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AMD 'Venice' Core Shows Big Drop in Power Needs
dtjohnson writes "
Lost Circuits has carefully
measured the power consumption of four recent Athlon 64 cores and
has found that power consumption has been dramatically reduced in the
new 'Venice'
core from the relatively-low (compared
to Intel P4) numbers of the original 2003 'Clawhammer' core to less
than 30 watts under load and less than 10 watts for Windows at
idle. This huge power reduction was apparently accomplished by a
combination of 90 nm die shrink, Silicon-on-Insulator
technology, and something called 'dual-stress
liner technology' As Lost Circuits points out, power
consumption worldwide has been exploding as more CPUs come online and
the CPU power requirements increase so a significant power reduction
will reduce the burden on electrical grids everywhere."
... shouldn't it also reduce the heat produced by processors, therefore extending processor life?
:)
Or, for an overclocked machine, extending the amount of time it takes for the processor to die?
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
You laugh, but it's true. I spent some time living in Kenya, and Internet cafes are everywhere. The power grids in these countries are already so stressed that to have a chip that drastically reduces power consumption in these places would be a tremendous help. And not just for Internet cafes, but for point-of-sale terminals, businesses, etc. (And yes, they really do have point-of-sale systems in the "third world.")
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.
In other words, cautiously we project the current power consumption of all computers running somewhere in the order of at least 20 Hoover Dam power plants
.04% of the annual US oil consumption.
If 9000Mw/hrs are the equivalent of 4 Hoover dams and current estimate is 20 Hoover dams, then current consumption by CPUs is around 45,000 Mw/hrs.
This site quotes 10.9 cubic meters of oil per megawatt/hour.
If my math and sources are right, then CPUs alone, worldwide consume the equivalent of nearly 500,000 cubic meters of oil each year.
According to this site, one American barrel of oil is 0.15899 cubic meters.
That means that the power consumption of all the CPUs in the world equate to over 3 million barrels of oil/year.
Perspective? The US currently uses a bit over 20 million barrels of oil/day. So CPUs worldwide are using around the equivalent of
You need to get a solar chart for your area of the world, and look up the equivalent insolation in terms of hours. Around here, we get an equivalent of 3.5 hours of maximum sunlight per day, averaged over the course of the year. Assuming your numbers are similar, you'll need about (24/3.5)*200 watts worth of solar panels -- that's 1370 watts. Assuming you get a great deal, you might pay $2.25 per watt, uninstalled cost, so that's over $3000 just for the panels. You'd also have to build a mounting system and possibly install a small motor to keep the panels pointed in the optimum direction.
On top of that, you need a battery system to provide power during hours of darkness. I could continue BS'ing the numbers to figure out how many batteries you'd need but would rather not. Needless to say, it's going to be several thousand dollars for the whole system.
(Yes, I've done this before)