A few days ago Google and Intel announced their new project: “Climate Savers Computing Initiative.” Basically it calls for the introduction of more energy-efficient personal computers and server systems to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their program calls for the setting of better efficiency goals for computers and software that manages power consumption.
Already they have recruited some prominent members of the tech and environment sector to support them:
Dell Inc. (Charts, Fortune 500), Hewlett-Packard Co. (Charts, Fortune 500), IBM (Charts, Fortune 500), Lenovo Group Ltd. , software maker Microsoft Corp. (Charts, Fortune 500), the Environmental Protection Agency and more than 25 environmental groups, companies and universities for the energy savings campaign.[source]
According to them a computer wastes about 50% of its power to heat while a server wastes about 33%. This is according to the 80% efficiency rating set by the EPA. What the project is batting for now is a 90% efficiency rating of power supplies (by 2010) that will cut global emissions by 54 million tons a year and incur $5.5 billion in energy savings. The downside of raising the bar to 90% is that it increases the price of PC’s by $20 while a server by $30, but you can reclaim that cost in energy savings.
Historically Intel, AMD and Sun have long ago forked their entire processor design architecture to concentrate on reducing their energy consumption. The “High Clock Speed” wars have long been over as they concentrated on producing more bang for the energy buck. Most notable of the technology direction taken was to increase the number of “cores” of a processor versus increasing the clock speed in an overly stretched silicon base. Based on this, its about time that other tech companies follow suit in developing products that consume less electricity.
I hear a lot of news of tech companies pushing for more energy efficient products. I hope the auto industry would be as noisy in touting their developments in providing more energy efficient cars. Or is it because they don’t concentrate as much as the tech sector in this endeavor? Oh thats just me thinking out loud.
Category: Global Warming, Environment
