Can the Computer Chip Industry Reduce Its Carbon Footprint? (theguardian.com) 25
"Last week Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest chipmaker, which supplies chips to Apple, pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2050," reports the Guardian.
"But decarbonizing the industry will be a big challenge." TSMC alone uses almost 5% of all Taiwan's electricity, according to figures from Greenpeace, predicted to rise to 7.2% in 2022, and it used about 63m tons of water in 2019. The company's water use became a controversial topic during Taiwan's drought this year, the country's worst in a half century, which pitted chipmakers against farmers. In the US, a single fab, Intel's 700-acre campus in Ocotillo, Arizona, produced nearly 15,000 tons of waste in the first three months of this year, about 60% of it hazardous. It also consumed 927m gallons of fresh water, enough to fill about 1,400 Olympic swimming pools, and used 561m kilowatt-hours of energy. Chip manufacturing, rather than energy consumption or hardware use, "accounts for most of the carbon output" from electronics devices, the Harvard researcher Udit Gupta and co-authors wrote in a 2020 paper....
[A]mid pressure from investors and electronics makers keen to report greener supply chains to customers, the semiconductor business has been ramping up action on tackling its climate footprint... Greater availability of renewable energy is helping chipmakers reduce their carbon footprint. Intel made a commitment to source 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, as did TSMC, but with a deadline of 2050. Energy consumption accounts for 62% of TSMC's emissions, said a company spokesperson, Nina Kao. The company signed a 20-year deal last year with the Danish energy firm Ørsted, buying all the energy from a 920-megawatt offshore windfarm Ørsted is building in the Taiwan Strait. The deal, which has been described as the world's largest corporate renewables purchase agreement, has benefits for TSMC, said Shashi Barla, renewables analyst at the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. As well as guaranteeing a clean electricity supply, it pays a wholesale cost and removes itself from price shocks, "killing two birds with one stone", he said.
TSMC's actions have the potential to influence the rest of the industry, said Clifton Fonstad, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, "other manufacturers are likely to follow its lead"...
There is also innovation aimed at tackling the worst-polluting materials used in making semiconductors. The chip industry uses different gases during the production process, many of which have a significant climate impact. TSMC said it had implemented scrubbers and other facilities to treat gas emissions. But another route is replacing "dirtier" cleaning gases that clean the delicate tools in semiconductor manufacturing, said Michael Pittroff, a chemical engineer working on semiconductor gases at Solvay Special Chemicals. In industrial tests over the last six years with about a half dozen chipmaker clients, Pittroff said, he and his team had replaced more polluting gases with "cleaner" fluorine, with a lower global warming impact. Other companies target the gases that are used to etch patterns onto and clean the silicon surface of a wafer — the thin piece of material used to make semiconductors. Paris-based industrial gases company Air Liquide, for example, has come up with a line of alternative etching gases with lower global warming impacts...
Some experts believe chipmakers will start to modify their processes to incorporate greener gases, especially if the big players make a move. "If TSMC switches, I am sure the others will," said Fonstad. "If TSMC doesn't, then other manufacturers may switch to show they are better than TSMC."
"But decarbonizing the industry will be a big challenge." TSMC alone uses almost 5% of all Taiwan's electricity, according to figures from Greenpeace, predicted to rise to 7.2% in 2022, and it used about 63m tons of water in 2019. The company's water use became a controversial topic during Taiwan's drought this year, the country's worst in a half century, which pitted chipmakers against farmers. In the US, a single fab, Intel's 700-acre campus in Ocotillo, Arizona, produced nearly 15,000 tons of waste in the first three months of this year, about 60% of it hazardous. It also consumed 927m gallons of fresh water, enough to fill about 1,400 Olympic swimming pools, and used 561m kilowatt-hours of energy. Chip manufacturing, rather than energy consumption or hardware use, "accounts for most of the carbon output" from electronics devices, the Harvard researcher Udit Gupta and co-authors wrote in a 2020 paper....
[A]mid pressure from investors and electronics makers keen to report greener supply chains to customers, the semiconductor business has been ramping up action on tackling its climate footprint... Greater availability of renewable energy is helping chipmakers reduce their carbon footprint. Intel made a commitment to source 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030, as did TSMC, but with a deadline of 2050. Energy consumption accounts for 62% of TSMC's emissions, said a company spokesperson, Nina Kao. The company signed a 20-year deal last year with the Danish energy firm Ørsted, buying all the energy from a 920-megawatt offshore windfarm Ørsted is building in the Taiwan Strait. The deal, which has been described as the world's largest corporate renewables purchase agreement, has benefits for TSMC, said Shashi Barla, renewables analyst at the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. As well as guaranteeing a clean electricity supply, it pays a wholesale cost and removes itself from price shocks, "killing two birds with one stone", he said.
TSMC's actions have the potential to influence the rest of the industry, said Clifton Fonstad, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, "other manufacturers are likely to follow its lead"...
There is also innovation aimed at tackling the worst-polluting materials used in making semiconductors. The chip industry uses different gases during the production process, many of which have a significant climate impact. TSMC said it had implemented scrubbers and other facilities to treat gas emissions. But another route is replacing "dirtier" cleaning gases that clean the delicate tools in semiconductor manufacturing, said Michael Pittroff, a chemical engineer working on semiconductor gases at Solvay Special Chemicals. In industrial tests over the last six years with about a half dozen chipmaker clients, Pittroff said, he and his team had replaced more polluting gases with "cleaner" fluorine, with a lower global warming impact. Other companies target the gases that are used to etch patterns onto and clean the silicon surface of a wafer — the thin piece of material used to make semiconductors. Paris-based industrial gases company Air Liquide, for example, has come up with a line of alternative etching gases with lower global warming impacts...
Some experts believe chipmakers will start to modify their processes to incorporate greener gases, especially if the big players make a move. "If TSMC switches, I am sure the others will," said Fonstad. "If TSMC doesn't, then other manufacturers may switch to show they are better than TSMC."
Decarbonize: noun (Score:4, Funny)
A magical incantation intended to ward off the ill effects typically expected when an enemy wizard invokes the "carbon footprint" spell. Usually entails paying protection money to a designated Carbon Broker Gnome who provides a temporary blessing to continue operations. May or may not involve sourcing electricity from low pollution sources like hydroelectric dams or nuclear reactors.
Green washing (Score:3)
In one sense it is heartening that the Tech Titans of the semiconductor industry are awakening that this is a dirty, polluting activity along with a host of other dirty, polluting activities that make up our modern industrial culture. The conventional wisdom is that a geek with a monster gaming rig is not harming the environment in any way whereas the dude-bro with the monster-truck hobby is harming the environment.
On the other sense, it is disheartening for Intel to claim that they will "source 100% el
many more issues with an oversized vehicle. (Score:2)
The conventional wisdom is that a geek with a monster gaming rig is not harming the environment in any way whereas the dude-bro with the monster-truck hobby is harming the environment.
The impact of a gaming rig vs a vehicle can be quantified. Not sure what you mean by monster truck hobby. Very few can afford a monster truck. If you're talking about oversized car hobby?...well, yeah, you're a fucking asshole if you drive a much bigger vehicle than you need. If you want a 20k gaming machine, you're playing it, what 4h a day on a weekday, 8h on weekends? The environmental impact can be measured: greenhouse gasses, toxic emissions, etc. All of this can be quantified and it takes a LOT
The old, old saying (Score:2)
We can stipulate that the monster truck driving dude bro is indeed harming the environment, and the TFA establishes that the gamer geek is doing at least some harm to the environment until TSMC clean-sources their electric power?
The old, old saying is "we have just established what you are. What we are doing right now is haggling on the price."
Slashdot in a nutshell (Score:1)
The government of each country should own and control the computing power. That way they can ensure they are only used for social justice warrior approved purposes and not for malicious purposes like hacking, stealing money electronically and child pornography. In addition, since computers would only be used when absolutely necessary it would dramatically cut down on evil carbon emissions -- not just from their reduced use, but because we would need less chips.
Re: Slashdot in a nutshell (Score:1)
The fact that there is a large overlap in the set of morons screaming to electrify everything and the set of morons screaming to shut down electrical generating plants leaves me no choice but to conclude that most humans don't think.
If I were to choose a moralizing view of the world, I would say they choose not to think. If I were to choose a paternalistic view of the world, I would say they are not capable of thinking.
I do not have sufficient insight into the mental states of these people to make an inform
There is no need to be upset. (Score:4, Funny)
The global programming community will quickly compensate for any gains in hardware efficiency (execution *or* production) by publishing even more inefficient code!
What's that? You renamed a *local variable* ? Neat! Now your entire project needs recompilation!
Re: (Score:2)
But some of this is offset by new demands we place on our computers and there is a cost to all of the added layers of abstraction we've created between the software we use on a r
Trend seems to be less efficiency - microservices (Score:2)
While more powerful hardware means that you can get away with garbage code or a bad algorithm for a little bit longer, the trend over time has been for more efficient code and algorithms, or even specialized hardware that's better at running certain types of algorithms that are more effective at solving certain types of problems. But some of this is offset by new demands we place on our computers and there is a cost to all of the added layers of abstraction we've created between the software we use on a regular basis and the hardware it runs on.
The layers of abstraction are fatal. Ever notice how many websites bring your powerful computer to its knees? 20+ JavaScript and CSS frameworks just to render a simple form app will do that for you.
Or here's another one: The fucking microservices fad. Some degree of distribution is great, but there are idiots who think every table in a database needs a dedicated microservice and think you're a heretic if you don't do that. Also, why does every fucking service need it's own Docker container? Every
Re: (Score:2)
Try running today's software on 10y old hardware.
Because visual c# 2005 on a 2k vm with one cpu allocated takes *one screen refresh* to open. At 144 Hz. Measured it repeatedly with my phone's 960fps camera.
visual studio 2022 takes about 4 seconds on my 5950x.
That, is A THOUSAND TIMES slower.
A THOUSAND FUCKING TIMES.
Water (Score:2)
Water is used and contaminated in fabs. Reverse Osmosis only produces at best 1 gallon of water for each 4 used. Other contaminates are highly toxic as well.
Making things uses resources (Score:4)
Water Use (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're interested, here is an article [sustainalytics.com] which goes in to water use in semiconductor manufacturing in a little more detail.
Up until now, the semiconductor industry seems to have had a mostly free pass on the volume of water they use... But surely this can't last. I wonder what sort of solar panel footprint Intel would need to generate enough electricity to boil 24.66 million gallons of water a day - and through distillation be able to return a significant proportion of it for re-use?
I'm guessing that the answer is "an unfeasibly large amount of solar"...
Which is a shame, because what the semiconductor industry is doing today simply isn't sustainable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
From what (very little) I understand, you need to reduce the chemical load on the water to reduce water consumption. The fabs essentially are diluting the wastewater to the point where it is “safe” for normal disposal, so you need to do more on the front end to limit/recover the chemical waste.
Wrong question (Score:4, Insightful)
Not "Can ..." but "How ...". *All* parts of industry must reduce their impact on the environment, it might cost but the cost of not so doing will be much higher. I said "impact on the environment" as it is more than just climate change but also: heavy metal pollution; use of water; release of plastics into the environment; ... Individuals as well as industry need to play their part.
Yes...if they replace silicon with carbon (Score:2)
Make some graphite based chips and then they'll be buying carbon instead!
Perhaps the we can recycle the chips as pencils? ;-)
Nuclear fission power (Score:1)
A big part of the problem can be fixed with nuclear fission power. They can use nuclear power to produce electricity and freshwater. That appears to be the two biggest complaints. After that there was some issues with efficiency of the chip factories, and some ideas to use alternative chemicals where they currently use some pretty bad stuff.
Nuclear fission power isn't the beginning and end of solving this, more like the beginning *OR* the end.
I'm seeing people recognize the need for nuclear fission power
Non-problem. (Score:2)
Stop worrying about "can we make this fully electric business non-polluting" bullshit and start focusing on industrial sources of pollution that aren't related to electrical use. We know how to convert the grid to be "green" and it's slowly happening but we have deeply entrenched businesses that are polluting because it's part of the chemical process they designed.
Related question (Score:2)
A corollary question: If it can't reduce it and producing chips as we do will degrade the environment, will we accept limiting production to save ourselves or just plow ahead and say there was nothing we could do?
Re: Related question (Score:2)
Water too (Score:2)
It would be good if they can reduce their carbon footprint, but they also need to find a way of reducing water consumption or finding ways of reusing water on hand.
A recent drought in Taiwan has highlighted how much water is needed in chip manufacturing.