Python's carbon guilt
Peter J. Holzer
hjp-python at hjp.at
Sat Oct 10 12:31:43 EDT 2020
On 2020-10-10 15:58:18 +0000, Peter Pearson wrote:
> Python advocates might want to organize their thoughts on
> this subject before their bosses spring the suggestion:
>
> From https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/we-re-part-problem-astronomers-confront-their-role-and-vulnerability-climate-change :
>
> . . . Astronomers should also abandon popular programming languages
> such as Python in favor of efficient compiled languages. Languages
> such as Fortran and C++, Zwart calculates, are more than 100 times
> more carbon efficient than Python because they require fewer
> operations.
>
It would be interesting on which data he based these calculations. For
simple benchmarks of numerical code that's almost certainly true, but I
doubt anyone writes code intended to run on a supercomputer in plain
Python. Surely such programs would use numpy or other specialized
libraries which are already written in C or Fortran and may even use a
GPU if present? There is of course still some overhead, but it's much
smaller.
hp
--
_ | Peter J. Holzer | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) | |
| | | hjp at hjp.at | -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!"
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