Tag Archive for Green

RB | June 27, 2009
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Wireless Power Gets Closer

intel_logoIntel has been working on wireless power transmission technology for several years, which I wrote about earlier, that now works over longer distances. At its Intel Research Day at the Computer History Museum in Mt. View California, on 06-18-2009, the company showed off a new variation of the idea that power can be transmitted through the air to run a speaker without any other power source.

Intel now calls the technology Wireless Resonant Energy Link (WREL). Intel’s goal of the WREL project is to cut the power cord. Building on principles proposed by MIT physicists in 2006, the WREL team has lit a 60W light bulb at a range of several feet and with 70%  efficiency.  WREL works in a fashion similar to the old 1970′s Memorex commercial staring Ella Fitzgerald where a singer can shatter a glass by hitting  its natural frequency, at which it absorbs energy efficiently. In the case of WREL, a coil of wire with a natural frequency around 10MHz takes the place of the glass, and a similar coil takes the place of the singer. The technology uses two flat copper coils tuned to resonate at a particular frequency. One wire releases electromagnetic energy and the other picks it up in much the same way an opera singer can shatter a wine glass by singing at just the right pitch, said researcher Emily Cooper. The wireless transmission shows efficiency of 90 percent at distances of up to a meter, she said.

Intel hopes the technology will be useful for charging devices like netbooks or smartphones in a room without wires. Intel also predicts the technology could be used within devices such as a laptop.  to replace the fallible wires that connect laptop screens through a hinge, Cooper said

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Intel admits that the next milestone for the WREL project is to build a rectifying circuit that can convert the RF power to DC power without upsetting the carefully tuned pair of coils.  Intel has demonstrated they can charge a light bul with 60W of wireless power, which should be sufficient to charge a laptop. However to power a laptop or charge a battery, Intel will need DC power, not a 10MHz AC signal. The need to drive down the power requirements for the next generation of computing devices is also helping drive Intel’s latest attempt to break into the UMPC process market with the Atom chips  and the next-generation “Moorestown” processor which boasts lower energy consumption requirements. It is also notable that Intel has a stated long-term plan of 60watts power for mainstream desktop processors, down from a maximum consumption 130 watts of the new Pentium Extreme Edition 840, according to Benson Inkley, a senior processor applications engineer, with Intel in an article at Tom’s Hardware.

While it seems that Intel is on a trajectory to cut the power requirements and costs of owning and operating a PC fleet, it will be a while. It is much more likely that Moorestown processors are going to aided by the pending IEEE 802.3at POE+ specification which will allow up  to at least 30W which can be used to charge devices. It is my guess that the reports of the demise of wired networking are greatly exaggerated until Intel figures out how to economically and safely deliver 60W through the vapor.

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Category: Electricity, Green, Hardware, PC | Tags: , , , , ,
RB | June 20, 2009
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Low Cost Desktop Virtualization

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On Thursday (06-18-09) LG, and NComputing announced an agreement where the Korean manufacturing giant will include NComputing’s desktop virtualization hardware on a new line of LCD  monitors slated for release in June 2009.

NCompncomputinguting’s desktop virtualization product includes both a proprietary hardware access device and Vspace desktop virtualization software. The hardware piece will be integrated in the LG monitors that will enable a single PC or server to be virtualized. Two LCD sizes will be available in the U.S.  on the LG SmartVine N-series line: a 17-inch and 19-inch monitor. The monitors can also be used as traditional monitors that connect using VGA.

lglogo“LG is integrating the access device into these monitors themselves,” Stephen Dukker, chairman and CEO of NComputing says. “So, instead of being a stand-alone, PC-like device, it becomes an all-in-one computing device, and you just plug your keyboard, mouse and microphone into the monitor,” he says. The solution will be priced below $200, and will offer both NComputing’s L series which connects via Ethernet and the X series access device, which requires a local PC connection.

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The partnership is the next act in the migration away from desktop PCs to portable computing (laptops, netbooks and mobile device). The traditional PC makers don’t realize that desktop virtualization allows the owner to save money throughout the life-cycle of the device. There are savings in up front acquisition costs; there are operational savings by reducing the management costs and the risk of obsolescence. Long term savings can include reduced power consumption and e-waste problems. NComputing indicates that by using LG’s monitors, customers can lower their computer hardware costs by 60%, maintenance costs by 70%, and electricity costs by 90%.

The combined capabilities of the two firms should make the rest of the industry take notice of their progress (or lack). LG shipped more than 15 million monitors in 2008, and NComputing claims over over a million seats sold in over 140 countries.  NComputing won the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation award, the Gartner Cool Vendor Award and the Frost and Sullivan Green Computing award.  NComputing CEO Stephen Dukker was previously co-founder and CEO of low-cost PC maker eMachines.

Category: Green, Hardware, Networking | Tags: , , , , , , ,
RB | May 23, 2009
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Energy Star for Servers Released

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released an Energy Star specification for computer servers on May 15, 2009. This new specification covers standalone servers with one to four processor sockets is in part a reaction to estimates that by 2011, IT equipment is  expected to account for 3 percent of all U.S. electricity consumption, according to the EPA. Andrew Fanara of the Energy Star  product development team helped spearhead the process of getting a spec for servers told DataCenter News. “EPA believes this new server spec is an important first step to help attract attention to the need and opportunity to reduce cost and save energy in federal data center facilities, especially during a time of tight budgets,” Fanara told GCN.

The new specification includes:

  • Power supply efficiency requirements which should increase efficiency and reduce waste heat
  • Power consumption limits for when the server is idle
  • Single-socket server are limited to 60 watts
  • 2-3 socket servers are  limited to 151-221 watts
  • Allowances for additional installed components
  • Power and performance data sheet  detailing power consumption  in a common format
  • Ability to report energy-related statistics to data center management software.

Vendors Respond - Major server manufacturers are already submitting their products for Energy Star approval. HP says that two of its hp_logomost popular servers, the DL360 and DL380 G6 are now Energy Star compliant with more servers added to the list soon. IBM‘s next-generation Power6 processor has power management abilities that let it drop down to a 100-watt level. Sun Microsystems has been touting the energy efficiency of its UltraSparc T1 “Niagara”-based servers for quite a while . The Niagara CPU typically uses 72 watts of power at 1.4 GHz. Jay Dietrich, ibm_logoprogram manager at IBM’s corporate environmental affairs group told GCN,“Overall, we think that there has been good progress on the server requirements, and we think EPA has done some good work in getting that specification focused on the issues.”  Not to be left out, Dell launched an energy-efficient server line in December. Dell touts it’s PowerEdge Energy Smart 1950 III and 2950 III servers as the Dell green sun_logoalternatives

Criticism- The new Energy Star criteria has its critics. The biggest complaint  is that a qualifying server need only demonstrate energy efficiency when it’s in idle, powered on but doing no work. This is the equivalent of dellcomparing the mile per gallon of a Hummer and a Prius sitting at a stop light. Both use a similar amount of fuel idling, not going any where. Many argue that the amount of energy spent idling is less important than how many miles per gallon the vehicle gets while driving, doing its work.  However, firms are becoming increasingly aware of this issue and are addressing it. Organizations are  deploying virtualization to eliminate underutilized servers to get as much performance per watt as possible from their hardware. In most IT organizations there are underutilized servers which spend a great deal of time idling, so idle server power consumption  is relevant but not the whole story. Servers are not like desktop or laptop computers because they are not meant to be idle. Instead, they are designed to be highly utilized and available. “A heavily utilized server is much more energy effective than a small server running at very low utilization rates,” Albert Esser, vice president of data center infrastructure at Dell to GCN.

Subodh Bapat, a distinguished engineer at Sun explained to Data Center News another drawback to the program: It doesn’t take into account how many cores per processor a machine has. “The fact is, when you go from a server that has four processors with two cores each to two processors with four cores each, you save energy. That’s not recognized by the spec,” he said. “If you’re shipping a server with one processor, it doesn’t matter if you have one core or two cores or four or eight. You still get the same idle power allowance. There’s no benefit for the fact that you can do, say, eight times work with a fewer number of watts.”

“This is a great first step, but it’s not a complete spec,” says Bapat. “It’s a good start toward finding out which servers are better than others on an energy basis.” Bapat wasn’t entirely critical about the Energy Star program for servers. For example, a compliant server must be capable of measuring real-time environmental data . “Transparency is always a good thing. Energy Star requires the ability to report power consumption data pretty much across the range of utilization and at all times that the server is on. If you want to know how much [power is being consumed], you should be able to ask it and it should tell you. That’s a very useful feature.”

EPA Responds - The Tier 2 Energy Star specification will cover servers with more than four processor sockets, blade servers and fault-tolerant machines is expected in October 2010. The Tier 2 spec will also define a metric that compares server performance with energy consumption. EPA’s Fanara speculates that finding the magic numbers,  could take a while. The EPA is developing an Energy Star spec for data center facilities and is collecting data from volunteering data centers now. Fanara said his group also hope to have a framework document for an Energy Star for data storage equipment out in June 2009.

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I agree with Sun’s Bapat that the current version of the Energy Star requirements for servers is a good first step. Just like any 1.0 version release, there is still a lot of work to be done.

energy_starEnergy Star was introduced by EPA in 1992 as a voluntary program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency. The Energy Star label can be found on more than 50 different kinds of products, new homes and commercial and industrial buildings. Energy Star is the EPA labeling program designed to help consumers pick out energy-efficient products. If a manufacturer qualifies its product, it can place an Energy Star label on it, and the product information can also be displayed on the manufacturer’s and the Energy Star Web site.

Category: Green, Hardware, Networking | Tags: , ,
RB | March 22, 2009
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Vampire Power Draining Budgets

electricityVampire power, aka standby power, phantom power, wall warts, standby loss, idle current, phantom power, ghost load and vampire load is costing business and consumers billions annually. The term vampire power refer to the electricity many devices and appliances waste just by being plugged in (even if they’re switched off). Due to poor design or short term manufacturer cost-cutting these devices draw power all the time. According to Grinning Planet, an Australian study of global standby power usage in electronic devices estimated that electronics manufacturers could reduce vampire power by 30% immediately just by using existing, better technologies-and with minimal additional cost to consumers.   Tree Hugger cites a study from  Future Forests, which says only 5% of the power drawn by cell phone chargers are actually used to charge phones. The other 95% is wasted when there is no phone in the charger to charge.

Grinning Planet also cites recent survey on the vampire power that in the United States, 5% of electricity usage is due to standby power. In Europe, the numbers run slightly higher: France at 7% and Germany and the Netherlands at 10% each. Australia comes in at 11%, Japan at 12%.

According to UC-Berkley the US consumes 26 percent of the world’s energy.  Of that energy, approximately 5 percent is vampire power. USAToday puts that in perspective, that’s between 200 and 400 terawatt hours — roughly as much electricity as the entire country of Italy consumes in a year. The Energy Information Administration says that in the United States alone, vampire power costs consumers more than $3 billion a year.

All this energy use enacts quite a hefty toll on the environment. Coal-burning power plants produce carbon dioxide, a leading cause of global climate change. Therefore, less vampire power translates to lower carbon emissions.

As a beginning I have installed Edison by Verdiem. Verdeim is a Seattle WA based start-up. The Edison software reportedly doesn’t completely shut the computer off but rather moves it to a “suspend” state, which uses less energy. Users can also schedule to shut down the screen and hard drive before going into suspend mode.

We’ll see what issues result from the installation of this software and the various states it can induce on my WinXP test box. In future updates I will also try out physical devices such as .

Watt Stopper/Legrand’s Isolé plug load controller

Smart Strip Power Strip

Power-Saving Essential SurgeArrest 7 from APC

Category: Electricity, Green | Tags: ,
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