VIA touts eco-credentials with 'carbon-neutral' CPU
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Green machine VIA has begun shipping what it claims is the first ever carbon-neutral computer processor. It's balancing the reduced carbon emissions resulting from the use of its C7-D chip with carbon removal efforts such as reforestation and energy conservation programmes, the company said today.â¦
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Memory standards association confirms a spec that it says will boost performance and reduce power.
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Green ITÂ is something of a chameleon that appeals to different users on different levels. From a 10,000-foot perspective, it's hard to knock the benefits of energy efficiency, recycling and vendors working side by side with users to promote the green agenda. However, many users are finding it difficult to adopt a technology that is not characterized by a wide selection of physical products that they can buy and implement in their IT infrastructures today.
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Cisco Systems wants to turn the enterprise data network into an electricity meter.Using open standards, the company wants to get server and storage vendors to collect and share information about their equipment and send it to Cisco routers and switches. The data could include power consumption, operating temperature and more. It&#39;s becoming a critical job, and because the network touches all IT resources across the enterprise, data collection should happen there, according to Paul Marcoux, vice president of green engineering.Marcoux joined Cisco from American Power Conversion only about six weeks ago after Cisco created the position to overlook energy issues across all parts of the company. Networking gear itself makes up a much smaller portion of IT power consumption than do servers or storage, but Cisco plans to go beyond just making its own products more efficient.Power is a growing issue in datacenters as the cost of energy rises and concerns about global climate change increase. Being able to collect and analyze information about power usage is a big part of the battle and becoming more crucial in the age of virtualization, according to Marcoux. Distributing storage and processing cycles without regard for power issues is not just inefficient, it&#39;s dangerous, he said.If virtualization software looks at a process that requires more computing power or storage space, then enlists servers or storage devices that are near to overheating or running out of power, it could send a rack of servers over the edge and shut it down, Marcoux said. For that reason, the virtualization system needs to know the power status of all the resources it may call upon, he said.By the same token, consolidated datacenters typically serve many departments of an enterprise and consume a lot of power, but those groups generally don&#39;t have to pay for their part of the power. In fact, the electricity bill often bypasses even the IT department, going to building management instead, Marcoux said. Collecting data about the power consumed by each device, and eventually by individual transactions, would allow enterprises to bill each department for the power it uses, he said.Software on routers and switches would collect the information and then take actions or forward it on to separate building management, energy management or virtualization control systems, Marcoux said. Given the large amount of energy data to be processed, Cisco may introduce daughtercards for its platforms to provide extra computing power, he said. He hopes the technology will be in place and collecting information in enterprises within three years.Because datacenters contain gear from so many vendors, open standards are the only way to make such a system work, according to Cisco. Fortunately, there already are several available standards, Marcoux said. Having standards already in place will help speed up adoption, Marcoux said.&quot;We&#39;re not trying to reinvent the wheel, we&#39;re just trying now to utilize the wheel,&quot; Marcoux said.Cisco&#39;s proposal would represent a whole new role for networks beyond communications, said Burton Group analyst Dave Passmore. Server vendors might go along with the plan, but Cisco can&#39;t count on smooth sailing, he said. Centralized power regulation would play a role in overall management of the datacenter, an area where Cisco is attempting to make inroads with other initiatives as well.&quot;Who controls virtualization in the data center is going to be the new battleground,&quot; Passmore said.
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Massively parallel, 64-bit POWER-based processor to debut at ISSCC
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A supposedly earth-friendly PC is being developed in Britain, featuring wood casing for keyboard, screen, and mouse.
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(InfoWorld) - Via Technologies announced that two of its PC chip sets have passed Microsoft Windows Vista Basic certification tests, ensuring trouble-free installation and driver upgrades. The certification testing confirms trouble-free installation of the Windows Vista Ultimate, Enterprise, Business, Home Premium and Home Basic editions, Via said in a statement. PC chip sets are the two chips, dubbed the Northbridge and Southbridge, that connect a PC's processor to main memory, graphics, audio and other chips inside a computer and regulate the flow of data between chips. The Via K8M890 chip set works with the full range of Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD) Athlon64 processors and AMD Sempron processors, including processors made for the latest AM2 socket. The Via P4M900 chip set was made to work with IntelÂ processors up to the 1,066MHz front-side-bus speed, including the latest Intel Core 2 Extreme chips. Aside from trouble-free installation, the certification ensures users can expect the chip sets to support functions that take advantage of some of Vista's new features. For example, both the Via K8M890 and Via P4M900 chip sets carry integrated graphics processing cores, the Via Chrome 9 IGP, which provide DirectX 9.0 graphics support and other enhancements meant to optimize Vista's visual experience. The two chip sets also support for the latest PCI Express add-in graphics cards, giving PC makers the flexibility to add greater graphics power, depending on user requirements. Both chip sets are available now from all of the world's top motherboard makers, Via said.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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New version of the Efficeon processor uses only 3 watts of power at 1-GHz speed.
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Intel's new plan in Chandler, Ariz., which started 45nm production last week, was built with recycled materials, uses the town's grey water, and increases indoor air quality - in a new "holistic" approach to being green.
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New silicon means less power, more range, Solarflare says Companies touting full TCP offload engines (TOEs) for 10Gig Ethernet are barking up the wrong tree - and worse than that, they do not comply with the specs for 10GBase-T, a chipset supplier has claimed.â¦
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VIA Technologies has officially announced its VIA K8T890 chipsets for the AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 processor and AMD Athlon 64 processor 4000+ for PCI Express enabled motherboards.
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Big Blue is green, Apple is brown. Whodathunkit? Eco-lobby group Climate Counts has issued a green rating scorecard that lauds Canon and IBM as veritable Planeteers, but dumps on eBay, Amazon and Apple as planet-hating muckity-mucks.â¦
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An organic climate change lobby group has issued green ratings for hardware and software-based IT suppliers as well as other businesses. IBM leads the IT pack while Apple, Amazon and eBay are bottom with zero green credentials.
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Energy Star 4.0 badges for new launches Dell, the green movement's most recent recruit, is trumpeting yet another be-kind-to-the-environment initiative. This time it's mobile workstations and notebooks that have been greenwashed, with the firm's latest launches, the Dell D430 Notebook and the Dell Precision M4300 mobile workstation earning the Environmental Protection Agency's newest Energy Star 4.0 badge.â¦
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The new PC motherboard meets U.S. Energy Star requirements for efficient power consumption.
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The unveiling of Via Technologies Inc.&#39;s tiny Mobile ITX motherboard turned heads at last week&#39;s Computex exhibition in Taipei. But what the company didn&#39;t announce was that prototypes of the board are already running Windows XP.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Commission is considering introducing a voluntary code of conduct on energy efficiency for datacenter operators. Next week, the Renewable Energies Unit of the Commission's Joint Research Center will meet in London to discuss the idea. If adopted, a code of conduct would be voluntary, said Antonia Mochan, spokeswoman for the science and research unit of the Commission. Those organizations that adopt it would agree to abide by certain principles or standards, she said. The London meeting will include a session on the technical capabilities for reducing datacenter energy use and what a code of conduct -- if one is to be adopted -- should include. Participants will include hardware manufacturers, including Intel, datacenter designers and datacenter operators. The Commission has made few regulations about computer energy consumption, said Kevin Fisher, Intel's standards and regulations manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, earlier this week. Environmental agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, which placed limits on greenhouse gas emissions for countries, are driving government interest in reducing energy consumption, Fisher said. Enterprises are interested in reducing utility costs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA)Â Energy Star programÂ is used internationally as a specification for energy-efficient desktop computers, but the specification does not address servers. Part of the problem is a lack of metrics for establishing efficient server power consumption, although several efforts are under way, Fisher said. The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit group based in Warrenton, Virginia, is developing a first-generation benchmark for evaluating the energy efficiency of servers. The benchmark will measure energy use in conjunction with performance metrics. In December, U.S. PresidentÂ George Bush authorized the EPAÂ to study datacenter power consumption. The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab at the University of California is also study energy issues with servers, and a report is due to the U.S. Congress in June, Fisher said. The Renewable Energies Unit meeting is a day after the UK Energy Summit organized by Datacenter Dynamics at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London and will be held in the same venue. Â