Most CPUs can run with a range of clockspeeds. The over-clockers go up. You can go down at less than peak loads. I work a lot with terminal servers. The load from each client is very spiked. There are burst of a second or two as a chunk of data is moved or processed. Some systems can be set to adjust clockspeed according to load just like a screensaver can blank the screen. The absolute best way to save energy is to network so that one powerful machine can serve a bunch of clients. A $1000 machine can handle 35 thin clients that need only 10 watts or so to run an LCD monitor with a low power CPU without fans built in. That's about as much power as a wall clock per client.
There is a major break in Moore's law per core, but they are getting around that with multiple cores. If you have twice as many active devices and you run them at 1 over square-root of 2 times the frequency the power per core will be halved and you get the same computing power. Less frequency reduction gives more computing power. This does help the heating problem by spreading the heat source over a larger area.
Another way to increase the cooling effectiveness is do draw heat out both the top and bottom of the chip. Perhaps the pins could carry heat out. Perhaps we need a package with a hole in the array of pins to give more cooling on the bottom.
The problem of putting in more conections to the CPU is that it takes up so much space. It may be necessary to increase clock speeds for transfers on and off chip and use multiplexing. The ultimate would be serial links on laser beams. Then, we could use fewer pins and gain more access to the chip for cooling.
The move to 64 bits is overkill for most desktop users, but is wonderful for servers. I believe we could best use a small number of 64 bit water cooled beasts with hundreds of thin clients running at 10 watts or so. Now, there is a power saving. 200W for server + N X 10 W for clients is much better than N X 100 W as long as N > 3 For N=100 clients, the cost is 1200W instead of 10000W. It will take the chip techs a long time to do that, but the network boys and girls can make it happen today.
I have introduced many students to Linux and not one had any difficulty with small differences in the user interface. They liked the speed of a hot server serving last decade's slow PC clients and they never looked back. A 5 minute intro and they are off, unlike grown-ups who seem afraid they will break something. The fact that the students are unlikely to break anything is a joy. For the age ranges, I put younger students in the "games" group so they can play the mathgames and hand-eye coordination stuff. Debian, thank you. The older students should have all that mastered and need not waste the time. The only real debate I have found over Linux and young kids is whther or not we should use smaller keyboards before grade 3.
Linux is an OS. It is infinitely configurable to meet any needs in schools. There are many thousands of apps out there and, increasingly, web apps, too. What schools can do with Linux is only limited by the imagination and energy of the educational community.
The "news" aspect of this story is that Linux is being installed everywhere. I am near the Arctic circle in Canada and Mandrake TerminalServer was the first thing I set up in the high school. Now I have switched to Debian + LTSP because of the quality. We are on a 20 kilobyte/s link to the outside world but it doesn't matter because I have downloaded gigabytes and serve it locally. We have 11000 texts from Gutenberg.org indexed by Swish-e. My students have split-second access to literature, images, student/teacher product, assignments, and grades without the school paying for a single bit of software. My students may be living in the bush, but they have first rate IT, thanks to Bill's oppressive EULA and fees which made surplus a huge stack of Pentium IIIs. My students have the opportunity to learn to use Linux to control PCs rather than to be controlled by them and Bill. Schools are introducing millions of students to Linux in every corner of the world.
K12LTSP is a nice fedora3 based distro with all the LTSP setup built in
Exactly. That is why I use Debian Sarge + LTSP. Why have thousands of bugs bite you when Debian is a lot closer to perfection? Fedora is a testing distro for RedHat. Sarge is a testing distro (almost) for Debian and has been tested for two years, now. Sarge will have fewer bugs and has way more applications. I have 7 CDs of Debian. I believe K12LTSP is three or four. The APT packaging system is cool, once you get it configured.
Are the PCs networked? If they are LTSP is the way to go. You can either use a cluster of the machines to be the server with LTSP on OpenMosix, or you can add one hot machine per school as server. Use Debian. It has the most packages of any Linux distro. It is best if the X interfaces are identical, so you do not need special config files for deviant machines.
The clients do not need a hard drive so there is less to maintain.
All the system software maintenance can be done remotely by SSH if the WWW link is maintained. User management should be done locally, at least to maintain the lists.
I would provide local services: a web server with free texts from Gutenberg.org, Swish-e search engine, web cache and filter, DNS cache, a local web page with image database like Coppermine, and MySQL databases for local projects and php scripts/web applications. If you provide all these glorious services and include local copies of TLDP.org, MySQL manual, and links to hot Linux forums, who cares if the teachers are helpless? They can lead, follow, or get out of the way of the students.
Just having local web content served in milliseconds instead of seconds will convert the students who will become computer geeks. Set up a computer club with a few machines on which to practice.
Any reasonable Linux installation will give performance superior to what they are accustomed.
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Most CPUs can run with a range of clockspeeds. The over-clockers go up. You can go down at less than peak loads. I work a lot with terminal servers. The load from each client is very spiked. There are burst of a second or two as a chunk of data is moved or processed. Some systems can be set to adjust clockspeed according to load just like a screensaver can blank the screen. The absolute best way to save energy is to network so that one powerful machine can serve a bunch of clients. A $1000 machine can handle 35 thin clients that need only 10 watts or so to run an LCD monitor with a low power CPU without fans built in. That's about as much power as a wall clock per client.
There is a major break in Moore's law per core, but they are getting around that with multiple cores. If you have twice as many active devices and you run them at 1 over square-root of 2 times the frequency the power per core will be halved and you get the same computing power. Less frequency reduction gives more computing power. This does help the heating problem by spreading the heat source over a larger area.
Another way to increase the cooling effectiveness is do draw heat out both the top and bottom of the chip. Perhaps the pins could carry heat out. Perhaps we need a package with a hole in the array of pins to give more cooling on the bottom.
The problem of putting in more conections to the CPU is that it takes up so much space. It may be necessary to increase clock speeds for transfers on and off chip and use multiplexing. The ultimate would be serial links on laser beams. Then, we could use fewer pins and gain more access to the chip for cooling.
The move to 64 bits is overkill for most desktop users, but is wonderful for servers. I believe we could best use a small number of 64 bit water cooled beasts with hundreds of thin clients running at 10 watts or so. Now, there is a power saving. 200W for server + N X 10 W for clients is much better than N X 100 W as long as N > 3 For N=100 clients, the cost is 1200W instead of 10000W. It will take the chip techs a long time to do that, but the network boys and girls can make it happen today.
I have introduced many students to Linux and not one had any difficulty with small differences in the user interface. They liked the speed of a hot server serving last decade's slow PC clients and they never looked back. A 5 minute intro and they are off, unlike grown-ups who seem afraid they will break something. The fact that the students are unlikely to break anything is a joy. For the age ranges, I put younger students in the "games" group so they can play the mathgames and hand-eye coordination stuff. Debian, thank you. The older students should have all that mastered and need not waste the time. The only real debate I have found over Linux and young kids is whther or not we should use smaller keyboards before grade 3.
Linux is an OS. It is infinitely configurable to meet any needs in schools. There are many thousands of apps out there and, increasingly, web apps, too. What schools can do with Linux is only limited by the imagination and energy of the educational community.
The "news" aspect of this story is that Linux is being installed everywhere. I am near the Arctic circle in Canada and Mandrake TerminalServer was the first thing I set up in the high school. Now I have switched to Debian + LTSP because of the quality. We are on a 20 kilobyte/s link to the outside world but it doesn't matter because I have downloaded gigabytes and serve it locally. We have 11000 texts from Gutenberg.org indexed by Swish-e. My students have split-second access to literature, images, student/teacher product, assignments, and grades without the school paying for a single bit of software. My students may be living in the bush, but they have first rate IT, thanks to Bill's oppressive EULA and fees which made surplus a huge stack of Pentium IIIs. My students have the opportunity to learn to use Linux to control PCs rather than to be controlled by them and Bill. Schools are introducing millions of students to Linux in every corner of the world.
Are the PCs networked? If they are LTSP is the way to go. You can either use a cluster of the machines to be the server with LTSP on OpenMosix, or you can add one hot machine per school as server. Use Debian. It has the most packages of any Linux distro. It is best if the X interfaces are identical, so you do not need special config files for deviant machines.
The clients do not need a hard drive so there is less to maintain.
All the system software maintenance can be done remotely by SSH if the WWW link is maintained. User management should be done locally, at least to maintain the lists.
I would provide local services: a web server with free texts from Gutenberg.org, Swish-e search engine, web cache and filter, DNS cache, a local web page with image database like Coppermine, and MySQL databases for local projects and php scripts/web applications. If you provide all these glorious services and include local copies of TLDP.org, MySQL manual, and links to hot Linux forums, who cares if the teachers are helpless? They can lead, follow, or get out of the way of the students.
Just having local web content served in milliseconds instead of seconds will convert the students who will become computer geeks. Set up a computer club with a few machines on which to practice.
Any reasonable Linux installation will give performance superior to what they are accustomed.