Power Trip by Webber Michael E.;

Author:Webber, Michael E.; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2019-07-04T20:00:00+00:00

THE TRANSISTOR, THE MICROPROCESSOR, AND THE INFORMATION AGE

Sharper and better tools from coal transformed society. Oil and gas gave us plastic and other materials that changed society once again. But the rise of electricity gave rise to even more sophisticated tools for manufacturing and information storage and processing that seemed to accelerate the pace of change. The high-tech industry cannot exist without electricity; it’s a modern sector and therefore needs a modern form of energy. Those parts of the world that lack access to modern forms of energy also do not have those modern sectors, because you can’t run an IT sector or its appliances directly on fuelwood, for example.

At the core of the information age is the transistor. This little device was invented at Bell Labs in 1947. At its simplest, the transistor is just an electrical switch that is either on or off. This state could be used to approximate a binary number, with 1 equal to on and 0 equal to off. A series of transistors could create a series of binary digits, or bits, which if combined the right way form the underpinning of integrated circuits (electrical circuits with multiple components like resistors and capacitors embedded within a chip) and microprocessors. The microprocessor could automate all sorts of functions. Initially, it was used for complicated math problems that were too time-consuming and cumbersome to solve by hand. Today, microprocessors have taken on an incredible number of other computational functions, such as displaying particular colors on a computer monitor or controlling equipment. At its launch it was an exotic technology and laboratory curiosity, but today it is embedded in our appliances and consumer electronics. Smartphones, modern cars, and video game consoles all require microprocessors to operate, and now even passive appliances such as light bulbs might include small microprocessors to enable remote operation, sensing, or adjustability.

These tools are now so ubiquitous that it is hard to imagine life without the electricity-enabled information accessible at our fingertips. The information technology boom, like the coal, steel, or oil booms before it, also created wealth. The modern version includes tech billionaires—Bill Gates, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Steve Jobs, and others—who made their money from computers powered by microprocessors running on electricity. The electrically driven transistor underlies this modern wave of wealth creation, just as oil-driven combustion engines or coal-driven factories created prior booms. US Steel was the world’s first billion-dollar company, but Apple was the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

The cumulative energy needs of the IT industry globally are quite large. About 2 percent of national electricity consumption is needed to power racks of computers in data centers and the air conditioners needed to cool the computers.6 One rack at a data center, which looks like an open filing cabinet filled top to bottom with high-speed computers, consumes the same amount of power as a neighborhood of homes. A data center or server farm has hundreds of these racks all lined up in neat rows. Those microprocessors generate a lot of heat when they operate, so a lot more electricity is used just for cooling them back down.

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