this system, a monstrous waste of energy that places the Bitcoin in a demented situation , “ sighs Jean-Paul Delahaye, Research Center computer, signal and automatic Lille. A team of climatologists from the University of Hawaii has even calculated that if it was massively adopted, Bitcoin alone could bring the global temperature to the fateful threshold of + 2 ° C in less than 20 years!

What put a stop to the digitalization of the world? The debate remains open because, at the same time, the sector promises strong energy savings.Engineers work on much simpler electronic component architectures, such as neuromorphic chips that mimic the function of human neurons. Other, more effective, cryptocurrency concepts are emerging. The networks have a good margin of progress: “We demonstrated, during our Green Touch project, that it was technically possible to reduce the consumption of the networks by 98%, starting by virtualizing the private internet box “ , launches Anne-Cécile Orgerie. And then artificial intelligence promises to optimize the energy balance of buildings, transport, electricity networks, data centers …

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AFFOLE CALCULATORS
2,500 W
It is the power of calculators that prototypes of autonomous vehicles embark on: the equivalent of 40 incandescent bulbs! Not to mention the energy-intensive training of AI algorithms …

IT WILL HAVE TO MAKE CHOICES

What make Thomas Veyrenc, strategy and foresight director at RTE, optimistic: “We do not see any prospect of explosion of electricity consumption related to digital in the coming years in France; despite new uses, the efficiency gains are very important. “ Even if the” rebound effects “are common in this area — the more one optimizes a system, the more it intensifies and diversifies its use.

In fact, the question is whether this progress will be fast enough to offset the effects of the “data tsunami” expected in the coming years. “Our models show that this progress will not be sufficient to prevent a sharp rise in energy consumption in the coming decade,” says Anders Andrae, a researcher at Huawei.

This could lead us to having to choose between computer data and energy … Our society is so dependent on digital now that it could favor access to energy from data centers and networks to the detriment of other sectors of activity. very consumers. “

Cruel dilemmas in perspective. Unless we manage to moderate our appetite for Netflix nights, our Face-book accounts, our favorite voice assistant and other great innovations to come. Which is not really won.

Digital is also a riot of matter!

Electricity is not everything. The production of connected TVs consumes 50% of the world’s indium production; the manufacture of a mobile phone requires some 60 different metals, of which less than 20% are recycled; also know that it takes 32 l of water to produce a chip of 2 g. According to Anne-Cécile Orgerie, “the multiplication of connected objects could ultimately be limited by the finiteness of mineral resources” .

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Streaming, bitcoin, AI: energetic delirium!

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