In contrast to stuff like AI training or crypto, chips at least fulfill an actually useful function, so I don’t see the issue with their manufacturing consuming a lot of energy. Or should we compare the same for cars or medicine?
Right? I was just thinking that entire countries run on chips so it sort of sounds about right at least.
entire countries
Not going to even read this horseshit. Which countries? Brazil or Vatican City?
Fuck these headlines. If they have valid points to make, I’ll never see them. Grow the fuck up and be journalists or I don’t have time.
Megawatt is a unit of power, not energy.
Okay. What are we supposed to do, not use chips? They’re kind of a main character of the 21st century.
This would be a great application of those nuke plants fuckin’ Google and Amazon want to build.
We could start by not requiring new chips every few years.
For 90% of the users, there hasn’t been any actual gain within the last 5-10 years. Older computers work perfectly fine, but artificial slow downs and bad software cause laptops to feel sluggish for most users.
Phones haven’t really advanced either. But apps and OSes are too bloated, hardware impossible to repair, so a new phone it is.
Every device nowadays needs wifi and AI for some reason, so of course a new dishwasher has more computing power than an early Cray, even though nothing of that is ever used.
Do 7 nm chips are more energy intensive than older 100 nm?
Or it’s just scale, more chips to manufacture, more energy needed.
