Google, Intel launch energy efficiency program
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, California  - Web search leader  Google Inc.  and semiconductor maker Intel Corp.   launched a broad-based program on Tuesday to introduce  more energy-efficient personal computers and server systems to  save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Internet-age technology giants on Tuesday joined environmentalists in a campaign to dramatically cut the amount of electricity wasted by computers.
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(InfoWorld) - A group of some of the biggest technology companies said they've committed to a plan to improve the power efficiency of equipment they make and use. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative , which includes companies such as Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., aims to improve the efficiency of power sources for computers and servers and encourage end users to take advantage of underused power management techniques. Only about 50 percent of the power that leaves a power outlet reaches a PC, because inefficient power cords leak energy, Google's Senior Vice President of Operations, Urs Holzle said Tuesday during a press conference to announce the program. Climate Savers has defined a series of standards for power supply efficiency in servers and PCs that it suggests members adopt between now and July 2010. By 2010, the Climate Savers standard will define a power supply that is above 95 percent efficient, Holzle said. The program asks manufacturing members to build products to the standard and companies to pledge to buy products that have the improved power supplies. The improvement doesn't require the development of new technologies. "This is all do-able today with technology we have and know," Holzle said. The reason that vendors haven't deployed such efficient power cords is because they cost more, said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's digital enterprise group. A PC with a more efficient power cord would cost around US$20 more and a server an additional $30, he said. To address that price premium, Climate Savers is encouraging energy companies to issue rebates to users that buy products with the more efficient power supplies. Over time that cost premium is expected to drop with volume production, Gelsinger said. In addition, end users will save on their energy bills, also helping to offset the cost, he noted. Another component of Climate Savers is general education and encouragement for end users to take advantage of power management mechanisms that are typically built into existing PCs. "Ninety percent of PCs are capable but aren't utilizing power management techniques," Gelsinger said. "We want to drive IT policy in enterprises," he said. Improving power supply efficiencies and the use of power management techniques along the timeline Climate Savers has described would reduce global carbon emissions from the operation of computers by 54 million tons per year. It would save 62 billion kilowatt hours of energy in 2010, worth around $5.5 billion in energy costs, the group said. In its own data centers, most of Google's servers already have power supplies that comply with the Climate Savers standards for 2008 and 2009, Holzle said. Google began investing in the more expensive supplies because "it's worth spending a bit more on the power supply to save on the energy bill," he said. He defended Google's overall carbon footprint, despite questions about company jets that are hard on the environment. He pointed to the solar power used at the company's headquarters and incentives for employees to buy hybrid cars. In addition, he hinted at future energy-saving programs that the company plans to announce soon. Although Holzle said he knows Google's carbon footprint, he declined to share it. Other companies that are already part of the program include Yahoo Inc., Hitachi Ltd., eBay Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., NEC Corp., Red Hat Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd., Unisys Corp. and the Linux Foundation.
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Google, Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard pledged this week to develop and use more energy-efficient computers and computer components.
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Intel and Google are heading a group comprised of both technology and environmental groups aimed at promoting energy efficient computing.
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AMD Opteron servers prove more power-efficient than Xeon-powered servers in tests.
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By Associated Press  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- A coalition of technology companies and environmental groups led by Google Inc. and Intel Corp.
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Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. has released a test suite designed to enable IT managers to compare servers from different vendors on the basis of energy efficiency.
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Google and Intel today kicked off an effort to help blunt the impact of global warming by bringing greater energy efficiency to personal computers and servers.
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(InfoWorld) - A startup chip company is introducing a power-efficient processor it has been developing for three years, just as the market clamors for energy efficiency. P.A. SemiÂ is offering a dual-core, 64-bit processor Monday that it claims uses only 5 watts to 13 watts of electricity running at 2GHz, making it 300 percent to 400 percent more power-efficient than comparable processors. P.A. Semi is making its PA6T-1682M PWRficient processor available to companies that will test it for possible use as an embedded processor in networking equipment for telecommunications, military or aerospace customers, said Dan Dobberpuhl, co-founder and chief executive officer. The chip is based on Power Architecture technology, which the company has licensed from IBM. P.A. Semi claims the new product has a better performance-per-watt rating than an IBM 670MP processor, an Athlon 64x2 processor from Advanced Micro Devices and the Core 2 Duo from Intel. But P.A. Semi won't be directly competing with AMD and Intel because it won't be selling into the server or personal computer markets with its initial product. P.A. Semi's performance measures were not independently verified. P.A. Semi has improved power efficiency through advanced dynamic power supply regulation, Dobberpuhl said. In older chip design, power coursed through the processor continuously. About 10 years ago, chip designers introduced dynamic power supply regulation in the processor block to start and stop the flow as needed, a process also called "clock gating." But P.A. Semi gets more granular, clock gating not at the block level, but at the registry level within a block. "That level of fine grain clock gating inside the block, no one else has really done," Dobberpuhl said. "In our chips we have more than 25,000 gated clocks; most chips that do [block level] clock gating have maybe a few hundred." Although the 1682 is targeted only at networking equipment, the company has plans to later introduce other members of the PWRfficient family, including single-core processors that could find a wider market in blade servers and some portable devices. But even just in networking equipment, the chips could be a big help in energy efficiency, said Richard Wawrzyniak, senior market analyst with Semico Research Corp. "For all the people who are concerned with their power budget, or they have run out of power budget, and they are trying to figure out some way to increase their performance, this makes a lot of sense," Wawrzyniak said. Dobberpuhl was previously a vice president at chip maker Broadcom, which acquired his company, SiByte, in 2000. He also spent 20 years at Digital Equipment Corp. developing microprocessor technology. Other co-founders and executives of P.A. Semi, based in Santa Clara, California, and founded in July 2003, worked with Dobberpuhl at Broadcom or SiByte. Engineering samples of the 1682M sell for $700 apiece while an evaluation kit carries a price tag of $8,500. Power efficient operation of servers and other computers has become a top concern of data-center managers because of rising energy costs. It has long been a focus of P.A. Semi and its embedded processor development. Said Dobberpuhl: "We were doing this before it was cool."
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Intel, the world&#39;s top chipmaker, and Nokia, the No. 1 mobile-phone maker, plan to lesson their respective impact on the environment, the companies said separately Monday.
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In an unexpected development, chip giant Intel Corp. has joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The nonprofit project aims to equip children in developing countries with specially designed low-cost notebooks powered by chips from Intel&#39;s rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD).
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The new PC motherboard meets U.S. Energy Star requirements for efficient power consumption.
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Memory standards association confirms a spec that it says will boost performance and reduce power.
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AMD provides a sneak peek at how its pending quad-core chip will improve performance and save energy.
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A new computer chip developed by Intel promises to perform calculations as quickly an entire data center, while consuming as much energy as a light bulb. By the Associated Press.
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Scientist Jonathan Koomey and AMD exec Mario Rivas say the amount of energy required to run data centers has gotten out of hand.