> If you look at the graph of energy consumption, the top line is basically flat going back as far as 2010.
> There have been too many data center efficiency improvements to list
This seems consistent with jevon’s paradox. Efficiency improvements have not reduced the overall consumption.
Unless you believe that efficiency improvements have just randomly coincided with growth and they happen to cancel each-other out… but it seems more likely to me that cheap compute contributed to the huge uptick in machine learning / big data etc.
> There have been too many data center efficiency improvements to list
This seems consistent with jevon’s paradox. Efficiency improvements have not reduced the overall consumption.
Unless you believe that efficiency improvements have just randomly coincided with growth and they happen to cancel each-other out… but it seems more likely to me that cheap compute contributed to the huge uptick in machine learning / big data etc.