There are three main approaches to lowering the power requirements of your computing equipment:
Power-saving equipment
The Sun Niagara T1 CPU, Intel's Core Duo and Core 2 Duo series, VIAs Eden/C7 CPUs, IBMsX3 chipset and AMDs Cool'N'Quiet technology all aim to provide the same processing power, while using significantly less electrical power in the process.
The chips use different technologies - the T1 uses a high number of cores and execution units with a lower speed to provide equivalent power, Intel and AMD uses a variety of power switching and speed stepping technology to lower the overall power requirements, particularly effective in the Opteron CPU used in many servers. IBM's X3 uses the better conductivity of copper and Silicone-on-insulator (SoI) technology to get better power usage out of their CPUs and chipsets.
There are three main approaches to lowering the power requirements of your computing equipment:
Power-saving equipment
The Sun Niagara T1 CPU, Intel's Core Duo and Core 2 Duo series, VIAs Eden/C7 CPUs, IBMsX3 chipset and AMDs Cool'N'Quiet technology all aim to provide the same processing power, while using significantly less electrical power in the process.
The chips use different technologies - the T1 uses a high number of cores and execution units with a lower speed to provide equivalent power, Intel and AMD uses a variety of power switching and speed stepping technology to lower the overall power requirements, particularly effective in the Opteron CPU used in many servers. IBM's X3 uses the better conductivity of copper and Silicone-on-insulator (SoI) technology to get better power usage out of their CPUs and chipsets.
This week, I'm going to be looking at issues of power consumption, techniques for reducing your power usage, and way of adjusting how you use, pay for and supply the power you need.
We'll start with a straightforward question:
Worried about power consumption in your datacenter?
There's a good rundown of the 6 things you can do now to fight power and cooling problems. There are some common tips here, but the article also mentioned the approach by many manufacturers to try and lower the power consumption of their CPUs and platforms, rather than simply relying on changing the way you use and deploy your computing power.
This week, I'm going to be looking at issues of power consumption, techniques for reducing your power usage, and way of adjusting how you use, pay for and supply the power you need.
We'll start with a straightforward question:
Worried about power consumption in your datacenter?
There's a good rundown of the 6 things you can do now to fight power and cooling problems. There are some common tips here, but the article also mentioned the approach by many manufacturers to try and lower the power consumption of their CPUs and platforms, rather than simply relying on changing the way you use and deploy your computing power.
I noticed today that the feed links on Planet MCslp were linked incorrectly to Coalface.
This only affects the links that were provided in the panel - if you’ve subscribed by clicking on the Subscribe button in your browser, or just supplied the main Planet MCslp URL (http://planet.mcslp.com), you should be subscribed just fine.
If you think you’ve got the wrong links, the way to check is examine what posts have appeared in your Planet MCslp feed - you should be getting a range of posts, including in the last week, four from Laptop Solaris, five from Computerworld, and three yesterday from the new Mobile blog generated by the camera on my mobile phone.
Repairing those patches on your lawn can be a fun and rewarding experience. Putting patches on trousers can be a trend setting - or breaking -experience. Some may enjoy the process of patching up their networking to get the best out of their network hardware and infrastructure, but few people I know enjoy patching their computers.
Why do we hate it so?
Well for one, patching can cause more problems than it solves. Untested patches cause faults, and having incompatible patches on different machines can cause interoperability and stability issues. Even just applying patches effectively is problematic. Failing to commit a patch can be just as bad when a virus or problem hits.