Low Power Servers & Desktops?

dhart asks: "Does anyone make low power servers or desktop computers? Couldn't this be accomplished with commodity parts designed for portable PCs. Energy efficiency is environmentally friendly, with the added benefit of smaller and cheaper UPS and AC units in a server setting. If the demand for these units increased, it could lower the cost of energy efficient parts and, by association, the portable computers that drive the technology."

Comments

Motivation

[jbert]

I suspect this won't happen. The reason is that there is (currently) insufficient motivation for people to consume less power than they need to.

Power seems to be cheap, a few pence/cents/whatever to keep lights running, run a computer, etc does not concern most (enough) people.

Laptops are different, since high power usage has a clearly perceived negative influence (shorter battery life).

Don't know what the answer is. Until we get lots of lovely clean (well, mostly) fusion power we have a problem.

But generally relying on people's good nature isn't enough motivation to pay 0.5% more for a 'greener' PC.

Not wishing to bait flames, but I think power is underpriced. Currently, power producers get to consume shared resources for little or no cost - hence the power consumers do not have the cost passed on to them.

Perhaps one day the idea that consumption of 'fresh air' (via pollution) (and any/all other items which get used up) is a privilege which should be paid for will seem as natural as the idea that you might need to pay for building/living on land. (Perhaps a poor analogy, since I suspect territorial humans have always had a sense of the value of land...ah well).

Basically, its the 'tragedy of the commons'. There is a shared resource which is being (over-)consumed because it isn't owned and charged out by someone and because those consuming it aren't being lent on by a bunch of angry villagers with pitchforks (I really need to work on these analogies).

If you throw into the mix that pollution in one country can cause acid rain in another (just as pollution in a river in one country can turn up in another downstream) and you have a hell of a mess which even per-country government intervention isn't going to dent.

I hope the free market types agree that something needs to be priced fairly (would it be a sensible market which prices a can of beans according to the raw cost of tin and neglected the cost of the beans, manafacture, marketing, etc) and that the green types see that simply imposing national taxes on certain types of consumption doesn't solve the problem.

So...what should be done?

Mobile Processors

[SEWilco]

Well, you can get boards which use the laptop-designed mobile processors. An easy one to search for is "Tillamook" -- search for that along with words such as "motherboard", "VGA", "ISA", "PCI" (to filter out non-computer references).

Some are single-board computers which may require that your computer case use PC/104 or passive ISA/PCI bus designs.

Dams Cause Earthquakes

[scotpurl]

I'm serious, and no, this isn't some X-files nonsense. The correct term is "Reservoir-Induced
Seismicity". A URL to get folks started:

http://www.google.com/search?q=dams+cause+earthq ua kes&hl=en&lr=&safe=off

Think of it this way. When you build a house, it settles. When you introduce a lot of weight anywhere onto the earth's surface, something has to deflect. In the case of softer ground, it settles, whilst bedrock deflects less, often imperceptably.

The introduction of thousands of tons of weight into an area does cause problems. Everyone who's taken a geology class has heard how land uplifts after glaciers recede (weight removal), so why wouldn't land sink if weight is introduced?

Two more examples. Quake Lake west of Yellowstone National Park. A large earthquake caused a mountain to fall, only a couple of years after a dam was built upstream. Hungry Horse Dam near Glacier National Park. Almost no siesmic activity, then a nice 7+ Richter quake only a couple of years after it filled.

I know it sounds hokey, but honest folks. T'aint snake oil I'm selling here....

Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly

[nukebuddy]

dhart:
Energy efficiency is environmentally friendly...

Energy efficiency is not intrinsically environmentally friendly. There is no shortage of clean energy that can be exploited in the form of nuclear fission power. California saves lots of energy by not using nuclear power to desalinate (make into fresh water) sea water. California alternatively drains Mono Lake and diverts water from the Colorado River and the San Joaquin Delta.

Spending money to reduce energy consumption tends to hurt the environment by interfering with environmentally friendly factors such as economic and technological growth. It's a waste of engineering resources that could be put to positive environmental use -- such as devising cheaper and better nuclear power plants.

Re:Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly

[spinkham]

Laptops general aren't made for constant use.
The cooling on them isn't all that great, and hot components=higher failure rate.

Re:Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly

[gmhowell]

But the original story was about using laptop components. I took that to mean chips, drives, ram, etc. If you were suggesting just plugging up a laptop into a docking station and calling it a server (or workstation) I'd agree with you. But if someone were building a new hybrid (workstation with low power consumption drives, chips, etc.) there's no reason to believe that someone would put a fan on the chip. Also, if the goal of the original system is low power consumption, underclocking of some components could decrease the heat output, and lower consumption even more.

Also, I'm not sure where you get that laptops are not made for constant use. Maybe they aren't. Again, I don't use 'em, and I don't buy 'em. But they are certainly sold and reviewed as such.

Let me reiterate: there's a difference between throwing a laptop onto a desk and plugging in a monitor, and what the story is about. The story (in my estimation) is asking why not build one of those dinky PC's, but with low consumption, probably notebook based, parts.

Re:Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly

[gmhowell]

Due to having to be built to be dropped and exposed to greater heat/cold cycles, I would venture to say that the average laptop component is better built than a desktop. Further, if placed in a non-mobile, desktop environment, it should last longer.

But I'm no engineer.

Using a low wattage processor is a good start

[Mononoke]

• Lower wattage CPU leads to lower heat dissipation
• lower heat dissipation requires less machine cooling
• lower machine cooling needs means lower room cooling needs

Now, for some Apple hardware specs:

G4 Cube - 225 Watts Maximum (Not sure why it's higher than the server...could be the video card.)
Cube Specs

G4 Server - 220 Watts Maximum (The G3 server is 170 Watts Max.)
G4 Server Specs

15" LCD Studio Display - 50 Watts Maximum (An equivalent CRT can almost triple this.)
LCD Display Specs

Those Wattage ratings aren't power supply output ratings. Those are what the device will pull from the wall, including any heat losses in the power supply.

I can't find any other manufacturers who want to tell me their wattage requirements.

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Re:Using a low wattage processor is a good start

[HerrNewton]

Actually you can forget the display---all current Apple displays use the ADC connector which powers through the tower, not through a separate transformer in the display.

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Laptops

[Xunker]

Regarding servers: I was thinking myself this question a while ago, myself - the most logical choice being a laptop as the server.

• Benefits:
• Low Power
  
• Very Low heat (little or no active cooling required)
  
• variable power savng states (the machine can throttle it's processor usage dependent on how much it is being used).
  
• Small (can fit in a closet)
  
• Built-in battery backup
  
• Can be found cheap, if you buy one with a broken screen. (just plug in an external monitor, and only turn it on when you need it)
  

• Drawbacks
• Sometimes are Proprietary (i.e. memory)
  
• CPUs are Seldom upgradable (unless it's a Powerbook :) )
  
• Mobile CPUs are usually slightly slower than desktop CPUs or the same MHZ
  
• Mobile technology is usually 1-2 generations behind desktop machines (we have 1.2ghz processors on the desktop and 700mhz mobile CPUs have only recently appeared)
  
• Software support may be lacking for some models (Especially Linux, BSD or NT4)
  
• Expandability can be low - they don't make PCMCIA RAID controllers.
  

In my case, I could probaly pick up a used p233 laptop with a busted screen for only a few hundred, buy two PCMCIA ethernet cards, drop Linux, *bsd (or even NT4 or Win2k) on it and it could do all my web serving and firewalling/NATing.

Re:Laptops

[specialguest]

The standard low-power-consumption server is the StrongARM powered Netwinder. Originally developed by Corel and later sold to Rebel.com, the Netwinder is a very professional server. It comes with Linux and Apache installed and preconfigured and uses ~15 watts, less than most laptops.

Malthusian

[SEWilco]

"The fossile energy-resources will be used up very quickly. Or at least those, that are easy to exploit."

1. Coal is a fossil fuel (some has plant fossils).
2. Oil and gas are geological fuels, they're in places just being discovered now.
3. Club of Rome 1972: World reserves 455 billion barrels. "We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade," said President Jimmy Carter.
4. 600 billion barrels used between 1970 and 1990.
5. 1990: Oil reserves over 900 billion barrels.
6. 1999: World oil reserves: 1,000 billion barrels (5,000 of natural gas also).

Of course, we're ignoring fission plants. Not that it matters when nobody is building power plants. Well, we can all fire up our backyard generators and see what that does to air quality.