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Move to a Mainframe, Earn Carbon Credits

Posted by Zonk on from the trade-and-process-process-and-trade dept.

BBCWatcher writes "As Slashdot reported previously, Congress is pushing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop energy efficiency measures for data centers, especially servers. But IBM is impatient: Computerworld notes IBM has signed up Neuwing Energy Ventures, a company trading in energy efficiency certificates, in a first for "green" computing. Now if your company consolidates, say, X86 servers onto an IBM mainframe on top of slashing about 85% off your electric bill each megawatt-hour saved earns one certificate. Then you can sell the certificates in emerging carbon trading markets. IBM's own consolidation project (collapsing 3,900 distributed servers onto 30 mainframes) will net certificates worth between $300K and $1M, depending on carbon's market price. Will ubiquitous carbon trading discourage energy-inefficient, distributed-style infrastructure in favor of highly virtualized and I/O-savvy environments, particularly mainframes?"

5 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Full Circle? by feepness · · Score: 2, Funny

    I do find it ironic that computing started out with large mainframes, and now it seems more and more likely that the majority of computing needs in the future will be met by terminals connected to mainframes via virtualization. Keep in mind that your cellphone will has more power than most of the mainframes used to and the terminals will have far more power beyond that.

    It's a change in terminology, not in behavior. It's not that terminals are connected to mainframes, it's that everyone has their own mainframe and the personal mainframes are connected to mega-super-duper mainframes.

    Which, in twenty years, will fit on your watch.
  2. Re:Oh yeah! by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2, Funny

    0.10 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
    0.20 PROGRAM-ID. JL01A.
    0.30 *
    0.40 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
    0.50 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
    0.60 SPECIAL-NAMES.
    0.70 TERMINAL IS TERM.
    0.80 INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.
    0.90 *
    1.00 DATA DIVISION.
    1.10 FILE SECTION.
    1.20 *
    1.30 WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
    1.40 77 WS-TEKST PIC A(13) VALUE "WELCOME BACK.".
    1.50 *
    1.60 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
    1.70 JL01A.
    1.80 *
    1.90 DISPLAY "HELLO WORLD, " WS-TEKST UPON TERM.
    2.00 *
    2.10 FIN.
    2.20 STOP RUN. Oh yeah, I've played this game. Just buy a potion from Gandolf!
    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  3. Re:Carbon credits = lame by cheater512 · · Score: 2, Funny

    So...I should buy a lot of carbon credits and make a killing in 20 years time? :)

  4. Re:Full Circle? by asliarun · · Score: 5, Funny

    and now it seems more and more likely that the majority of computing needs in the future will be met by terminals connected to mainframes via virtualization. That is indeed Big Irony.
  5. In the end by ms1234 · · Score: 3, Funny

    In the end we'll end up with just 5 huge mainframes in the world as foretold by the IBM executive in the 50's? (can't remember where he was quoted).