Turning a problem into an opportunity

14

October

2018

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In 2015 the number of internet-connected devices was around 10 billion, this number is expected to increase to a total of 34 billion in 2020. These devices already revolutionized the world we are living in as they facilitated communication, made real life information available immediately and had an enormous impact on productivity. However, recently conducted research by Greenpeace revealed that if the internet would be a country it would have the 6th highest power consumption in the world. This has the foundation that all the data needs energy to be generated. In the finance metropolis Frankfurt data centers have a higher consumption than the international airport.
A big problem is that most of the energy is not received from renewable energy sources. Amazon web services got into criticism in 2014 because a study characterized it as the least sustainable among all leading cloud providers with only 13.5% of its energy from renewable sources and no foreseeable renewable energy commitments. Shortly after, Amazon announced a long-term commitment to 100% renewable energy; however, due to experts it is not expected to be achieved in the close future.
Nevertheless, there are promising solutions for the unprecedented increase in the need for increased storage and data center facilities that are scalable, energy efficient and environmentally responsible. The “Leftal Mine Center” in Norway demonstrates a perfect example of how to turn the problem into an opportunity. The center is exclusively powered by renewable energy and gets cooled by water from a nearby fiord, a world leading cooling system. Furthermore, they designed the center to have large spaces with unique scalability. The facility is expected to have an incomparably good power usage effectiveness of 1,15 which is described as the ratio of total amount of energy used by a computer data center facility to the energy delivered to computing equipment.

The example proves that solutions to the increased demand in interconnectivity and the resulting increase in data generation are available. Now it is up to the leading IT companies to make use of them.

 

http://www.whatissmartgrid.org/featured-article/the-internet-of-things-is-changing-the-way-we-use-energy

https://www.lefdalmine.com

https://presseportal.zdf.de/pressemitteilung/mitteilung/planet-e-im-zdf-ueber-stromfresser-internet/

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Rechenzentrum-in-norwegischem-Bergwerk-3714484.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness

 

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How the human brain inspires technology

17

September

2018

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By today computer can outperform humans in a lot of tasks. Especially within the field of well described mathematical problems even a standard calculator can solve problems in fractions of the time a human would need. Nevertheless, there are many everyday situations which can be better handled by humans compared to technology. A perfect example is represented by the task to recognize a face.

In order to approach the ability a human shows with regard to tasks such as face recognition researcher put intensive work into the field of artificial neural networks (ANN) which is a sub-sector of artificial intelligence (AI).

The following is determined to give a short introduction of how the human brain functions as it is the foundation of all research towards artificial neural networks.
The brain consists out of a network built of approximately 100 billion neurons. Every neuron has an internal or membrane potential which changes with incoming signals from other neurons. At the time a certain threshold value inside the neuron is reached it sends out a spike. A spike is a short and sudden increase in voltage. Thereafter the spike spreads through the axon towards synapses which build the connection to following neurons. A single neuron is connected to roughly 10,000 synapses that influence the internal potential and therefore the firing of a spike. Using the mentioned setup, the human brain is capable of solving visual tasks in very short time and remarkably energy efficient.

Having the human brain as model, ANN have the potential to disrupt almost every industry. According to KC Cheug (2018) ANN creates algorithms that can be utilized in modeling complex patterns and, in turn, helps the user in the decision-making process.

I am convinced that ANN will be one of the leading technologies in the upcoming future as it taps into fields which were yet not approachable for technology, namely assessing feelings, interpreting gestures etc..

 

S. Herculano-Houzel. “The Human Brain in Numbers: A Linearly Scaled-up Primate Brain.” In: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 3 (Nov. 2009), p. 31. issn: 662-5161. doi: 10.3389/neuro.09.031.2009. url: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/.

I. Perrett, E. T. Rolls, and W. Caan. “Visual neurones responsive to faces in the monkey temporal cortex.” In: Experimental brain research 47.3 (1982), pp. 329–342.

 

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