Google Calls For Power Supply Design Changes

Raindance writes "The New York Times reports that Google is calling 'for a shift from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12-volt standard. Although voltage conversion would still take place on the PC motherboard, the simpler design of the new power supply would make it easier to achieve higher overall efficiencies ... The Google white paper argues that the opportunity for power savings is immense — by deploying the new power supplies in 100 million desktop PC's running eight hours a day, it will be possible to save 40 billion kilowatt-hours over three years, or more than $5 billion at California's energy rates.' This may have something to do with the electricity bill for Google's estimated 450,000 servers."

Comments

No...

[rsilvergun]

google hires experts on Electrical Engineering to figure out how to reduce the power bill on those 450,000 servers. Hell, I'm all for it. Less power means less heat means quieter fans (w/o spending an arm/leg on an Antec Sonata or whathaveyou).

Re:No...

[x2A]

Better than that guy they spent $50,000 who said moving the plant from the window and installing a water feature would allow the energy would flow much better...

If google come out with a "can save energy this way...", and gets the world to follow, the marketing value speaks for itself. That kind of reputation doesn't come easily.

Re:No...

[JahToasted]

Why do that when they can just rent out space in one of their super massive server farms. Think about it... you get some good bandwidth, your data will be mirrored on geographically and topographically separate systems. You don't have to worry about hardware failure or anything like that and you'll be able to get all the bandwidth you could ever want. You don't have to worry about database replication or syncing up data or anything like that, its all taken care of for you. Depending on your needs, you can have gmail, google maps, google office, adsense all integrated with whatever it is you're setting up... web app, file server, database system, whatever it is you're setting up you'll be able to get it from Google along with some nice cross platform tools to make it as easy as possible.

And because of economies of scale the price will be very reasonable, ie. cheaper than rolling your own solution. Hell, I'd consider it, wouldn't you?

Re:No...

[alienw]

If you can cut power consumption by 10 watts a machine (quite realistic) and you have 100,000 machines (Google has more) you just saved 1 megawatt of power, or about a million dollars per year in electricity (without even taking into account the electricity required for cooling). That's quite a chunk of cash.

What in a modern computer actually uses 12V?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

In the old days, disk drive motors and fans. But many of these now run on 5V, hence the cheap USB-powered drive cases out there. Chips at CMOS power levels run at 3.3v, TTL is 5v, but hardly anything runs at 12v anymore. It seems to me that if they'd just pick their hardware carfully, they could run their entire server rack off of 5v+- rails.

Re:What in a modern computer actually uses 12V?

[Anonymous Coward]

Video cards use a ton of 12v power, enough that high-end cards get a dedicated connector featuring two wires of it.

Re:What in a modern computer actually uses 12V?

[poot_rootbeer]

Google is not throwing 7950's in their servers. These systems run with on-board video at best. Google has no need for a video card that can do anything more than text, as with all non-windows based servers. For that matter, after the first boot, there is no need for a video card at all.

Seems to me Google doesn't want to fracture the commodity hardware market into server-class hardware using 5VDC power and desktop-class hardware using 12VDC. One standard, applied equally across the entire range of products.

Re:Big ego department

[purpledinoz]

I would bet a lot of the employees at Google have Electrical Engineering degrees. Don't underestimate the brain power Google has in its employee base. But the power supply issue they're trying to address isn't a technical challenge, but a political challenge.

I've wanted this for years.

[dgatwood]

The ability to have all my machines powered by a heavy cable carrying 12VDC would be pretty useful for several reasons.

• The UPS could be integrated into the power supply, avoiding lots of energy lost in converting it up to 110VAC and right back down again.
• The power supply would then be external, where it could be a fanless brick instead of being inside the case where it adds heat that must be dissipated.
• A switching power supply is theoretically more efficient than a wall wart. If everything were 12V, all those stupid little outboard devices could draw power off of the same supply source, resulting in better overall efficiency. More importantly, I would never let out the magic smoke when I accidentally plug a wall wart into the wrong device. :-)
• A 12V system can more easily be integrated with solar panels to reduce load on the power grid.

*sigh*

Re:Big ego department

[ve3id]

I have been saying this for years. We lose 10-20 % of energy charging a battery in a UPS with 117V, we lose another 20-30% in the inverter to get it back to 117V, and then we lose another 10% getting the 117V back to usable voltages for the PC.

It does not take an expert in electrical engineering, just common sense.

Can I sue google for stealing my idea?

Consoles, of course.

[Junta]

Serial remains one of the most manageable approaches to console management. Video is, obviously, not loggable, not automatically monitorable, not greppable, and not amenable to low throughput, high latency remote access.. Serial devices and consequently drivers for them are so simple and straightforward, and the behavior so deterministic, that it is far preferable to something more complex (ethernet and usb) for a console. Ethernet certainly in questionable circumstances may suggest a driver unload/reload as a step to problem resolution, which is safer if not using as a console (though many times I have used ssh and chained the commands using semicolons). For example in that case, if your path contains an nfs mount, and you forget about it as you yank the network out, your chained command will hang as the shell tries to stat the nfs mount for the path. Part of the problem with relying solely upon the ethernet for console is the ethernet has more than one job to do, so it takes a fair amount more competent engineering to get to work right. Many newer systems offer to redirect textual serial traffic over IPMI, and that is admittedly decent *if* the vendor architects it robustly, which is difficult to ensure beyond hands-on experience with a brand and trusting in their consistancy. For example, e326 servers from IBM I wouldn't trust the net console, but an IBM x3455 I would be more confident in. USB, again, has similar complexity issues (it's multiplexed for keyboard/mouse/mass/storage/printing/scanning/etc etc). If you theoretically had bi-directional text console over some usb device, it's more difficult for a low level, simple piece of software to set up the usb controller and all requisite activities, then traverse the bus, identify the console devices, and then use it. Just like with an ethernet device where you may have cause to unload and reload a driver, a usb controller out to lunch with respect to a mass storage device would cause a similar issue. Enterprise distribution kernels tend to compile in the serial console and leave the usb controller modular, specifically with serial consoles in mind.

Serial console servers, in answer to your question, provide a scalable way for systems to access via the network serial consoles. By being dedicated, moderately simple systems with 40+ serial cables, they can provide access (via telnet generally) to a rack's worth of 1U servers, automatically log the content, or at the very least provide an administrator with remote console access at will to any given system.

Serial console is not obsolete in the least bit, just because it can't run your '31337' aero interface, or whatever nice and shiny interface that makes poser administrators and PHBs drool, doesn't mean good, serious systems administrators don't consider the technology to be a vital part of a robust management strategy.