On Route 101, the freeway that forms the spine of Silicon Valley, a ticker display on an advertising billboard counts up the billions of dollars’ worth of electricity wasted by companies that still use inefficient, power-hungry technology to power their search engines, web servers and video streaming networks.
Though the steadily climbing 10-figure numbers, which are heading for the $2 billion mark, are an advertisement for the new processor from Advanced Micro Devices, the sheer size of the numbers throws into stark relief an issue many online businesses hope will go away: the astronomical energy demand of today’s computers.
As…
