Generally people argue that static HTML is more energy efficient than server side rendering.
I wonder If that is true in the case of static HTML "that loads an SPA", versus a server-side rendering with a proper cache in place. The SPA loading will still consume good energy on each client computer. Would love to see some numbers.
Lots of hype, lots of projects and approaches, and lots of opinons about what is more convenient, but few numbers measurements of resources (space, time, what more?). May be It silly me, and the difference in energy terms is irrelevant.
My intuition is that network transfer uses almost no energy, on a marginal basis, because the network links are always on anyway. When you pay for bandwidth, you're paying the amortized costs of building and maintaining the infrastructure.
Rendering a SPA on a client device consumes CPU time, which definitely uses energy proportional to the number of client devices.
Assume the server uses less clock cycles to render than the client--e.g., because of optimized software, hot caches, or tuned hardware.
Therefore rendering on the server should always be more energy efficient than on the client.
That is my intuition also. I heard Vercel's founder on some talk claiming the energy-efficiency of their approach, and thought that should be proved with facts (mostly because of the "x clients" factor you commented). Thanks.
I would love to hear how the deal was made to include the repository transfer. It is really surprising.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230524161733/https://github.co...