Last Updated on Thursday, 18 March 2010 08:10 Written by Chris Hunter Thursday, 10 January 2008 19:00
Author: Justin Ohl
With trends in the technology industry moving towards an environmentally conscious attitude, it is surprising that the public does not reflect this mentality in their purchasing habits. Alas, the American market, both on the client end and on the server end, is not adopting the "greener" hardware they have at their disposal.
What the Processor companies are doing is pushing just as many clock-cycles through their processors as the previous generation, but with a lower heat envelope, lower power draw, and more work per megahertz. Everyone prefers more for less, something that AMD does hold the lead in is efficiency. The problem is that corporations and major bulk computer purchasers are sitting on old stock, wasting their money and natural resources.
Let us look at a scenario in a typical call center. A common location that usually runs hundreds of the cheapest computers imaginable. Usually, the systems are too slow and do not have enough ram. The implementation of these incredibly old and immense networks pulls a large amount of power; this power is wasted most commonly as heat. At the bare minimum, a PIII is sufficient for the typical call center employee. Unfortunately, companies usually use the bare minimum. These slow and inefficient machines spend most of their time idle or powering a simple browser. However, the amount of watts consumed for the work performed is atrocious by today’s standards
Moores law
If it is a PIII, then there are many limitations in terms of computing power, which may or may not be useful for the company, but the problem lies in the actual architecture of the chip. At .18 microns, for one transistor's worth of space on a PIII, we have, if the calculations are correct, 2.6 transistors. That is because 90 nm would be half of .18 microns. Additionally, the BE-2400 is a 65 nm chip, which would be another third drop in transistor size.
We could think about how much power a standard PIII pulls in: about 140 watts idle. Now that may not seem like a lot, but when there are 1000 computers to consider, the usage amounts shine. Just for the computers, that equivocates to a 140 Kilowatts/hour. In addition, that much heat has to be dissipated by the environmental controls. Every facet of using old equipment affects the electricity bill, something that is not looked at much by businesses.