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Google Demands Higher Chip Temps From Intel
JagsLive writes "When purchasing server processors directly from Intel, Google has insisted on a guarantee that the chips can operate at temperatures five degrees centigrade higher than their standard qualification, according to a former Google employee. This allowed the search giant to maintain higher temperatures within its data centers, the ex-employee says, and save millions of dollars each year in cooling costs."
When in college, I heated my crappy little schack by putting 150W bulbs in every light. It was like my own little Easy-Bake oven.
Not really.
No matter how cool the chips run they will put out heat. If you have two chips that run at X and use Y watts you will save power if you can run them a little hotter and use less power for cooling.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm not sure what your getting at - if by doing this they are saving millions in cooling expense, they are certainly using less energy. What is "going green" if it isn't energy conservation? The fact that the conservation comes from less work for their AC units rather than efficient little processors is immaterial.
Don't expect any company to do things because its right - but good companies will find win-win situations where they cut costs and do things to "Go Green".
Overclockers
Wouldn't Intel run into physical limitations
Google is most likely getting the best chips out of Intel's standard production. It's akin to sorting out the best bananas at the grocery store. This sort of privilege happens when you buy enough products from a supplier.
If they were demanding much more than 5 degrees then I would say they are getting custom made chips, but I don't think that's the case.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
WI'm surprised Google isn't considering moving some of its data centres to Arctic locations where you get cool temperatures year-round.
There is no reason to be surprised. It is cheaper to not move the data center to where it is colder and just make all upgraded hardware use the new chips. Google's budget calls for hardware upgrades already. Upgrading to CPUs with higher temp tolerances would mean they pay the same $X-thousand for the box they would anyway and simply turn the thermostat up.
A net savings.
I'm surprised Google isn't considering moving some of its data centres to Arctic locations where you get cool temperatures year-round.
Don't kid yourself. They probably have. But then, who did you get to work at what would probably be a very remote location?
Additionally, such remote locations may suffer from not enough bandwidth and/or electricity.
Bearded Dragon
Two words: "Free Cooling"
The greater the difference between your data centre's output air temperature and whatever passive external cooling system you are pumping it though, the more heat you can dump at zero cost. That's monetary cost as well as the cost to the environment through the energy "wasted" in HVAC systems and the like. Google has a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness; the ratio of power input to power acutally used for powering production systems) approaching 1.2 vs typical values of around 2.5-3.0 - Microsoft is around 2.75 as I recall - so they are clearly doing something right.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I'm surprised Google isn't considering moving some of its data centres to Arctic locations where you get cool temperatures year-round.
Oh yeah! And completely melt the ice cap.
What?
"Guarantee us a higher temp CPU or we will switch to AMD...and tell everyone about it."
That's not really how the negotiation goes in this type of situation where there are two major supplier choices (AMD and Intel) and Google is a relatively small customer when compared with Dell, HP, IBM, etc.
In all likelihood, the negotiation is more of a partnership where both parties work together to create value. Google says, "We buy thousands upon thousands of your chips, but we also pay millions of dollars annually to cool them. We'd be willing to pay little premium and lock in more volume if you can help us save money by increasing the temperature inside our data centers." Google has done the math and comes prepared with knowledge of how much those specs can save them and forecast of chip need of the next 12-18 months, and the two work together to create value. For example, Google might offer to allow endorsements (as they did with Dell for their Google appliances) in exchange for favorable pricing and specifications.
The "do this or I'll switch" tactic only works well when there are many suppliers and products are relatively undifferentiated, like SDRAM or fan motors.
Odds are this is being driven by a data-center engineering team, who are looking at the cost savings of running their data center 5 degrees hotter.
You don't get what you don't ask for.
Intel will do exactly as much engineering as necessary to keep their target market up, and no more.
If the market wants chips that operate 5 degrees hotter.. the engineers will do their job and see if it can be done. Intel will charge a premium for this.
That's business.
Most of the power supply systems for my servers, which are HP G3-5 systems of various U sizes, tend to waste more power as temperature goes up.
This has nothing to do with CPU's though. It is the power supplies on the machines. As temperature goes up, efficiency goes down. At around 80 degrees I noticed a significant larger draw on the power supply with my amp meter.
I had a gaming system with two ATI 4870's and the 800 Watt power supply would crash my machine if I did not run the air conditioner and keep the room at 70 degrees after some fairly long Supreme Commander runs.
I noticed that the amperage would go up, and the power output would go down as temperature would go up.
I have not conducted any experiments in a lab setting with this stuff, but from experience, jacking the temperature up usually makes power supplies work harder and makes them less efficient.
-gc
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Wouldn't Intel run into physical limitations that simply don't allow chips to run at that low a temperature? I'm surprised Google isn't considering moving some of its data centres to Arctic locations where you get cool temperatures year-round.
Are you serious? Neither the Arctic nor the Antarctic is well known for reliable power or fast Internet connections.
Yes, but way I see this is:
Intel isn't arbitrarily going, "man, we could make chips that run ok 5 degrees hotter, but we're gonna piss everyone off by demanding more cooling. Just because we can." Most likely Intel is already doing the best it can, and getting a bunch of chips which vary in how good they are. And they're getting the same bunch of chips regardless of whether Google demands higher temps or not.
Google just gets a cherry-picked bunch, but the average over Intel's production is still the same. Hence everyone else is getting a worse selection. They what remains after Google took the best.
It's a zero-sum game. The total load on the planet is the same. The same total bunch of chips exits Intel's fabs. On the total, no energy was conserved.
So Google's "going green" is at the cost of making everyone else less "green". They can willy-wave about how energy efficient they are, by simply dumping the difference on someone else.
That's not "going green", that's a predatory approach. Your computers could require on the average an extra 0.5W in cooling, so Google can willy-wave that theirs uses 1W less. They just dumped their costs and their "eco burden" to someone else.
It's akin to me willy-waving that I'm so green and produce less garbage than you... by dumping some of my garbage in random other people's garbage bins across the town. Yay, I'm so green now, you all can start worshipping me. Well, no, on the total the same amount of garbage being produced, I just dumped it and the related costs on other people. That's not going green, that's being a predator.
I can see why a business might want to cut their own costs, and not care about yours. That's, after all, the whole "invisible hand" theory. But let me repeat it: on the whole no energy was conserved. They just passed off some of their cooling costs (energy _and_ money) to someone else.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It also takes longer to boil ramen.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
And ideally, I'd come home to find Alyson Hannigan oiled up and duct taped to my bed
You know you're pathetic when they're even unwilling in your fantasies.
They are not asking for the chips to be made to produce more heat, they're demanding that Intel guarantee that the chips will still perform, even if operated at a higher than specified max operating environment temperature.
You would be forgiven for thinking it makes more sense to for Google to insist that the chips produce less heat, rather than that they will still operate in extreme temperatures, since the majority of the cooling cost come from dissipating the chip heat from the enclosed space. But hey, it's Google, they do things a bit different.
Legend has it that the Celeron processor began its life as a way for Intel to make money off of the Pentiums that didn't pass quality control. If they sell the low performing processors at a discount, why shouldn't they sell the over performing ones at a premium?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
And ideally, I'd come home to find Alyson Hannigan oiled up and duct taped to my bed
You know you're pathetic when they're even unwilling in your fantasies.
You're assuming everyone prefers them willing.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
>> So Google's "going green" is at the cost of making everyone else less "green". They can willy-wave about how energy efficient they are, by simply dumping the difference on someone else.
The difference is that Google is going to actively exploit the ability of those hand-picked CPU's to run hotter. Chances are that the users who would have otherwise received those chips would not reap any energy savings from the capabilities.
At a minimum, Google is contributing here by forcing a vendor to differentiate chips that have a capability of running hotter from ones that don't. No matter who uses that capability, it's a benefit to the planet (versus the alternatives at least).
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
It's not just the celerons, its most CPUs. A modern CPU is quite big and contains a lot of components that aren't essential to the operation of the chip. If you disable these, you have a slightly less good chip without the engineering cost of designing a entirely new die layout. AMD takes this to extremes. Their Opterons have 4 cores, three hypertransport connections and a load of cache. If there is a manufacturing flaw in the cache, they are sold as a model with less cache. If it's in the cores, then they are sold as three, two, or single core chips. If it's in the HT controllers then they only support 2- or 4-way multichip configurations. Intel's 486SX line was just a 486 (later renamed the 486DX) where the FPU didn't work.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What was even weirder was the i487SX. This was a i486DX with an extra pin. If you had a i486SX system and wanted a FPU you bought the i487SX and plugged it in. Then during boot the i486SX was disabled and the i487SX was used for everything.
Intel's 486SX line was just a 486 (later renamed the 486DX) where the FPU didn't work.
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