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November 14, 2005
Manufacturers become energy-aware of power hungry computers
With energy costs skyrocketting, chip, PC and server manufacturers are increasing their focus on energy efficient computing capabilities.
As data centers located around the world today increasingly handle complex processing tasks the power demand for such centers are reaching 2 megawatts at certain facilities.
PC Hardware and chip makers are changing direction to develop energy efficient chips and hardware. Intel, under pressure from rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., is striving to improve performance by using multiple electronic brains on its chips -- each of which operate at a lower gigahertz speed to save energy. Intel's chief executive, predicted in August that new chips his company is developing could save $1 billion in energy costs each year for every 100 million units sold.
Chip makers are rushing to improve power consumption of desktop as well server chips. AMD' Opteron chip draws as much as 95 watts, compared with 150 watts for Intel's latest Xeon chips. Sun Microsystems Inc. this week announced a new chip, code-named Niagara, that has eight processors but draws only about 70 watts.
Posted by admin at November 14, 2005 06:38 PM