Comments on: Google: Server efficiency needs new recipe

Mobile computing companies have successfully lowered gadgets' power consumption. Too bad that work doesn't help much with servers, according to a Google engineer.

[Marcus Westrup]

Which of course, misses the point.
Two very big power users are not directly part of the computer core. Power supplies are rarely efficient (60 to 80% depending on load). The need to air condition an entire room - when you only need to cool a few square inches of electronics - wastes much more.

Start with redesigning the computer center. An integrated power system for all the machines would be more efficient and reduce the heat load. Next, vent the CPU / Hard Drive heat directly outside. These devices run warm anyway, and would be fine with ordinary outside air for cooling (as long as they get enough air flow).

[greeny73]

Another step from Google to be more green - if only other big companies would start following their lead.
check out www.cutyourfootprint.com to find a good profile of how green Google (and other big companies) actually are...

[carlhage]

Mobile computing and servers aren't that different. Both run >95% idle on the average (when not in sleep mode) and waste most of the power. Laptops have a much better transactions/watt rating (and lower total cost) because of better care in power management. Servers have multi-cores, but don't power down the cores when not needed. A better solution is a multi-core processor, with a special low power chip that can run low duty background processing and take near 0 power when idle. It should be possible to make a system where energy consumption is near 0 at idle and scales linearly. The problem is we have no standardized benchmarks and manufacturers don't disclose power usage, so have no incentive to make them cheaper to use.