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Congress Passes Energy Efficient Server Initiative
Krishna Dagli writes to mention a News.com article about a just-passed Congressional initiative. On Wednesday the House passed legislation instructing Americans to make energy efficiency a priority when purchasing computer servers. From the article: "Washington politicians voted 417-4 on Wednesday to tell American purchasing managers that it's in their 'best interests' to pay attention to energy conservation. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, also directs the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a three-month study 'of the growth trends associated with data centers and the utilization of servers in the federal government and private sector.'" Well, at least if they're doing this they're not passing 'real' laws, right?
...but why is this something our Congress is focusing on? How much time and money was just spent ignoring all the other needs so an oddball like this could get through?
Why don't they start pushing to have government offices 50% reliant upon solar (or other green power) by 10 years from now?
Get paid to code OSS
Maybe someone should try telling Americans the same thing about cars. To paraphrase the legislation "give high priority to energy efficiency as a factor in determining best value and performance for purchases of cars."
I also think that we do have a duty to think about the environmental impact of our actions, but I agree that passing a law to make someone consider this sort of thing is rather sad.
Oh arse
It's a good idea to recomend this, it does save money and the ability of a country to prosper has become bound up with it's ability to keep enough energy to do what it needs. I wonder if as well as energy efficiency we will see them pushing for non-fossil fuel methods of energy production on a large scale as well. I the UK a (slightly rigged) energy report suggested that alternative power and energy efficiency could provide great benifits, as well as Blair's pet project, lots og nuclear power.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
I find it interesting that AMD held the energy efficiency crown for the past 3 years and then this legislation gets passed the day Core 2 Duo reviews start pouring in. As many of you are well aware, Intel's new architecture has a strong focus on energy efficiency and beats out AMD in this area.
A saavy hosting company can virtualize multiple machines into one physical box. The companies who can do this well enough so that their customers cannot tell the difference will operate more efficiently. Power isn't going to get cheaper, until we figure out how to stop burning what's left of our fossil fuels.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
"...purchasing managers that it's in their 'best interests' to pay attention to energy conservation."
Congress asking managers to use "common sense" (the next buzz word I bet)??? Hopefully this doesn't catch on because I'm sure the 4 horsemen surely can't be far behind!
So they want to pass this for servers....but they wont force automakers to do this?
If you want to improve energy efficiency and reduce the price of oil overnight with little cost, increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. They haven't changed in years, and the average US vehicle fuel economy is the lowest point in more than a decade.
Mandate a 1 MPG increase by then end of 2007. The cost to the car industry is minimal. A 1 MPG increase doesn't sound like a lot, but a fleet-wide increase of 1 MPG is an enormous amount of oil. Start increasing the CAFE standard by 1 MPG every few years.
You know how much it costs to keep a computer running 24/7? If you look into it, you'll see it's usually at least a couple hundred dollars a year (if not more depending on energy cost, peripherals, and stuff like that.) Yeah, you have a huge server case, and penis envy might make you want to pop in a huge 600W power supply with a huge power-hungry CPU, and lots of high end and extra stuff that you don't actually need. I recall harddrives, as the main part of most home servers, do not take too much power (a couple dozen Watts i think). I used to leave my desktop on all the time and let it act as my file server, but am now using an older computer with a 250W power supply and a minimialist configuration, and let my desktop suspend to ram most of the time. Yeah, some may need that 600W for a home server if it's acting as a mythtv server/web server/media reencoding server, but most probably do not.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Most servers are heavily used. Most hardware-based energy efficincy work by lowering the cycles. The software approach to handling energy on servers is to shutdown a server and move the load over to others. Servers are better handled in the software realm, then hardware.
Instead, they should be working on desktop efficiencies. Monitors, harddisks, etc can be made a great deal more efficient. In particular, smaller drives (2.5"), in a office, small drives on desktop, with data on a central server, lcd monitors only, minimize the numbers of printers of make them sleep, etc, etc. There are far more desktops than servers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is very good thinking.
The amount of energy that is conserved by these new servers is clearly a benefit to everyone.
Now Congress can further this trend by raising auto fuel efficiency standards & provide a myriad of new ways for people and businesses to conserve energy.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Walter B. Jones (R-NC)
Ron Paul (R-TX)
Charles W. Pickering (R-MS)
1) How long and how many man hours did it take congress to come to the conclusion that it's a good idea to buy energy efficient servers?
2) Why are there four dissenting votes? More to the point, what's tacked onto this that would make a congressmen go on record as appearing to vote against energy efficiency.
There's more to this story here...
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I have to admit that I find the timing of this kind of odd. I live in DC, and in the past two months or so there has been a large marketing campaign by AMD touting the energy efficiency of their servers. In nearly every Metro station and in many bus kiosks around town, there are ads talking about how you could've cooled all of Georgetown with the energy saved by using AMD servers, or how the energy saved could've chilled X number of iced cappucinoes or whatever. Not that I expect Congresscritters to see these things while riding public transportation, but still...Interesting timing...
This guy's the limit!
"Congress might have to talk about the fact that the Middle East is about to descend into chaos due to complete mismangement over the past five years"
There's a limit to how much you can blame Bush for the fact that Hamas, Hesbollah, and Iran will only be satisfied if the Jews are outright exterminated. There's not much room for negotiation and compromise with these players, and they are large players that can't be ignored. How do you compromise with someone who wants all Jews eliminated? Do you meet them half-way and agree to let them wipe only half out?
Where were you when the voynix came?
"it's in their 'best interests' to pay attention to energy conservation"
Also, I'd avoid buying any aluminum tubes for hobby projects for awhile. THEY'VE GOT THEIR EYE ON YOU, AMERICAN PURCHASING MANAGERS.
Maybe someone should tell you that car manufacturers haven't been able to keep up with hybrid demand in the US for years. Believe it or not, Americans have been feeling pain at the pump for a long time. You might as well start telling people that smoking causes cancer.
As oil production peaks while demand continues to soar ever upward, all other industries that depend on cheap oil will suffer. If you're grid is powered primarily by coal, you will find that coal becomes much more expensive when coal mining equipment that depends on petroleum is more expensive to operate.
It is in our best interests NOW, TODAY to start paying attention to who is wasting electricity.
Few who have ever worked in data centers can say with a straight face that this is a sustainable business model in light of the looming energy crisis we're about to face.
Energy conservation is a good thing, even if we're all pissed at the state of energy markets today. They've misplaced the emphasis, unfortunately.
Consider:
1) All of the brick power supplies we're using that suck energy 24/7 when in use, or not
2) CRT energy efficiency vs information they give us compared to LCDs
3) Plasma displays. You can heat your living rooms with them
4) The state of ACPI and other energy savings initiatives, like EnergyStar jokes
5) How batteries are polluting aquifers because they're thrown away into landfills, then melt over time into ugly pools of toxic metal concentrations
6) How computing machinery disposal anarchy pollutes as much or more than #5
7) Why I have to buy a new set of computers and cell phones and PDAs so often..... and recycle the old ones (sorry, even Linux can't save a 486SX-25 machine)
This was for the perception that Congress is concerned. Instead, they're demonstrating technology cluelessness once again.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Because a bunch of people vote for political candidates who talk about "national energy strategy" and they bitch (again, at politicians) about gas prices. Regardless of whether or not people say they really want a centrally-planned economy, they truly act like they want the federal government to be in charge of energy production, energy use, and energy prices.
People, if you do want this stuff, then you just have to accept that Congress will pass laws about how much energy computers use, we will have our military forces in the Persian Gulf area, etc. If you don't like it, then tell your government to butt out, and that means voting against any candidate that says they will make energy issues part of their political agenda. Put your ballot where your mouth is.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
But getting congress to go along is very difficult. Even in light of all the corruption (Bush, Libbey, Cheney, Amberson , Frist, Delay, Jefferson, etc, etc,), it could not get passed. Sad.
I think that this will have to be a grassroot effort.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
At one time I kept my linux-based PC powered on 365 days a year. I had a little web server on there, email server, network backup service, etc. It was just a commodity Athlon-based computer running at 1.4 GHz or so.
... well, it adds up quickly. Beyond that, high density computing can easily exceed 6 KW per RACK! And that makes a lot of heat, and so you have to cool the data center 365 days a year - and that's even MORE power consumption. A $1 million dollar electricity bill per year for a data center ain't out of line. And remember, commercial energy costs are less than residential.
But then I noticed that my home power bill was growing. I used a watt-meter - a "kill-o-watt" - and saw that the PC alone was consuming over 125 watts of power at idle - and even more when the CPU was pegged and the disks were cranking. And remember, this doesn't include the monitor - just the PC itself.
In all, the 365 day-a-year, 24 hour-per-day operation of this PC alone was costing me about $160 (at $0.15 per KWh). I have a little computer energy consumption comparison here.
My servers at work cost even more - with all their redundant fans, power supplies, quad CPUs and so on,
Be certain that someone like Sun is lobbying for this. They have a power consumption advantage over some of their competitors, but the marketplace doesn't care. Convenient then to have the government mandate them caring.
an ill wind that blows no good
They all drove home smug in their SUVs.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
Not to mention the bans on drilling off the east and west coasts of the US, and around the Florida area.
We've had it offshore of LA for decades...time for the other states to allow drilling off their shores, and hold up their fare share of the energy obligations to the whole country.
Hell, most of the reason we got flooded so badly (aside from the incompetent Corps of Engineers poor levy building), was the loss of all our marshlands due to channels cut into them for ships and pipelines that caused our natural hurricane barriers to erode away.....
The Gulf coastal states have done their part and sacrificed for the energy needs of the US..time for more states to pull their share..allow drilling and refineries to be built on YOUR land and coasts....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Actually, it seems fuel efficiency hurts the govt. coffers. Less fuel produced and consumed...less taxes collected on it.
We've already seen this happening in the western states like CA, and Oregon. Lots of people using less gasoline...and now the states are trying to come up with imaginative new ways to collect lost tax revenue to keep the roads up...like the trials of cars that had computers and GPS systems that tracked the miles you traveled in the state (and God knows what other information, like if you were speeding any)...and would report this to the state at the gas station or maybe annual tag renewals..and you got charge on that data.
If you wanted to see a sharp drop in gas prices...get the fed and state taxes lifted for a day..and see what the price would really be.
No...the govt gets a LOT of revenue on fuel production and consumption.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If chips use less power, then it's likely we'll see more chips being used. If anything, just as much, if not more, electricity will be used. Same with gas--greater fuel efficiency does not necessarily mean lower demand. It could also mean more driving, since it would be more cost effective.
Either way, Congress can't do anything other than screw things up. The market has figured out that power-gulping chips are hurting its bottom line, so chip makers are making more efficient chips. Congress had nothing to do with that. The next step in chip design should likewise be dictated by what consumers want and are willing to pay for, not by politicians. Anything they do to "help it along" will muck it up.
So no, it doesn't matter...at least, not in the way you imply.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Hey, look - they could actively be screwing things up royally. This distracts them from causing real harm and provides /. with a reasonably close to on-topic story on what promises to be a slow day.
Drink plenty of fluids and watch your electrolytes. ... whl
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
I respect your article referral, but the reference only speculates on future gasoline usage and omits empirical data. For at least the past several years (and likely longer) gasoline usage has increased in California or remained the same year over year -- taxable revenue has always increased.
Here are my references:
Fourth Quarter 1999, 3.71% increase in gasoline usage
Fourth Quarter 2004, 29% increase in service station sales including gasoline (PDF)