Since 1986 - Covering the Fastest Computers
in the World and the People Who Run Them
Visit additional Tabor Communication Publications
August 02, 2011
Data Centers Consuming Less Power than Predicted
Jonathan G. Koomey, a consulting professor in the civil and environmental engineering department at Stanford University recent released a report that examined the data center power consumption between 2005 and 2010. His findings contradict several earlier reports, including one from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that predicted a doubling in data center energy usage during the same five-year period. 
Koomey contends that data center power use is not growing at exponential rates as predicted, but rather that it is slowing due to the rise of server virtualization technologies, lowered demand for computing due to the financial crisis of 2008 and new, more power-efficient devices and data centers.
In a special report prepared for the New York Times, Koomey claimed that “electricity used by data centers worldwide grew significantly, but it was an increase of only about 56 percent from 2005 to 2010. In the United States, power consumption increased by 36 percent.”
Conversely, the 2007 EPA report estimated that national energy consumption related to servers and data centers would nearly double from 2005 to 2010 to roughly 100 billion kilowatt hours of energy at an annual cost of $7.4 billion. It also predicted that data center demand for power in the United States would rise by 2011 to 12 gigawatts of power, or the output of 25 major power plants, from 7 gigawatts, or about 15 power plants.
As the New York Times reported, “Industry consultants and executives agreed with Mr. Koomey’s new analysis, but they also indicated that the slower growth might be temporary.”
In addition to reviewing energy consumption by servers and data centers, the report also considers the role of some of the cloud and data center giants, including Google. Koomey was able to obtain specific information about Google's data centers (no easy task given the company's secrecy about its server farms)--enough for him to contend that Google gets top marks for its efficiency.
Full story at New York Times
Discussion
There are 0 discussion items posted.
|
Join the Discussion |
Sponsored Links
Businesses that want to be on the cutting edge of their industries are increasingly turning to high-performance computing (HPC) solutions to handle complex compute processes and speed up their rate of innovation. Download this Executive Brief to see how businesses in energy, life sciences and entertainment put HPC solutions to work in their operations.
Accelerate your science with Seneca
One of the first HPC providers installing a 4X NVIDIA Kepler K-20 cluster. Invites you to a free evaluation on Seneca’s NVIDIA K20 Kepler cluster, pre-loaded with AMBER, NAMD, LAMMPS
Webinar: Programming Heterogeneous X64+GPU Systems Using OpenACC
Join Michael Wolfe as he compares the advantages and costs of using both low-level models and the directive-based OpenACC model for programming accelerated heterogeneous systems. Registration is free.
- Visualize Historical Usage for Optimized Returns on HPC Investments
- ClusterStor™ 1500 – High Performance Efficiency
- PGI 2013: OpenMP 1.5X faster than GCC, new GNU-compatible OpenACC C++ compiler, CUDA 5 and Tesla K20 support, and more.
- Acer and Altair simplify cluster computing
- Introducing the Cray CS300 Cluster Supercomputer Series
- The Accelerated Genomics Cloud $25,000 Giveaway
- Receive Higher Application Performance with end-to-end 56GbE
- Memory Debugging Challenges in Parallel and Distributed Applications
RSS Feeds
Feeds by Topic
- Applications
- Developer Tools
- Interconnects
- Middleware
- Networks
- Processors
- Storage
- Systems
- Visualization
Feeds by Industry
Feeds by Content Type
- Features
- Blogs
- Short Takes
- Off the Wire
- Whitepapers
- Multimedia
- HPC Soundbite Podcasts
- HPCwire Job Bank
Subscribe to All Content
May 21, 2013
- Keyes and Sterling to Headline IEEE Cluster 2013 Conference
- Cyber Network Gears Up for Growth in the Cloud With IBM PureSystems
- New OMAP5432 Processor-Based Evaluation Module From Texas Instruments
- TwinStrata Introduces On-Demand Disaster Recovery as Service for VMware Users
- Weidlinger Launches PZFlexCloud Using CliQr Technologies
- "Places2Be" Project to Boost European Leadership Around FD-SOI
May 20, 2013
- Cray and VBRX to Host Event for Upstream Applications in Oil and Gas
- Dell to Deliver Public Cloud Through Partner Ecosystem
- Mentor and Tezzaron Optimize Calibre 3DSTACK for 2.5/3D-ICs
- Cloud Provider Selects Mellanox's InfiniBand as Their Cloud Interconnect
- Xyratex to Present at Barclay Telco and Media Event
May 17, 2013
May 16, 2013
- D-Wave Two Quantum Computer Selected for New AI Initiative
- Mines' Powerful New Supercomputer to Focus on Energy Research
- Kitware Develops Customizable Simulation Framework to Provide HPC for Mid-Sized Manufacturers
- Next HPC Installation Step Initiated at High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart
- HybridCluster2.0 Self-Healing, Ultra-High Availability Capabilities Unveiled
May 15, 2013
- Nominations for SC13 Cray, Fernbach and Kennedy Awards Due July 1
- Mellanox Technologies Ltd. Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Kotura, Inc.
- NYSERDA Awards $1.8 Million to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Bright Computing Named Finalist for the 2013 Red Herring Top 100 North America Award
- Flow Science Releases FLOW-3D/MP 5.0
- NEC Establishes NEC Ukraine to Strengthen Operations in Russia and the CIS
- Fujitsu Receives Supercomputer Order From Nagoya University
- Avere Systems Helps Framestore Create Extraordinary Visual Effects for Blockbuster Films
- Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Exascale Systems Call for Papers
May 14, 2013
- Multimillion Pound Project to Develop Next Generation Computing Systems
- HPC Simulations Target Nanoscale Materials Under Strain
- New IBM Center in Beijing to Speed Linux Applications on Power Systems
- OpenCL Software Development Kit Fosters FPGA Exploitation
- S&P Capital IQ and Kuberre Systems Sign Data Facilitator Agreement
- Solarflare to Speak at Linux Foundation Enterprise End User Summit
May 13, 2013
- SDSC Hosts First Annual Industry Partners Research Review
- AMD Targets Server Performance with Open 3.0 Release
- BICS Selects Infinera DTN-X for 500G Pan-European Network
- Juniper Systems Celebrates its 20th Anniversary
May 10, 2013
- Two ORNL Researchers, Two Joint Faculty Receive DOE Early Career Awards
- ODCA to Hypervisor and VM Providers: Interoperability is an Enterprise Cloud Requirement
- Special ISC’13 Session to Probe the Thinking behind Europe’s Human Brain Project
May 09, 2013
- Ireland Sprouts Native Top Supercomputer List
- Durham University Cluster Boosts Study of the Stars
- Supermicro Ships New 4U 72x 3.5" Hot-Swappable HDD Storage Platform
- Two Virginia Tech Teams Named Finalists in DARPA Spectrum Challenge
Most Read Features
- Adapteva Shows Off $99 Supercomputer Boards
- "No Exascale for You!" An Interview with Berkeley Lab's Horst Simon
- Cray Answers Mid-Market's Call
- The Week in HPC Research
- Saddling Phi for TACC’s Stampede
- Supercomputing Vet Champions Quantum Cause
- Intel’s Big Data to HPC Interconnect
- The Week in HPC Research
- NERSC Managers Shed Light on 'Edison'
- Emerging Technologies at SC13: A Chat with the Chairs
Most Read Around the Web
- Speaking Many Languages into the MIC
- Floating Funding to Exascale Island
- New Tome Tells Modern History of Supercomputing
- Sequoia Hits Warp Speed
- HPC and the True Cost of Cloud
- Revolutionizing Tornado Prediction
- CUDA-Designed Robot: It's a Hit!
- Finnish Researchers Welcome New Cray Super
- Running Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Cloud
- Blue Waters: Security at Scale
Most Read This Just In
- IBM and Forrester Webinar to Discuss New Ways to Reduce Cost in HPC and Big Data
- Altera Opens FPGAs to Programmers with SDK, Off-the-Shelf Boards for OpenCL
- D-Wave Two Quantum Computer Selected for New AI Initiative
- New Simulation Speed Record Achieved with Sequoia Supercomputer
- AMD Targets Server Performance with Open 3.0 Release
- Brain Outperforms Supercomputers
- Vicor's ChiP Power Component Packaging to Make European Debut at PCIM Europe 2013
- Mines' Powerful New Supercomputer to Focus on Energy Research
- Commercial Quantum Computing Company D-Wave Systems Launches
- XSEDE13 Student Programming Contest Registration Opens April 30
Feature Articles
CERN, Google Drive Future of Global Science Initiatives
Large-scale, worldwide scientific initiatives rely on some cloud-based system to both coordinate efforts and manage computational efforts at peak times that cannot be contained within the combined in-house HPC resources. Last week at Google I/O, Brookhaven National Lab’s Sergey Panitkin discussed the role of the Google Compute Engine in providing computational support to ATLAS, a detector of high-energy particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Read more...
Saddling Phi for TACC’s Stampede
The Xeon Phi coprocessor might be the new kid on the high performance block, but out of all first-rate kickers of the Intel tires, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) got the first real jab with its new top ten Stampede system.We talk with the center's Karl Schultz about the challenges of programming for Phi--but more specifically, the optimization...
Read more...
"No Exascale for You!" An Interview with Berkeley Lab's Horst Simon
Although Horst Simon was named Deputy Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he maintains his strong ties to the scientific computing community as an editor of the TOP500 list and as an invited speaker at conferences.
Read more...
Sponsored Whitepapers
Best Practices in Big Data Storage
05/10/2013 | Cleversafe, Cray, DDN, NetApp, & Panasas | From Wall Street to Hollywood, drug discovery to homeland security, companies and organizations of all sizes and stripes are coming face to face with the challenges – and opportunities – afforded by Big Data. Before anyone can utilize these extraordinary data repositories, however, they must first harness and manage their data stores, and do so utilizing technologies that underscore affordability, security, and scalability.
Progress in Parallel: the Bull Parallel Programming Center
04/15/2013 | Bull | “50% of HPC users say their largest jobs scale to 120 cores or less.” How about yours? Are your codes ready to take advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s ultra-parallel HPC systems? Download this White Paper by Analysts Intersect360 Research to see what Bull and Intel’s Center for Excellence in Parallel Programming can do for your codes.
Sponsored Multimedia
SGI DMF ZeroWatt Disk Solution
In this demonstration of SGI DMF ZeroWatt disk solution, Dr. Eng Lim Goh, SGI CTO, discusses a function of SGI DMF software to reduce costs and power consumption in an exascale (Big Data) storage datacenter.
Cray CS300-AC Cluster Supercomputer Air Cooling Technology Video
The Cray CS300-AC cluster supercomputer offers energy efficient, air-cooled design based on modular, industry-standard platforms featuring the latest processor and network technologies and a wide range of datacenter cooling requirements.
HPC Job Bank
Featured Events
- June 13, 2013
- June 14, 2013
Think Beyond Plastics Conference
Berkeley, CA
United States
- June 16, 2013
- June 20, 2013
ISC'13
Leipzig,
Germany
.gif)
- June 17, 2013
- June 18, 2013
Forecast 2013
San Francisco, CA
United States
- June 20, 2013
- June 21, 2013
CIO North America
Marina Del Rey, CA
United States
- June 24, 2013
- June 25, 2013
The Trading Show Chicago
Chicago, IL
United States
- June 25, 2013
- June 26, 2013
TERATEC 2013 Forum
Paris,
France
