The intro teaser of our 4 hour magnum opus on the complete history of data centers.

For the full episode pop over to: www.stepchange.show/p/data-cente...

We dug deep into this history on the new @stepchangeshow.bsky.social .

🎧 Listen here → www.stepchange.show/p/data-cente...

AI is so power-dense it’s breaking the efficiency curve.

The next frontier?
Doing for GPUs what these breakthroughs did for CPUs:
maximize utilization, minimize waste.

That’s why data center energy use stayed flat for almost a decade,
even as internet traffic grew 10x+.

But the miracle is ending.

Containerization (2010s)
Virtual machines were heavy. Containers were light.

Kubernetes (from Google’s Borg) let apps run anywhere, efficiently.
The final layer of abstraction.
The cloud could scale without matching energy growth.

Physical Design (2000s)
For decades, data centers were cooled like freezers.

Google re-imagined them as a warehouse-scale computer.
Hot/cold aisle containment. Smarter siting in cool+dry climates. PUE to push competition

PUE dropped from ~2.0 → ~1.1. Waste dramatically decreased.

Virtualization (1990s)
Server closets were full of idle machines.

VMware solved it by slicing one server into many “virtual” ones.
This made the cloud business model possible.
AWS didn’t rent physical boxes—they rented slices.

Time-Sharing (1960s)
Mainframes once ran one job at a time while engineers waited in line.

MIT’s CTSS system let dozens of people share a computer simultaneously.
The first leap from “single-task” to maximizing utilization.

That wasn’t luck.
It was the result of a 50-year war on waste.

Here are the 4 big turning points in efficiency that powered the modern data center—
and why that era is now ending. 👇

Everyone’s talking about the explosion in data center energy use.

But the real shock isn’t how high it’s going.
It’s the quiet miracle of how flat energy use stayed while the internet grew exponentially.

Data Centers: The Hidden Backbone of Our Modern World Uncover the physical reality of our digital world--from mainframes to the AI boom.

This very cool pod @stepchange.bsky.social just does one giant, deeply researched episode every six months or so. This time around it's a subject dear to all our hearts: data centers!

Take four hours (!) & learn the crucial context you need to understand today's debates:

Me, on the Climate Papa podcast I talk a bunch about my career, the evolution of the climate fight, distributed energy and political power, and more.

Today on Volts: a few weeks ago I was a guest on the Climate Papa podcast, hosted by @ben8128.bsky.social. We talked about my history, how the climate beat has changed, the crucial importance of the grid & urban land use, & the danger of the tech-bro mentality seeping into cleantech. It was fun!

Didn’t he say all the same stuff last time.. and yet coal plants closed?

Going for maximum banter.

Thanks for diving in Peter!

Where are we in electrifying parts fertilizer production?

It seems that we could electrify all ag transport (inputs and exports). And then elements of supply chain.

Coal has shaped our modern world more than any other source of energy.

This image presents multiple graphs illustrating the history of living conditions in England across different dimensions: GDP per Capita, Life Expectancy, Food Supply per Capita, Child Mortality, Average Years of Schooling, and Literacy Rate.

Poor material living conditions have been such a persistent and pervasive reality that, for much of human history, it was unimaginable that they could ever be different.

Poverty did not change and so it was easy to believe that poverty was unchangeable.

Opinion | The Warning No shockwave. No mushroom cloud. But a space nuke would change life on Earth forever.

From this: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Although source is the great @ourworldindata.org

What a chart.

Not black, not a Friday, and not a week!

The Mother of Thanksgiving : Throughline The Thanksgiving story most of us hear is about friendship and unity. And that's what Sarah Josepha Hale had on her mind when she sat down to write a letter to President Lincoln in 1863, deep into the Civil War. Hale had already spent years campaigning for a national day of thanksgiving, using her platform as editor of one the country's most widely-read magazines and writing elected officials to argue that Americans urgently needed a national story. But she'd gotten nowhere – until now.Five days after reading her letter, Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. At the time, no one was talking about Pilgrims and Native Americans. But that too would change.Today on the show: a Thanksgiving story you may not have heard, how it happened, and what it leaves out.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Finally learned what led to this holiday: www.npr.org/2024/11/21/1...

Climate Papa | Ben Shwab Eidelson | Substack At the intersection of climate change, technology, and parenthood. Click to read Climate Papa, by Ben Shwab Eidelson, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

I am one of many! Chatting with others (often parents) here: newsletter.climatepapa.com

Hiiiii!!!