HP Looks To Improve Power Management Coordination

tringtring writes "Computer World reports on an HP Labs researcher who foretells a future in which power management features will be built into the processor, memory, server, software and cooling systems. Coordination will be paramount. 'What happens if you turn all these elements on at the same time?' the principal research scientist at HP Labs asks. 'How do I make sure that the system doesn't explode?' This future is the vision of Parthasarathy Ranganathan, the man behind the "No Power Struggles" project at Hewlett-Packard. Power management systems will have to operate holistically, without one component conflicting with another, Ranganathan says. Ranganathan is just one of many researchers at the tech industry's biggest labs researching on how future data centers will handle increasing demands for processing capability and energy efficiency while simplifying IT."

Comments

Amen.

[BronsCon]

My 10 year old HP laptop gets 5hr 45min on a freshly charged battery. The one I'm sitting at right now barely gets 2hr. It's about time they get back to where they were.

Re:Amen.

[dreamchaser]

So you have 10 times the computing power (to be conservative)but over a third the battery life as your old unit. It's called a tradeoff. You can't compare apples to oranges.

What the hell are HP selling now?

[rde]

"What happens if you turn all these elements on at the same time?" the principal research scientist at HP Labs asks. "How do I make sure that the system doesn't explode?"

That's certainly a worry for me. The last thing I want when I turn on a "processor, memory, server, software and cooling systems" is for the system to explode. Being a dedicated slashdotter, and therefore Linux user, I have little worry that the software will cause any manner of combustion event, but I'd never really considered the dangers of using a processor and memory at the same time. I was thinking of getting more RAM, but given that I'm already running a dual-core, perhaps I should hold off on the extra gig until I hear from HP.

Although it seems bizarre

[zappepcs]

There is something to this. In a data center, if you have a brown-out or full power drop, the strain on power systems to restore power are what can only be described as epic.

When you take a 1400 amp back up system and drop it up and down like a yo-yo in a lightning storm, stress tends to bring out the worst of Murphy's Law. If all the components in a data center were orchestrated, that can be mitigated. It can be mitigated into nearly 'not a worry' status.

Monitors? low priority in most cases. Redundant supplies, in some cases bring them up separately. Cooling fans could be delayed by some seconds depending on usage. It may seem negligent power use, but on startup each system will draw it's max current, and when all do at the same instant, the peak draw can be overwhelming. In fact, computers themselves could bring up hardware in an orchestrated manner to reduce the startup surge.

In addition to this, by adding power management, it's possible to reduce data center power use also. If you monitored temp and turned off fans when not needed, less power used, less heat generated, less cooling needed overall. If all hardware were built in such a way the hardware on a quad nic card that is not used could be powered off after configuration... as an example. Nic cards could be the last thing to be powered up.

This type of design is practically rocket science. If you look at systems that go into space you will see that they count every milliamp of current draw and manage it with precision. Power use is a big concern for space craft.