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The report's estimates, although based on reputable data, still contain some uncertainties. One of these, Koomey says, involves measuring the number and type of Google's servers. Google--and potentially other companies--uses servers that don't fall into any of the three main categories of server that the report includes: volume-class servers (which cost less than $25,000 per unit), mid-range systems (between $25,000 and $500,000 per unit), and high-end systems (more than $500,000 per unit). The company instead buys motherboards, the main circuitry of a PC, and uses them to custom-design servers. "Those wouldn't come under the IDC definition of 'server,'" says Koomey. "They fall under the PC category." To estimate the potential impact of Google's servers on the findings, Koomey used a New York Times-reported estimate of 450,000 Google servers. Assuming this and other power estimates are correct, Koomey claims that Google's servers would increase electricity consumption in the volume class of server by about 1.7 percent.
Still, the starting point is solid enough for researchers to use the findings as input for a study on data-center power consumption mandated by a recent Congressional bill. In December 2006, the Senate approved legislation introduced by Representatives Anna G. Eshoo, D-California and Mike Rogers R-Michigan, requiring research into reducing the power consumption of servers and data centers. "This will be used to inform that process," Koomey says.
Koomey expects that the report will spark industry-wide improvements, from energy-saving microprocessors and chip architectures to more-efficient cooling technology and software that helps distribute the workload in data centers more resourcefully. "I think in the data-center area, there is a lot of opportunity for improvement," Koomey says.
Far-flung data centers could use otherwise unharvestable renewable energy for computation.
The social network breaks an unwritten rule by giving away plans to its new data center—an action it hopes will make the Web more efficient.
Not a reason to build more nuc reactors
Nuclear reactors won't make a dent in today's power needs.
They are incredibly expensive. One of the most expensive forms of electricity.
They take 10 years from planning and approval to operation typically.
They take 2,400 highly skilled personnel each.
in US individual reactors are down for refueling every 2 years, unlike new modular designs, or possibly the untried-yet but good idea traveling wave breeder reactor.
Highly toxic hazardous waste has to either be left hanging around the plant forever till de-commisioning after 30 years (another major expense) or be hauled around the country expensively subsidized by govt to a waste repository that is required by law for feds to build but has not been built yet.
The industry get govt subsidized liability insurance as no electric company wants to build a nuclear plant if they'd be liable for costs incurred of cleanup and not being able to use hundreds of square miles after spilling highly toxic waste aka three mile island or chernobyl.
They are also terrorist targets.
So they are a bad business decision
Our own human brain uses a 20-25%* of our bodily energy -- a developing brain up to 60%*. So, it's not surprising that the developing global brain is going to gobble for awhile. Feed it.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain "Wiki-truth"
You are forgetting about savings
I would suggest that although the cpus in servers and such consume some quite large amounts of power, it is highly likely that the information these servers manitain and provide access to save untold amounts of power consumption. Without these servers much of the increased communication and the rest that goes along with the internet, have provided us with huge productivity and effieciency gains in the daily activities of the workforce world wide. So yes, there is a cost, but I believe you have forgotten to mention the benfits that are produced by these servers. I imagine it is fairly difficult to quanify the benefits but they more than outweigh the power consumption costs.
Sun Microsystems has been selling "more energy efficient" servers for a while now, under the CoolThreads label -- see http://www.sun.com/processors/whitepapers/UST1_pwr_v1.0.pdf
Here's a snippet from one of their customers, Matthias Schorer, Chief Architect at Fiducia IT AG:
"Unpacking the box we couldn't believe a 32 thread server could be so small. But after running our own benchmarks it's pretty clear that looks can be deceiving. With the Sun Fire T2000 servers we'll be able to replace our current servers at a rate of 4:1 while doubling our performance. And if that's not enough it, it looks like we'll be able to cut our energy use from 5.2 to .35 kw/hour. That's a factor of 14. Amazing!"
More at http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/testimonials/
So anyone still burning the megawatts with Intel should be looking at changing over to save money and CO2!
Re: Sun is ahead of AMD and Intel
Have a look at the next generation of the Cool Threads technology (a.k.a. Niagara2) in this presentation delivered at ISSCC - http://www.opensparc.net/pubs/preszo/07/n2isscc.pdf
The energy consumption between 2000 and 2005 may have doubled, but has anyone looked at the trend (not numbers, but rate of growth) in the 5 years since? I would suspect that the rapid adoption of cloud and virtualization has slowed that growth rate. Would be interesting to see the curve.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
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New Energy Star Specification
According to recent reports, the Energy Star program is due to release new computer specifications in July. The federal government must purchase Energy Star qualifying products, but it will be interesting to see if current electric bills are high enough to persuade corporations to purchase and vendors to develop Energy Star complaint servers.
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