THE COMPUTER EFFICIENCY TREADMILL

I didn't feel like watching a movie tonight, but neither like doing 
anything productive. I felt like writing a phlog post, but I don't 
really have much to say, and Aussies.space isn't back to accepting 
my SFTP log-in yet either. But as you've observed by now I decided 
to yabber away at you anyway.

I'm listening to The Best of Ravel on my stereo. I sorted out my 
cassette tape collection last weekend - like so many things it's 
mainly made up from the two collections of my grandparents, 
although one of those is actually mostly copies of national anthems 
for reasons I won't go into. I have picked up some classical tape 
sets at op-shops myself as well. Then on Sunday I went to a 
hamfest, the first I've been to since 2019, and failed to find much 
of the electronics stuff on my list of stuff to look out for (I 
think what's left on there has become a list of electronic things 
that don't show up very much at hamfests). But instead I came back 
with a bootload of IT gear that was too cheap to turn down. There's 
something quite impressive about suddenly having 16TB of storage 
ready to plug into my network, not to mention the all the other 
former contents of someone's old server cabinet, but I don't really 
have a use for it so it's destined for Ebay. The server itself, and 
UPS, are going to be tricky though because they're too heavy to 
post. But as I got the lot for only $150, it's not such a worry if 
I can't shift everything quickly. :)

Of course I have been thinking again about keeping it all to run my 
big website idea, but then that brings me back to the first server 
I bought as a teenager. It was an old HP ML370 G3 that was being 
sold for under $100 because it was way out of date. I had an idea 
for using it as part of one of my first business ventures, which in 
typical fashion didn't attract any customers and never went 
anywhere. I did have good fun setting it up with Linux, while at 
the same time being deafened by its fans and probably running up my 
mother's electricity bill. In a practical sense its full-height 
rack-mount case was really most useful as a sort of low table to 
put things on next to where I sat at my PC. Along with the 
relatively saleable server, I also got an older HP G6 at the 
hamfest, so it's becoming a collection.

I wonder how the performance of that HP G3 server of mine would 
compare to modern SBCs such as the Banana Pi BPI-R3, which has a 
24W power supply rating rather than 800W* ( 
https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R3 )? What do regular 
offices (I think the stuff I just bought came from a truck hire 
business) really do with computers now that they didn't do in 2003 
(roughtly when my HP G3 server was introduced), and which 
conceptually forbids continuing to run computers with equivalent 
processing/storage capability that are now vastly cheaper and lower 
power? I know there are practical issues with software support and 
the the Banana Pi boards aren't designed for server-like 
reliability, but in theory all the technology is there, it just 
hasn't been adopted because it's not the direction that IT hardware 
and software manufacturers want things to go. The endless upgrade 
cycle continues.

Then there's the fact that everyone carries around battery powered 
computers in their pockets with better specs than an office PC from 
2003, yet still has fast i7 or whatever PCs on their desks at work, 
probably to do the same things that they would have done with them 
in 2003. Or if they use thin clients, then new thin client models 
are actually as powerful as a computer from 2003 themselves!

Anyway it seems funny how this is so overlooked while there's so 
much focus on stuff like LED lighting, office buildings designed 
for efficient climate control, and so on. Old-fashioned climate 
control and lighting would chew through a lot more power than the 
server room in many workplaces, but I doubt that people think 
there's an option for more efficient computer use to compare with 
those things in the first place. Or if there isn't, it's only 
because software developers have needlessly forced the issue 
through the inefficiency of their own products.

Or maybe I'm just annoyed that I've got all this cool server gear 
but I don't want to run it myself because _I_ care too much about 
the power consumption. I don't know. But maybe when Moore's law 
completely wears out things will start going down the efficiency 
route because computer companies won't have anything else new to 
offer.

 - The Free Thinker

* While playing around with the stuff later, I found that the UPS
  claims that the server only draws about 120VA at idle, which is
  actually pretty good with 5xHDDs, 2xSSDs, 2xCPUs, and 112GB RAM
  (I'm unsure about the accuracy of the UPS's measurements though).
  Still, it's a long ahead of the power consumption for modern
  SBCs now offering about the average performance of such servers
  from the early 2000s.