Visual china
In august 2016, a bitcoin mine in ganz, sichuan。
It is expected that the people who have taken a piece from the tip of the bitcoin wind will rush to the “mining plant” and invest in the “drilling” of gold. At the same time, the alarming amount of electricity consumed by bitcoin's “mining” is remarkable。
The powercompare. Co. Uk study of the energy price comparison service website shows that in 2017, more than 29. 05 watt-hours (100 million watt-hours) were used for “drilling” in bitcoin, exceeding the average annual electricity use in 159 countries worldwide。
There have also been reports in recent days of large-scale jumps in a small area of kunming, yunnan, resulting in the burning of transformers and damage to more than 400 metres of cables as a result of a bitcoin “mining”。
Dig a bitcoin. Why is it so power-consuming
Integrated circuits are the root cause
"bitcoin diggers are essentially a special computer." the vice-president of the institute of information technology of the university of qinghua, cao junye, spoke in an interview with a journalist for the daily science and technology newspaper。
How did this special computing device get to bitcoin
In the world of bitcoin, about every 10 minutes a data block is recorded. All mining computers complete the submission while trying to pack the data block, and those who eventually succeeded in producing the data block receive a bitcoin payment. The more powerful the machine is, the faster the “mining” is, the more likely it is to get to bitcoin。
Bitcoin “mining” is now entering the age of “team mining” from “mineers” alone to “mining” through “mine ponds”. If your machine calculates one fifth of the size of a mine pool, and if the mine can dig up five bitcoins a day, you can get one bitcoin。
The cost of electricity is an important cost that cannot be ignored, behind the race for seconds for “drilling”. There are “miners” who account for 0. 0018 bitcoin, based on 24 hours a day of operation of the mine, and one bitcoin for 556 days. His mine power rate was 1350 watts, his 1,000 watts of mine power was used approximately once an hour, and two machines consumed 32. 4 degrees per day at a cost of $16. 8 per day. In other words, finding a bitcoin cost $9367。
“it is essentially a matter of the utility of integrated circuits.” cao junway told the daily reporter that, at the hardware level, the circuit itself consumes electrical power, while the bitcoin miner demands more of his calculus, and the miner is concentrated in large-scale “mining” operations, which, together, can be of great use。
It's not just a miner
In fact, in addition to the bitcoin “mining”, news of an alarming amount of electricity consumed by computing equipment is very common。
Like supercomputers. Reports indicate that sky river ii supercomputers generate electricity costs of close to rmb 100 million per year, equivalent to one year of electricity consumption in a small and medium-sized city. The supercomputer "the light of lake vitae" consumes approximately 15 mwh per year, equivalent to electricity at three tsinghua universities. Electricity consumption remains alarming。
And like data centers. The secretary-general of the technical committee for energy conservation of the data centre of china, lu astronomical, in an interview with a journalist for the daily science and technology newspaper, described the total electricity consumption of the data centre of china in 2016 as over 110 billion kilowatt hours, exceeding the total electricity generation of the three gorge dams throughout 2016 and an increase of 11. 7 per cent over 2015。
“the electricity consumption in the data centre consists of four components, it equipment, distribution systems, wind cooling systems and others.” lu astronomical reports to the daily paper technology, where it equipment consumes about 50 per cent of total electricity consumption, new wind cooling systems about 35-40 per cent, and distribution systems about 15-18 per cent。
In lu astronomy, pue (power usage energy, power efficiency) is an important indicator of energy efficiency in the data centres, resulting from the division of total energy consumption by it equipment. At present, the average pue level at the national data centre is above two, meaning that non-it equipment consumes more power than it equipment itself。
“in data centres, large amounts of energy consumption occurs on non-it equipment, and many electricity is wasted in vain.” lu astronomical tells the daily reporter of technology that the distribution and refrigeration systems have great potential for energy conservation. For example, new wind refrigeration systems account for 35-40 per cent of total energy consumption and optimize energy-saving adaptations save 10-20 per cent of energy consumption. Nationwide, between $10 billion and $20 billion in electricity can be saved。
Breaking moore's law limits is the key
But lu astronomical acknowledges that the energy efficiency of it equipment is fundamental in data centres. As it equipment energy consumption is a major component, the distribution system and the new wind cooling system are all for it equipment。
Lu astronomer wrote down a bill to the daily reporter, and if the it equipment had a power of 1,000 watts, it would have required a new wind cooling system with a power of 1,000 watts and a power of 1,000 watts, with a total electricity consumption of 3,000 watt hours per hour. If it equipment reduces energy consumption to 500 watts, it will require a 500 watt distribution system and a 500 watt new wind refrigeration system with a total electricity consumption of 1,500 watt hours per hour。
This means that once it equipment is depleted, energy consumption will also decrease significantly throughout the data centre。
“it is a paradox, however, that most of the current energy-saving adaptations in data centres focus on non-it equipment such as distribution and refrigeration systems.” lu astronomical told the daily reporter that once the data centre is operational, it will be difficult to re-engineer the it equipment because of the huge loss of opportunities. As a result, data centres are often encouraged to use better performance and more energy-efficient it equipment as far as possible at the start of the design。
So how does the energy consumption of it equipment come about? Lu astronomical explained that the “large household” of it equipment in the data centre is a network storage facility and server, where the network accounts for about 60 per cent of energy consumption. The energy consumption of mechanical hard drives has previously been higher, and the data centres are now increasingly using network storage techniques such as ssd solid hard drives, which can significantly reduce this。
“whether bitcoin `mining', data centres, or supercomputers, the problem of power consumption is essentially related to the lowest integrated circuits.” in cao's view, with the development of chip technology, there is an increasing number and complexity of units of integrated circuits, while at the same time the cost of integrated circuits is increasing。
In addition to the presentation by cao junway, at the level of software, the effort is related to the design of algorithms and the efficiency of software. At the systemic level, it depends on the network structure and efficiency of many it-based clusters. Environmental factors, in turn, involve systems such as dissipation and refrigeration。
As to how to make these computing devices fundamentally less power-intensive, in the long run, there is a fear that it will be necessary to break through the limitations of moore's law through quantum computing and new semiconductor materials to make computing devices more efficient and energy-efficient。
