Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hellove everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting next to me, as always, is the sunny and
Speaker 1: genial senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, build up, I
Speaker 1: just you know, yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't follow that.
Speaker 1: I love it. So today we're going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit. You know, you might remember several podcasts ago
Speaker 1: we we kind of compared the paper technology world and
Speaker 1: the computer technology world. Uh well, we started thinking about
Speaker 1: other topics we could talk about. They're kind of related
Speaker 1: to that. And one of those is an interesting question
Speaker 1: that a couple of people have asked, not just us,
Speaker 1: but in general, and that question is how much electricity
Speaker 1: does the Internet require to work? Lots? Yeah, but if
Speaker 1: you wanted to get a little more specific, actually nobody knows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we can. We can get that out of the way.
Speaker 1: First thing, We're going to go ahead and be completely
Speaker 1: straight with you guys. It is practically impossible to say
Speaker 1: with any degree of certainty how much electricity the Internet
Speaker 1: requires to work. Part of the reason for that is
Speaker 1: that you're talking about such a massive machine, really the
Speaker 1: biggest machine in the in the world, and it's constantly changing.
Speaker 1: It's growing all the time. Uh, the components are changing
Speaker 1: all the time. So what might be true today could
Speaker 1: be completely false in a year from now. It may
Speaker 1: be that perhaps eighteen more data centers go online in
Speaker 1: every region in the United States, and that could change things.
Speaker 1: It could be that some sort of massive energy saving
Speaker 1: technology comes out and that could that could impact it.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about how much electricity the Internet uses,
Speaker 1: keep in mind we're talking about estimates and vague ones
Speaker 1: at that, because a lot of the data that exists
Speaker 1: out there that people basically these sort of estimates on
Speaker 1: is more than a decade old. Yeah, And um, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things too where people are sort of
Speaker 1: extrapolating based on numbers that they do know. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're educated guesses when we we do have an idea
Speaker 1: of what's going on. Yeah, I mean, think of it
Speaker 1: this way. Even if we knew down to the very
Speaker 1: last device, how many computers and smartphones and everything else
Speaker 1: were connected to the Internet, including servers. Even if we
Speaker 1: knew all that, we don't necessarily know how often they're
Speaker 1: connected to the Internet. So just because a computer years
Speaker 1: on doesn't necessarily mean it's actually making use of the Internet,
Speaker 1: so it's not putting a drain on any resources. So
Speaker 1: then you're talking about all right, well, now we have
Speaker 1: to estimate not only how many devices are out there,
Speaker 1: but how how much time they're spending on the Internet. Right,
Speaker 1: so this is really about as fast and loose as
Speaker 1: you can possibly get and still have something to talk about. Well,
Speaker 1: we do know that the machines that are using the
Speaker 1: most electricity on the Internet are the servers, the data centers,
Speaker 1: which are sort of little internets in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could, you could say that the data centers on
Speaker 1: a on an individual basis, the server and a data
Speaker 1: center is using more electricity than any person's computer really,
Speaker 1: unless you're talking about I guess a supercomputer, in which
Speaker 1: case that's a little different. But if you're talking about
Speaker 1: sheer numbers. There are so many computers out there that
Speaker 1: if you were to look at at least some of
Speaker 1: the figures that I looked at, the biggest drain on
Speaker 1: the the electric grid of the the world, really, not
Speaker 1: just the United States, comes from consumer and corporate computers,
Speaker 1: not from data centers. And that's because just from a
Speaker 1: sheer scale, you're talking about just a huge, uh difference
Speaker 1: in numbers. So data centers, yeah, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of them, and there are thousands of servers in these
Speaker 1: data centers, but we're talking millions and millions of computers,
Speaker 1: or even perhaps one billion computers. But I think that
Speaker 1: was a figure that was arrived at maybe a year
Speaker 1: or two ago, and so again not necessarily accurate. Now
Speaker 1: they're probably even more. And also then we get into
Speaker 1: what is a computer. Before we get too far into
Speaker 1: all of these kind of vague discussions that are going
Speaker 1: to take up our next twenty minutes, I think it
Speaker 1: might help to kind of talk about energy and electricity
Speaker 1: in general, about how that's measured. So we generally talk
Speaker 1: about electricity in a term called kill a watt hours,
Speaker 1: which is a unit of energy, and it's essentially the
Speaker 1: equivalent to one kill a lot of power expended over
Speaker 1: the course of one hour. All right. So the reason
Speaker 1: why we do this is because energy is essentially a
Speaker 1: measurement of power times time. So it's the amount of
Speaker 1: power times the amount of time that that power is expended.
Speaker 1: That's how you get energy and kill what hour unit
Speaker 1: of energy? Now, when we're talking about global electricity use
Speaker 1: as far as the Internet goes, we're talking in the
Speaker 1: tarole wat range tarra watt hour range. And to give
Speaker 1: you guys an idea, Okay, so I kill a what
Speaker 1: is a thousand watts? A mega watt is a thousand
Speaker 1: kill a watts? A giga what is a thousand megawatts?
Speaker 1: And a tara lot is a thousand giga watts? So
Speaker 1: huge number here, enormous number. It's too big for me
Speaker 1: to actually imagine. I know what, I know it exists,
Speaker 1: but I can't fit it into my head, right right.
Speaker 1: It's nice of them to use these terms that we
Speaker 1: would probably be familiar with from things like bites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's nice that it's not you know, a jot
Speaker 1: and then a bit tool and then four handspans and
Speaker 1: then a furlong. Yeah, that would be really confusing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for the metric system. Um, So here's a
Speaker 1: here's a study that was done back in and it
Speaker 1: was done by Berkeley Labs Environmental Energy Technologies Division, the
Speaker 1: End Use Energy Forecasting group led by Dr Jonathan kumi
Speaker 1: who I have I've seen his notes on several different
Speaker 1: message boards about this subject. Dr Kumy is still very
Speaker 1: much active in this kind of study. Now back in
Speaker 1: the Berkeley group actually had money to conduct this study.
Speaker 1: I think he said that it costs somewhere around the
Speaker 1: three dollar range to do the study because you're you're
Speaker 1: you're compiling lots and lots of data. You have to
Speaker 1: gather all this information and then you have to make
Speaker 1: sense of it and um and then actually does take
Speaker 1: a lot of time and money. It sounds like it
Speaker 1: shouldn't you know. It sounds like something you could plug
Speaker 1: into Wolf from ALFA and get an answer immediately. It's
Speaker 1: not the way this works. So their analysis said that
Speaker 1: the total electricity used by office and network equipment is
Speaker 1: about seventy four tara watt hours per year, which was
Speaker 1: about two percent of the total electricity use in the
Speaker 1: United States. And then if you were to throw in
Speaker 1: telephone switching equipment and manufacturing energy for semiconductors and computers, uh,
Speaker 1: it knocked it up to about three of all electricity
Speaker 1: in use in the United States. So why would you
Speaker 1: throw in the telephone switching. Well, because modems. The studies
Speaker 1: done in it was based on figures from ninety and
Speaker 1: we didn't all have DSL lines and cable modems at
Speaker 1: that point, right, and so we're talking seventy four Tara
Speaker 1: Lott hours at that time. That's a huge amount. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was just for the United States to this
Speaker 1: was not a global study, so we're really talking about
Speaker 1: just one nation. But the other problem that we have
Speaker 1: here is that if you're talking about figures that are
Speaker 1: based off of n equipment, a lot has changed in
Speaker 1: the years between and now we are using computers that
Speaker 1: have much more efficient monitors. Were using a lot more laptops,
Speaker 1: which in general consume less energy than a desktop computer would,
Speaker 1: but there are also lots and lots more of them.
Speaker 1: So you have to figure, all right, well, the energy
Speaker 1: efficiency angle, how much does that impact this equation the
Speaker 1: number of computer is, how has that impacted? Uh? The
Speaker 1: and you start to see where the problem is here.
Speaker 1: You can't just easily adjust these numbers and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: let's just you know, we'll fudge this one a little
Speaker 1: bit and we'll switch this one a little bit. Um
Speaker 1: without a full study. You can't say for sure how
Speaker 1: much energy is being consumed. True enough, UM, I actually uh,
Speaker 1: I did a blog post on the tech stuff blog
Speaker 1: not too long ago, um that uh, in which I
Speaker 1: quoted Bobby Johnson who published in the Guardian, the paper
Speaker 1: from the United Kingdom, and UM, basically uh the information
Speaker 1: I had read. And there are actually a couple of
Speaker 1: articles in the Guardian about UH these topics. So apparently
Speaker 1: they are among those who are interested in finding out more. Um.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of people who are starting
Speaker 1: to become concerned by the uh energy usage from the Internet.
Speaker 1: I mean, UM, from from what I can tell, experts
Speaker 1: believe that data centers on the Internet U use about
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty two billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year,
Speaker 1: and that's two percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions
Speaker 1: as well. UM. As a matter of fact, uh, a
Speaker 1: thousand searches apparently create about the same uh CEO two
Speaker 1: emissions as an average European car going one kilometer according
Speaker 1: to the Guardian. So UM, you know that's just I
Speaker 1: figure a thousand searches in Google that's you know, probably
Speaker 1: as much as we do in a day at how
Speaker 1: stuff works with the editorial staff. Maybe Lamborghini one kilometer average. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think Lamborghini is an average European car. Don't
Speaker 1: get destroy my fantasies of how people live in Europe. Oh,
Speaker 1: you could ask the guys at high Speed stuff if
Speaker 1: that's accurate. I'll stop in next time they're recording. But
Speaker 1: the thing is um the Climate Group says emissions related
Speaker 1: to computers are probably going to go up around that's
Speaker 1: a hundred one point for gigatons of carbon dioxide by
Speaker 1: because the Internet is just growing at that sort of
Speaker 1: a rate. That's pretty significant. Yeah, and back in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, there were some people who attempted to take
Speaker 1: another stab at guestimating. Essentially. I mean, I'm it sounds
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm slapping them for their their efforts, But really,
Speaker 1: when you get down to it, when you don't have
Speaker 1: the data in front of you, it is a guestimation.
Speaker 1: It's hard to quantify something like this too, because it's
Speaker 1: so you know, how would you break down the energy
Speaker 1: from somebody's electric meter on the side of their house
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well, you know your fridge used you
Speaker 1: know an eight to this, Yeah, and you have to
Speaker 1: figure out as well. Even with servers. I mean there
Speaker 1: there's a difference between the amount of energy a server
Speaker 1: will consume at a peak time versus a trough um.
Speaker 1: That's all that's called your your load differential. There, you
Speaker 1: know your difference and load and the uh if you
Speaker 1: if you have a really efficient server, um, the difference
Speaker 1: is going to be minor, like within the five to
Speaker 1: ten percent range where your your server will be consistent
Speaker 1: and it's not gonna very wildly from full use to
Speaker 1: trough use. And that's just meaning that it's very efficient,
Speaker 1: not that it's not that it's the all underpowered or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Um, you know, before we go on,
Speaker 1: just going to say too that I think that I'm
Speaker 1: just guessing, but I'm betting that the data centers, the
Speaker 1: facts and figures that we're seeing from the data centers,
Speaker 1: probably don't take into account the massive amount of air
Speaker 1: conditioning needed to keep those machines cool. Right, So you're
Speaker 1: not breaking down the different you're you're breaking down the
Speaker 1: building as a whole. You know, say well, this Google
Speaker 1: data center uses x amount of electricity per year, Well
Speaker 1: it doesn't say well, part of that the lighting for
Speaker 1: the people who work in the building, and part of
Speaker 1: that is the you know, fifty three air conditioning units
Speaker 1: sitting on the roof and all that stuff. It doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't go any further than that. Yeah, well there's
Speaker 1: and there are some studies that specify whether or not
Speaker 1: they take that kind of thing into account. And of
Speaker 1: course not all data centers use air conditioning. Some use
Speaker 1: water cooling systems instead. And I was going to mention
Speaker 1: something along those lines in a minute. All right, well,
Speaker 1: then I'll leave that for then. But the actually I
Speaker 1: should say that when I said a load differential, that's
Speaker 1: that's actually my brain throwing a wrong word, and it
Speaker 1: should have been load factor. I'm just gonna say that
Speaker 1: now because I'm sure people are already emailing me. But
Speaker 1: now that you've hit send, just know that I did
Speaker 1: eventually get around to getting it right. Um so the
Speaker 1: uh but no, Back in two thousand seven, this other
Speaker 1: study that I was talking about, it's not even really
Speaker 1: a full study. Uh, there was a question online about well,
Speaker 1: how much electricity does the internet use? And people were
Speaker 1: talking about this study and trying to extrapolate from that
Speaker 1: how much energy was being used at that time At
Speaker 1: two thousand and two thousand seven. So the person who
Speaker 1: tackled this came up with some interesting numbers. Uh. He
Speaker 1: decided that, UM, once he studied this carefully, said that
Speaker 1: the world consumption in billions of kilowatt hours for a
Speaker 1: for data centers was a hundred and twelve point five
Speaker 1: billion kilowatt hours. All right, the PCs and monitors five
Speaker 1: eight billion kilowatt hours, bodem's routers and that sort of
Speaker 1: thing hundreds or hundred sixty seven billion kilowatt hours, and
Speaker 1: then phone network one billion kilowatt hours for a grand
Speaker 1: total of approximately eight hundred sixty eight billion kilowatt hours.
Speaker 1: And that was in two thousand seven. But here's the
Speaker 1: thing was that he was basing this off of figures
Speaker 1: for um, these older computers, So he's looking at power
Speaker 1: consumption figures from years and years ago. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about old CRT monitors which were not as efficient necessarily
Speaker 1: as some of the l C D and plasma monitors
Speaker 1: that we have today. Yeah, you know, I saw a
Speaker 1: number on NPR that was interesting. Um. Their website said that, uh,
Speaker 1: this is not kill a lot hours, but um, they
Speaker 1: say that in the United States, more than one billion
Speaker 1: dollars has spent every year keeping on computer monitors that
Speaker 1: are not really in use. Right, that's you know how
Speaker 1: accurate that is, But that's you know, I would I
Speaker 1: believe it. People leave their computers on and screens are
Speaker 1: are pretty they're pretty energy and hungry, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so put your computers to sleep, or at least your
Speaker 1: monitors the So yeah, the this eight h sixty eight billion.
Speaker 1: It's one of those figures that some people like to
Speaker 1: to say that's how much energy the Internet consumes per year,
Speaker 1: and other people point out, well, that's not really true
Speaker 1: because we don't have enough information. We don't you know
Speaker 1: this this is taking into account old equipment. And yeah,
Speaker 1: while monitors have gotten better over the years, we've also
Speaker 1: had faster processors, which consume more powers. So as monitors
Speaker 1: have become more efficient, processors have demanded more energy. So
Speaker 1: it's again one of these sort of seesaw things. You
Speaker 1: have to look at all the different factors and there's
Speaker 1: no easy way to say, all, right, well, how many
Speaker 1: high end computers are out there, how often are they
Speaker 1: accessing the Internet. How many low end computers are there,
Speaker 1: like netbooks, how many netbooks those are accessing the Internet
Speaker 1: all the time because they don't have the native capabilities
Speaker 1: to really do everything you need to do on the
Speaker 1: computer itself. So that's why this this conversation is a
Speaker 1: difficult one to have, but sixty eight billion, it's good
Speaker 1: number to kind of keep in the back of your mind.
Speaker 1: That's sort of a best guess right now. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit more about energy, I assume
Speaker 1: because you had some stuff about water coolings the THEMS
Speaker 1: at least. Yeah, one of the uh, they're talking about supercomputers.
Speaker 1: I ran across some information about IBMS Power five seven
Speaker 1: five supercomputer UM, which actually was linked to from one
Speaker 1: of the other posts, and I thought this was pretty
Speaker 1: cool because it's got it uses water chilled copper plates
Speaker 1: over each of its microprocessors UM and that's a lot
Speaker 1: because they're four processor course on each rack of the
Speaker 1: supercomputer UM. But the water cooling uses less electricity than
Speaker 1: you would using traditional cooling methods, so that's also much
Speaker 1: more efficient. Yeah, because you know, if you think things
Speaker 1: like that could help us cut down Yeah, when you
Speaker 1: think about it, UM, water is just it's a it's
Speaker 1: a better cooling system because it as a fluid. It
Speaker 1: is more efficient at carrying heat away, and you can
Speaker 1: just run water across, uh, you know, using some sort
Speaker 1: of tube system. Obviously you're not just you're not just
Speaker 1: dousing serves and water necessarily. You know, I tried that.
Speaker 1: I just turned a hose on my computer in it.
Speaker 1: It's it doesn't run that way at all. Why, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably a bad way to do a water cooling system.
Speaker 1: But if you're doing it correctly, and the fire department
Speaker 1: was upset too, sure the water, the water will carry
Speaker 1: the heat away much more efficiently than air will. And
Speaker 1: you can then reclaim the water, you know, you you
Speaker 1: just cycle it exactly. You just you know, move it
Speaker 1: through so that it can release the heat, and you
Speaker 1: reclaim the water. You cycle it back through, so it's
Speaker 1: not like you're using tons and tons of water and
Speaker 1: it's just going to waste. You're using the same water
Speaker 1: in the system, and then occasionally, I'm sure, replenishing it,
Speaker 1: but not like not like you just turned the tap
Speaker 1: on and let it go. You know, I wish I
Speaker 1: had made the turning the hose on the computer joke
Speaker 1: because I was going to say, yeah, and if you
Speaker 1: put the fish in there, that the heat kind of
Speaker 1: cooks the fish. But yeah, I've already made a joke,
Speaker 1: so I won't make um. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that I found that was funny was and the
Speaker 1: reason I find it funny is because it's so contested.
Speaker 1: But um blogger and author Nicholas carr Uh said he
Speaker 1: he did a blog post that a lot of people
Speaker 1: disagree with a few months ago, but it said, um,
Speaker 1: the Second Life avatars themselves, just keeping the avatars running
Speaker 1: use one thousand, seven or fifty two kilowatt hours per year.
Speaker 1: The average human uses two thousand four and thirty six
Speaker 1: kilowte hours per year. But uh, about the person the
Speaker 1: average person in Brazil, The average Brazilian uses one thousand
Speaker 1: four kilo one hours, So basically Second Life people in
Speaker 1: Second Life use almost as much electricity as the average Brazilian.
Speaker 1: He says, Now he's you know a lot of people
Speaker 1: disagree with him, but if it's even close to that,
Speaker 1: now they do they leave the company that that runs
Speaker 1: Second Life, leaves the servers running and the avatars are
Speaker 1: on for as long as that's the thing they got in.
Speaker 1: They broke it down and said, well, you know, if
Speaker 1: the avatar is only on for two hours there. You know,
Speaker 1: such and such average people online, and it's not all
Speaker 1: the people on Second Life versus the average Brazilian who
Speaker 1: you know runs twenty four hours a day. Uh so, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just think it's funny though, to compare a virtual
Speaker 1: person to a human being. Um, you know, I would
Speaker 1: imagine that they're probably I don't know how accurate it is,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine that it's got to to run
Speaker 1: all those those data centers to keep the world of
Speaker 1: Second Life going. Um, you know, it would be at
Speaker 1: least reasonably comparable to what happening been in Second Life. See,
Speaker 1: they just need to hit that switch. They just need
Speaker 1: to hit that switch. I mean, you know, it's no
Speaker 1: reason to keep that going, is all I'm saying. Alright, alright,
Speaker 1: so I've got nothing more to say about Second Life.
Speaker 1: I've never tried it. Yeah, well, you value your sanity,
Speaker 1: you just keep it that way. There are some cute
Speaker 1: things about Second Life. I wrote how Second Life works,
Speaker 1: all right, and it's there are some people who are
Speaker 1: legitimately using that as a way to make friends and
Speaker 1: and have fun conversations and chat about all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: and they enjoy being able to modify their avatars, and
Speaker 1: so I guess they're the ones who are chalking up
Speaker 1: these kill of one hours because they're the ones who
Speaker 1: are going back over and over again. But then there's
Speaker 1: everything else, and there's a lot of everything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and everything else. I mean like some pretty hardcore porn stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's special, right. I didn't write too much about
Speaker 1: that in the article, but yeah, wow yeah, okay, alright,
Speaker 1: so moving on, So do you have anything else about electricity? No? No, Um,
Speaker 1: I just wish that we were able to deliver a
Speaker 1: hard and definitive numbers, and this is absolutely it. But
Speaker 1: I feel the same way. So if there are any
Speaker 1: research institutions out there who wish to grant us three
Speaker 1: to four hundred thousand dollars to do a study, we
Speaker 1: will happily accept that money and we will see you
Speaker 1: in our research center, which happens to be on the
Speaker 1: big Island of Hawaii. Um. It's just that was the
Speaker 1: best place we could put it. So if you want
Speaker 1: to give us that, we will report back to you
Speaker 1: in ten maybe fifteen years. Okay, then sounds good to me.
Speaker 1: So I guess that just brings us round two. Listener man,
Speaker 1: Oh no, today's listener mail comes from Chad from Montana,
Speaker 1: a Big Sky. Hello. First off, love the podcast. You
Speaker 1: guys do an excellent job of explaining things in a
Speaker 1: way easily understood. You make tech stuff interesting and not overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Thanks you're welcome. I have a question for you. I
Speaker 1: don't really recall hearing too much about bits and PCs
Speaker 1: until Windows Vista came out, and it seemed like it
Speaker 1: was front and center, and how software hardware wouldn't be
Speaker 1: compatible anymore because one was on a thirty two bit
Speaker 1: and the other was on the sixty four bit. I'll
Speaker 1: be honest, I really don't even understand what they mean
Speaker 1: when they say thirty two bit or sixty four bit,
Speaker 1: And when I tried to ask a computer salesman what
Speaker 1: it meant, he couldn't even give me an easy answer.
Speaker 1: So this seemed like an excellent question for the fab
Speaker 1: tech duo. How do bits work? And how is sixty
Speaker 1: four different from thirty two? Trying to fit it into
Speaker 1: the how theme? If possible, please address Mac users and
Speaker 1: also snow Leopard and Windows XP Vista and seven. Thanks well, Chad.
Speaker 1: Here's the nice thing is, once you understand how this works,
Speaker 1: it applies to everything across the board. It's it's not
Speaker 1: something where it's different for Windows versus snow Leopard versus
Speaker 1: anything else. So let's start with bits. Now. Bits are
Speaker 1: your basic information units, right, and they come in two varieties,
Speaker 1: zero and one, unless you're using a quantum computer, in
Speaker 1: which case it can be both zero and one and
Speaker 1: everything in between. That's a cubit uh. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about quantum computers in some future podcast when both of
Speaker 1: us are ready to tackle quantum physics. But your basic
Speaker 1: bit is a zero or one. You can think of
Speaker 1: it like a switch, you know, it's like on or off.
Speaker 1: And then if you put two bits together, then suddenly
Speaker 1: you can have up to four integers represented. You have
Speaker 1: a quarter ha ha ha, two bits, nice shaven a haircut.
Speaker 1: So but you can have up to you can represent
Speaker 1: up to four different states using two bits. And by
Speaker 1: that I mean you could have a zero, zero, zero, one,
Speaker 1: one zero or one one. And so every single time
Speaker 1: you add a bit, you increase the number of integers
Speaker 1: you can represent. Um and engine roll any for any
Speaker 1: number of bits, it results in two to that number
Speaker 1: in integers. So if you were to use two bits,
Speaker 1: maybe two to the power of two, which is four. Right. Uh, Now,
Speaker 1: thirty two bit processor can handle up to thirty two
Speaker 1: zeros and ones all strung together in various states, and
Speaker 1: that results in oh, four point three billion integers. That's
Speaker 1: how many different integers you can have with a thirty
Speaker 1: two bit system. Yeah, but a sixty four bit system,
Speaker 1: now sixty four bit, that results in one point eight
Speaker 1: times ten to the nineteenth power integers, which I looked
Speaker 1: this up is eighteen quintillion integers. Now, if you're wondering
Speaker 1: what a quintillion is, it goes billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion,
Speaker 1: So it's lots. Now, when we're talking about a thirty
Speaker 1: two bit system or sixty four bit system, we're really
Speaker 1: talking about the processor here, all right. So your processor,
Speaker 1: what it's doing is it has and it has a
Speaker 1: set of instructions that it has to uh complete upon
Speaker 1: a set of data. Now the thirty two bit or
Speaker 1: sixty four bit that refers to the amount the kind
Speaker 1: of data that's coming into the processor. If it's a
Speaker 1: thirty two bit processor, that means it can accept digits
Speaker 1: of up to the thirty two bits. It can't accept
Speaker 1: anything more than that because it's just not capable of
Speaker 1: doing it. That's it's beyond its processing power. So a
Speaker 1: sixty four bit processor can process sixty four bit information.
Speaker 1: So if you have a thirty two bit processor, you
Speaker 1: cannot use an operating system that is the sixty four
Speaker 1: bit variety because it is asking too much of your processor.
Speaker 1: Your processor can't handle that data flow, not normally. No,
Speaker 1: and why would you want you know, why is this important?
Speaker 1: What's the thirty two bit and sixty four bit? What's
Speaker 1: the deal? It becomes important when you're using really high
Speaker 1: end applications, things like three D modeling, video process, video processing.
Speaker 1: Maybe some really really heavy audio processing too, that can
Speaker 1: also do it. But video processing really because you're talking
Speaker 1: about rendering and things like that. Um, if you are
Speaker 1: doing cryptography, cryptography involves factoring very large numbers. So the
Speaker 1: more the larger amount of information your processor can handle,
Speaker 1: the more complex you can make your your cryptography programs
Speaker 1: so that it is very difficult to crack. So essentially
Speaker 1: it can handle more calculations and some more advanced you're
Speaker 1: doing more advanced computing, you can handle word right, it
Speaker 1: can do bigger calculations in the same amount of time
Speaker 1: that a weaker processor would do smaller calculations. I guess
Speaker 1: you could think of it that way. Okay, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not that the thirty two bit processor couldn't run
Speaker 1: the same applications. It probably could, it just would be
Speaker 1: much slower. So I hope that answers your question. Chad, Uh,
Speaker 1: we thought we'd take a stab at it. At any rate,
Speaker 1: If any of you have any questions, you can send
Speaker 1: us email at our email address, which is tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And if you want
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Speaker 1: click on lots and lots of articles written by Johnson Strickland.
Speaker 1: So until then, I guess we will talk to you
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