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www.us-
tech.com
June, 2016 Tech-Op-ed
SOUNDING OFF
By Walter Salm Editor Emeritus
Revisiting the Cloud’s Dirty Little Secret
T
he other day, a new icon appeared on my smartphone’s screen: a puffy white cloud on a red background. Like it or not, the cloud has become a part of my daily life, which had been true long before that new icon ap-
peared on my phone. Selecting the icon takes me to Verizon’s Cloud, where I am offered all sorts of services that I really don’t need or want, and I find my self longing for the simplicity of my wife’s POT (plain old telephone). Yet, a POT would not give me my favorite team’s latest score, nor would it divulge that they are currently in first place (Let’s go METS!). I was dismayed to find that my Verizon Cloud was storing several photos of my cat which could have been stored quite easily on my phone’s very ample and vastly underutilized flash storage space. But no, it went to the cloud because I took the pics on my phone instead of with one of my two Nikons. Cloud computing; it’s nice to have, but in fact is just one more example
of resource-damaging Internet overkill. Unless we work for Google or Face- book or Amazon or Microsoft, most of us are blissfully unaware of the enor- mous infrastructure that has grown up to support the Internet. Large service providers like Google operate huge data centers housed in warehouse-like buildings, and these systems are kept running at 100 percent capacity all of the time, even though only 5 or 10 percent of the system is in actual use at any one time. This is because these large providers live in constant fear of be- ing hit by a sudden, large demand that could cause a system-wide crash. They’re not just worry-warts; such monumental crashes have already hap- pened, and more than once. One of the biggest energy hogs is the need to keep the system cool. This
calls for an air-conditioning system that blows frigid air through the stacks and stacks of servers stretching almost to the buildings’ high ceilings. The servers are power hogs and the cooling systems only add to the energy con- sumption. To make matters worse, because these server centers cannot afford a power outage, Diesel emergency generators are kept running on standby to provide instant takeover in the event of a power failure. Some of the major players claim to be using energy from renewable or sustainable sources, but this “green” energy accounts for less then five percent of the total used by any one provider. For the huge remaining balance, we are looking at a huge car- bon footprint. Internet-supporting data centers worldwide today consume over an esti-
mated 58 gigawatts of energy — the equivalent output of about 50 to 60 nu- clear power plants. How many of these energy hogging data centers are there worldwide?
Good question. Estimates vary, but a likely figure is 6 million or more. And of course, there’s the question of what counts as a major data center. If there’s a diesel generator idling nearby, it probably qualifies, and their numbers are still growing. They store everything: all of the daily transactions for Wall Street, all of Uncle Siegfried’s vacation pictures and videos, and even the con- tents of U.S.Tech for the last 10 years. Every tweet, every Facebook “like” for somebody’s new picture or hairdo, or restaurant meal, every email, every at- tached document and all those YouTube videos reside in a server, somewhere. And that server is probably in a huge, barn-like facility that has several diesel generators idling in the background, along with a massive cooling system. Is there an equitable solution to this wasteful use of planet Earth’s re-
sources? Yes and no. I personally dislike entrusting all of my digital files, pho- tos, family and business stuff to a “cloud” — even though I know that cloud is a high-tech server in a data center somewhere in California or Virginia or Illi- nois, and is probably perfectly safe — most of the time. It’s bad enough that I have to rely on Google for my email and on Comcast for my connectivity. Google does have catastrophic crashes every so often, and they’re not alone in this regard. All you need are a few hundred hackers pestering a service all at the same time. Instead of cloud storage, I still surround myself with large-capacity hard
disk drives. It’s rare that I lose something because of a system crash. On the other hand, I lost a great deal of stored data six years ago when my mother- board blew out and took two HDDs with it — my main hard disk and my ex- ternal backup as well. Did that catastrophe send me running to embrace the Cloud? Not even remotely, because I still have an ingrained basic distrust of off-site storage that’s run by somebody else. And it’s hard to say “no” to the extraordinarily inexpensive mass storage that’s available from places such as (you guessed it) Costco. r
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
By Jacob Fattal Publisher
Printing the Future from Scratch
A
dditive manufacturing or 3D printing has become a major component of every kind of manufacturing enterprise, be it electronics, medical, mili- tary, automotive, or aerospace. Starting from meager beginnings as a
curiosity and then a way to make engineering prototypes, the technology has blossomed into a major player across all fields. The techniques have evolved from roots in the electronics industry, and
are still heavily invested with computer control and design. UV light is some- times used to cure a photo-hardening material as it is deposited from the print head; early versions required masks to control the exposure area. 3D printers are controlled digitally, using blueprints loaded from a computer, and the ma- chine can often do its job with little human supervision. For the electronics industry, additive manufacturing presents a solution
for cheap, quick creation of commonly used parts. No longer only the hobbyist box in the garage used for plastic knick-knacks, manufacturers are now able to print materials that range from thermoplastics and rubbers to metal alloys. It was recently reported that two-thirds of manufacturers in the U.S. use ad- ditive manufacturing in some way. The scale of the machines has come to vary widely as well. It is now pos-
sible to use microelectronic fabrication processes to print nanoscale-sized ob- jects. Since they’re too small to be handled after printing, often they are print- ed onto a solid substrate, such as a silicon wafer. On the other hand, there are machines being developed to print objects up to 100 ft (30 m) long to be used for the aerospace industry. Just as no one could have predicted the longterm impact of technologies
like the printing press, the steam engine or the transistor, we are just begin- ning to envision the possibilities of additive manufacturing. Forbes invest- ment experts even believe that additive manufacturing has the possibility to spark a resurgence of American manufacturing, due to the ability of small, in- dividual companies to exploit their creativity without requiring a complex and often costly outsourcing strategy. This month, U.S.Tech is focused on electronic components and distribu-
tion, and many companies in this area now stand to benefit from the rise of additive manufacturing. Cheap prototypes, housings, multi-material shapes, conductive materials — the 3D printing landscape is wide open for exploration and exploitation. What would Gutenberg say if he were alive today? r
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