[Mesa-dev] Ramifications of software development with respect to climate change

[Nicolai Hähnle]

On 02.11.2016 08:59, Edward O'Callaghan wrote:
> This maybe somewhat of a striking topic however it is one that has not
> really had enough attention, I feel, in a way that warrants the gravity
> of if ramifications. Thus, I really would like to kick this discussion
> into hopefully something serious and creditable that we can all think
> about. Also, please excuse the generality of this initial attempt as
> this will probably sound border line crazy talk..

Yes. :-p


> As developers we spend essentially the totality of a focus on - in
> pretty much in following order of priority:
>
> i.) features,
> ii.) performance,
> iii.) bug fixes.
>
> However we spend no serious mental energy on how our software preforms
> regarding the environmental impact. Now, while it is true we do think a
> little about battery life and also performance, this isn't usually our
> highest of priorities and is somewhat an indirect method of solving the
> problem. I can't think of too many examples where we have actually gone
> really out our way to think about this problem and come up with tools to
> address it, apart from perhaps powertop.

As nice as powertop may be, the real way to go here is to make it 
unnecessary, by implementing good defaults.

Also, what's the impact of the energy consumption of a CPU/GPU over its 
lifetime vs. the impact of the production and waste disposal?

I'd expect the (potential) impact of the driver software to be 
comparatively small in the grand scheme of things. To the extent that it 
matters, battery life and performance already provide good forcing 
functions.

The transmission mechanism through which software probably matters most 
here is that the overall suckage of it (hello, JavaScript websites and 
ads) encourages people to buy new hardware sooner than might otherwise 
be necessary.

Cheers,
Nicolai


> What do folks think, and how could we start thinking about technical
> ways to address this problem?
>
> Kind Regards,
> Edward.
>
>
>
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