Microsoft - Carbon negative by 2030?

M

mpm

Guest
On my drive home, I heard a quick piece on the radio about Microsoft claiming to be on-track to "Carbon negative" by 2030. And they're going to spend a Billion dollars to get there. (Wow, a whole Billion for a company that size!)

Link: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/

My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system! (Maybe I'm just getting cynical?)

Personally, I can't count the hours wasted (and energy burned) trying to get various Microsoft products to work. I'll bet the Carbon wasted just on periodic updates totally swamps any so-called savings they will ever achieve!

Your thoughts?
Should make for an interesting "back-of-the-napkin" calculation.
 
On Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 5:03:22 PM UTC-8, Michael Terrell wrote:
On Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 7:28:19 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:

On my drive home, I heard a quick piece on the radio about Microsoft claiming to be on-track to "Carbon negative" by 2030.

No carbon in their distribution disks? No paper used at all? No black toner in their printers or copiers?
Click to expand...

Not how it works; you can scavenge CO2 from the atmosphere, and pump it into suitable
geological formations, at a few hundred dollars a ton. So, it's not zero usage required, it's
zero net contribution to atmosphere.

Black toner is magnetite, not carbon black. There's enough to bend a sheet of printed output with
a strong magnet.
 
On Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 7:28:19 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:
On my drive home, I heard a quick piece on the radio about Microsoft claiming to be on-track to "Carbon negative" by 2030. And they're going to spend a Billion dollars to get there. (Wow, a whole Billion for a company that size!)

Link: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/

My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system! (Maybe I'm just getting cynical?)

Personally, I can't count the hours wasted (and energy burned) trying to get various Microsoft products to work. I'll bet the Carbon wasted just on periodic updates totally swamps any so-called savings they will ever achieve!

Your thoughts?
Should make for an interesting "back-of-the-napkin" calculation.
Click to expand...

No carbon in their distribution disks? No paper used at all? No black toner in their printers or copiers?
 
On 17/1/20 11:28 am, mpm wrote:
My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system!
Click to expand...
Not to mention the 10^26 (*) CPU cycles wasted doing useless things
(like polling) when it should have been in a wait state.

(*) finger-in-air estimate: a billion machines, 40 years, 1GHz
 
mpm wrote:
On my drive home, I heard a quick piece on the radio about Microsoft claiming to be on-track to "Carbon negative" by 2030. And they're going to spend a Billion dollars to get there. (Wow, a whole Billion for a company that size!)

Link: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/

My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system! (Maybe I'm just getting cynical?)

Personally, I can't count the hours wasted (and energy burned) trying to get various Microsoft products to work. I'll bet the Carbon wasted just on periodic updates totally swamps any so-called savings they will ever achieve!

Your thoughts?
Should make for an interesting "back-of-the-napkin" calculation.
Click to expand...
If M$ really wanted to be "carbon negative",they would lay off every
programmer except the best three.
Would make for a lot less drivers and guzzlene used.
Also would lend to a very large improvement in quality of software
and perhaps compatibility of products afterward.
Would increase their profit by scads (massive decrease of expenditure
in wages etc).
 
On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 12:56:32 +1100, Clifford Heath
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 17/1/20 11:28 am, mpm wrote:
My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system!
Not to mention the 10^26 (*) CPU cycles wasted doing useless things
(like polling) when it should have been in a wait state.

(*) finger-in-air estimate: a billion machines, 40 years, 1GHz
Click to expand...

While Win85 used a busy loop in the null task instead of using a low
power wait for interrupt instruction loop when no work was done. At
least all WinNT versions used proper wait instructions and hence the
power consumption was low when idle.

Mediocre PC hardware that executed Win 3 without problems did not work
well when upgraded to Win85, not even after memory update. The
computer crashed after being idle for a while and was then asked to do
some work. With the original wait loop the current consumption fell
during idle periods and when actual work was needed, the CPU current
consumption increased rapidly. If the voltage regulation was bad, the
CPU crashed.

To "solve" this problem, MS replaced the wait loop with a busy loop
and the power consumption remains constantly high all the time and the
voltages did not fluctuate :).

This created a market of "power saver" programs for better
motherboards, which executed a low priority wait loop process just
above null task priority, which prevented the execution to fall down
to the null task busy loop, thus saving power during idle periods.
 
On 17/01/2020 01:03, Michael Terrell wrote:
On Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 7:28:19 PM UTC-5, mpm wrote:
On my drive home, I heard a quick piece on the radio about Microsoft claiming to be on-track to "Carbon negative" by 2030. And they're going to spend a Billion dollars to get there. (Wow, a whole Billion for a company that size!)

Link: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/

My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system! (Maybe I'm just getting cynical?)

Personally, I can't count the hours wasted (and energy burned) trying to get various Microsoft products to work. I'll bet the Carbon wasted just on periodic updates totally swamps any so-called savings they will ever achieve!

Your thoughts?
Should make for an interesting "back-of-the-napkin" calculation.

No carbon in their distribution disks? No paper used at all? No black toner in their printers or copiers?
Click to expand...

They're intending to use equal amounts of carbon and anti-carbon, the
details are still being worked on.

--
Cheers
Clive
 
On 17/1/20 6:50 pm, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 12:56:32 +1100, Clifford Heath
no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 17/1/20 11:28 am, mpm wrote:
My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system!
Not to mention the 10^26 (*) CPU cycles wasted doing useless things
(like polling) when it should have been in a wait state.

(*) finger-in-air estimate: a billion machines, 40 years, 1GHz

While Win85 used a busy loop in the null task instead of using a low
power wait for interrupt instruction loop when no work was done. At
least all WinNT versions used proper wait instructions and hence the
power consumption was low when idle.
Click to expand...

Except it is almost never really idle.

I run Windows (various NT versions - no longer interested in the old
16-bit versions) in virtualisation, so I see all the cycles it actually
uses - which is far beyond the ones that Windows tools will tell you
about. Some versions idle (with "nothing" happening) at above 30% CPU usage.

CH
 
On Friday, January 17, 2020 at 2:50:46 AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 12:56:32 +1100, Clifford Heath
wrote:

On 17/1/20 11:28 am, mpm wrote:
My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system!
Not to mention the 10^26 (*) CPU cycles wasted doing useless things
(like polling) when it should have been in a wait state.

(*) finger-in-air estimate: a billion machines, 40 years, 1GHz

While Win85 used a busy loop in the null task instead of using a low
power wait for interrupt instruction loop when no work was done. At
least all WinNT versions used proper wait instructions and hence the
power consumption was low when idle.

Mediocre PC hardware that executed Win 3 without problems did not work
well when upgraded to Win85, not even after memory update. The
computer crashed after being idle for a while and was then asked to do
some work. With the original wait loop the current consumption fell
during idle periods and when actual work was needed, the CPU current
consumption increased rapidly. If the voltage regulation was bad, the
CPU crashed.

To "solve" this problem, MS replaced the wait loop with a busy loop
and the power consumption remains constantly high all the time and the
voltages did not fluctuate :).

This created a market of "power saver" programs for better
motherboards, which executed a low priority wait loop process just
above null task priority, which prevented the execution to fall down
to the null task busy loop, thus saving power during idle periods.
Click to expand...

Win85?
 
On Friday, January 17, 2020 at 6:38:05 PM UTC-5, Michael Terrell wrote:
On Friday, January 17, 2020 at 2:50:46 AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 12:56:32 +1100, Clifford Heath
wrote:

On 17/1/20 11:28 am, mpm wrote:
My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system!
Not to mention the 10^26 (*) CPU cycles wasted doing useless things
(like polling) when it should have been in a wait state.

(*) finger-in-air estimate: a billion machines, 40 years, 1GHz

While Win85 used a busy loop in the null task instead of using a low
power wait for interrupt instruction loop when no work was done. At
least all WinNT versions used proper wait instructions and hence the
power consumption was low when idle.

Mediocre PC hardware that executed Win 3 without problems did not work
well when upgraded to Win85, not even after memory update. The
computer crashed after being idle for a while and was then asked to do
some work. With the original wait loop the current consumption fell
during idle periods and when actual work was needed, the CPU current
consumption increased rapidly. If the voltage regulation was bad, the
CPU crashed.

To "solve" this problem, MS replaced the wait loop with a busy loop
and the power consumption remains constantly high all the time and the
voltages did not fluctuate :).

This created a market of "power saver" programs for better
motherboards, which executed a low priority wait loop process just
above null task priority, which prevented the execution to fall down
to the null task busy loop, thus saving power during idle periods.

Win85?
Click to expand...

Yeah, otherwise known as Windows 1.0.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
 
Michael Terrell wrote:
On Friday, January 17, 2020 at 2:50:46 AM UTC-5, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
On Fri, 17 Jan 2020 12:56:32 +1100, Clifford Heath
wrote:

On 17/1/20 11:28 am, mpm wrote:
My immediate thought was:
Yeah, if Microsoft really wanted to be "Carbon negative", they would have built a better operating system!
Not to mention the 10^26 (*) CPU cycles wasted doing useless things
(like polling) when it should have been in a wait state.

(*) finger-in-air estimate: a billion machines, 40 years, 1GHz

While Win85 used a busy loop in the null task instead of using a low
power wait for interrupt instruction loop when no work was done. At
least all WinNT versions used proper wait instructions and hence the
power consumption was low when idle.

Mediocre PC hardware that executed Win 3 without problems did not work
well when upgraded to Win85, not even after memory update. The
computer crashed after being idle for a while and was then asked to do
some work. With the original wait loop the current consumption fell
during idle periods and when actual work was needed, the CPU current
consumption increased rapidly. If the voltage regulation was bad, the
CPU crashed.

To "solve" this problem, MS replaced the wait loop with a busy loop
and the power consumption remains constantly high all the time and the
voltages did not fluctuate :).

This created a market of "power saver" programs for better
motherboards, which executed a low priority wait loop process just
above null task priority, which prevented the execution to fall down
to the null task busy loop, thus saving power during idle periods.

Win85?

Never heard of it; do you not mean Win95 (and Win95 SE)?
Click to expand...
 
On Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 1:21:42 PM UTC-5, Robert Baer wrote:

Win85?

Never heard of it; do you not mean Win95 (and Win95 SE)?
Click to expand...

I think he's making the point that so many Microsoft products have problems.
....including the digit "9" not working on his Microsoft keyboard! :)
 
On Friday, January 17, 2020 at 2:20:47 AM UTC-5, Robert Baer wrote:

If M$ really wanted to be "carbon negative",they would lay off every
programmer except the best three.
Click to expand...

..... so you're saying Microsoft actually has THREE good programmers?!
 
mpm wrote:
On Friday, January 17, 2020 at 2:20:47 AM UTC-5, Robert Baer wrote:

If M$ really wanted to be "carbon negative",they would lay off every
programmer except the best three.

.... so you're saying Microsoft actually has THREE good programmers?!

THAT may be abateable...
Click to expand...
 
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