Low Power Servers & Desktops? 28
dhart asks: "Does anyone make low power servers or desktop computers? Couldn't this be accomplished with commodity parts designed for portable PCs. Energy efficiency is environmentally friendly, with the added benefit of smaller and cheaper UPS and AC units in a server setting. If the demand for these units increased, it could lower the cost of energy efficient parts and, by association, the portable computers that drive the technology."
Motivation (Score:2)
Power seems to be cheap, a few pence/cents/whatever to keep lights running, run a computer, etc does not concern most (enough) people.
Laptops are different, since high power usage has a clearly perceived negative influence (shorter battery life).
Don't know what the answer is. Until we get lots of lovely clean (well, mostly) fusion power we have a problem.
But generally relying on people's good nature isn't enough motivation to pay 0.5% more for a 'greener' PC.
Not wishing to bait flames, but I think power is underpriced. Currently, power producers get to consume shared resources for little or no cost - hence the power consumers do not have the cost passed on to them.
Perhaps one day the idea that consumption of 'fresh air' (via pollution) (and any/all other items which get used up) is a privilege which should be paid for will seem as natural as the idea that you might need to pay for building/living on land. (Perhaps a poor analogy, since I suspect territorial humans have always had a sense of the value of land...ah well).
Basically, its the 'tragedy of the commons'. There is a shared resource which is being (over-)consumed because it isn't owned and charged out by someone and because those consuming it aren't being lent on by a bunch of angry villagers with pitchforks (I really need to work on these analogies).
If you throw into the mix that pollution in one country can cause acid rain in another (just as pollution in a river in one country can turn up in another downstream) and you have a hell of a mess which even per-country government intervention isn't going to dent.
I hope the free market types agree that something needs to be priced fairly (would it be a sensible market which prices a can of beans according to the raw cost of tin and neglected the cost of the beans, manafacture, marketing, etc) and that the green types see that simply imposing national taxes on certain types of consumption doesn't solve the problem.
So...what should be done?
Re:Motivation (Score:1)
in a way, this problem will solve itself, over time.
The fossile energy-resources will be used up very quickly. Or at least those, that are easy to exploit.
Then, energy will get way more expensive. Unfortunately, this might crash the whole system we live in, so there might be some adverse effects...
This is all very obvious. Just consider all those devices that will end-up always-on when the ip-space is large enough.
Or think what would happen if China had the same car-density as US or Europe (>1 car on two people).
With the current system, I see no way out, unless energy gets way more expensive.
(and here in Germany, it is expensive already, thanks to "Green" government. But if you don't offer an alternative, people will really just go mad - witness the strikes/blockades of UK/French petrol-stations)
cheers,
Rainer
Fossil reserves (Score:1)
Well, in a way, this problem will solve itself, over time. The fossile energy-resources will be used up very quickly.
At present usage rates, the U.S. has 800 years of coal left [stanford.edu]. China's coal supply dwarfs the U.S.'s. Oil can be produced from resources not yet tapped such as oil fields with a higher cost of extraction, oil shale, tar sands, and the aforementioned 800 years of coal -- so dwindling conventional reserves are a non-issue.
and here in Germany, it is expensive already, thanks to "Green" government.
Thanks to Green government, Germany's green nuclear power program is being decomissioned.
Re:Motivation (Score:1)
Mobile Processors (Score:3)
Some are single-board computers which may require that your computer case use PC/104 or passive ISA/PCI bus designs.
Dams Cause Earthquakes (Score:2)
Seismicity". A URL to get folks started:
http://www.google.com/search?q=dams+cause+earth
Think of it this way. When you build a house, it settles. When you introduce a lot of weight anywhere onto the earth's surface, something has to deflect. In the case of softer ground, it settles, whilst bedrock deflects less, often imperceptably.
The introduction of thousands of tons of weight into an area does cause problems. Everyone who's taken a geology class has heard how land uplifts after glaciers recede (weight removal), so why wouldn't land sink if weight is introduced?
Two more examples. Quake Lake west of Yellowstone National Park. A large earthquake caused a mountain to fall, only a couple of years after a dam was built upstream. Hungry Horse Dam near Glacier National Park. Almost no siesmic activity, then a nice 7+ Richter quake only a couple of years after it filled.
I know it sounds hokey, but honest folks. T'aint snake oil I'm selling here....
Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly (Score:2)
Energy efficiency is environmentally friendly...
Energy efficiency is not intrinsically environmentally friendly. There is no shortage of clean energy that can be exploited in the form of nuclear fission power [stanford.edu]. California saves lots of energy by not using nuclear power to desalinate (make into fresh water) sea water. California alternatively drains Mono Lake and diverts [water-ed.org] water from the Colorado River and the San Joaquin Delta.
Spending money to reduce energy consumption tends to hurt the environment by interfering with environmentally friendly factors such as economic and technological growth. It's a waste of engineering resources that could be put to positive environmental use -- such as devising cheaper and better nuclear power plants.
Re:Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly (Score:1)
I'd wager laptop-type components have a shorter lifespan. If this is true, then using such chips would mean more would have to be manufactured than regular ones.
As to which is environmentally friendlier is anyone's guess.
Re:Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly (Score:2)
The cooling on them isn't all that great, and hot components=higher failure rate.
Using a low wattage processor is a good start (Score:2)
G4 Cube - 225 Watts Maximum (Not sure why it's higher than the server...could be the video card.)
Cube Specs [apple.com]
G4 Server - 220 Watts Maximum (The G3 server is 170 Watts Max.)
G4 Server Specs [apple.com]
15" LCD Studio Display - 50 Watts Maximum (An equivalent CRT can almost triple this.)
LCD Display Specs [apple.com]
Those Wattage ratings aren't power supply output ratings. Those are what the device will pull from the wall, including any heat losses in the power supply.
I can't find any other manufacturers who want to tell me their wattage requirements.
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Re:Laptops (Score:1)
* I heard the new Powerbooks in January are going to use PC133 memory. Powerbooks can now take one gigabyte of RAM, using 512MB sticks! Go see http://powerbookguy.com!
* CPUs are as you said
* Powerbooks are not slower except for possibly the PCI bus speed (I'm not sure); Apple uses virtually the same motherboard on all models, using their UMA (unified motherboard architecture).
* Powerbooks have the same CPU's as desktops. I heard that the G3 cpu is the size of a person's thumbnail.
* Installing LinuxPPC on my Powerbook (Wallstreet II series) was the single easiest installation of Linux I've ever done on any platform. It basically said "Oh, you have a Mac." It didn't ask for any hardware support and it was unconcerned with the fact that it's a Powerbook and not a desktop or anything else; they all use virtually identical hardware and it all just worked. Even at the time without a video driver, thanks to Open Firmware. It used SCSI, ethernet, the same video options as MacOS was in whenever booting Linux, PCMCIA, serial, and ADB. That's everything except video acceleration and sleeping, which came later.
* You don't need PCMCIA RAID when you have Firewire or SCSI. You can use software RAID or an external hardware RAID controller. Older Powerbooks like mine have SCSI-II and newer ones have USB and Firewire.
In short, there is no reason not to buy a Powerbook unless you want these:
* A bare minimum lower price on an equivalent system if you're strapped for cash, but they're no more expensive on average than anything else, especially considering the mind-numbing amount of integrated features they have. In that case, I'd probably buy an older or cheaper Powerbook from somewhere like powerbookguy.com.
* More than one CPU per host
* More than one gigabyte of RAM per host
* Some morbid juvenile fascination with native binary compatibility with IA32
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Hydro vs. green energy (Score:1)
Fish can't swim upstream or downstream past dams.
Hydro is also extremely dangerous. Large numbers of people are regularly killed [sabp.net] by dam failures, and there are two dams in the U.S. which could each nearly instantly kill 200,000 people.
1500 years of world coal left (Score:1)
The fossile energy-resources will be used up very quickly.
"The world has about 1500 years of known coal resources at the current use rate. [ornl.gov]"
Re:Laptops (Score:1)
((In the voice of 'herbert' from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'))
"Well, I'll tell you."
I said "Unless it's a powerbook" only for one an important reason you overlooked:
Powerbooks are (typically) THE MOST upgradable laptops in existance. Take ly 1400cs -- it was born with a 117mhz 603e. Right now, I could go buy a 333mhz G3 for it, and Sonnet is working on a 433mhz G4 upgrade for it. And take a Wallstreet or newer model -- it takes some work, but if history is any experience, we should be able to upgrade a stock 66mhz bus Wallstreet 233 to well over 600mhz with a simple card swap. Try that with most intel laptops.
But anyway, on with some your points:
* CPUs are as you said
> * Powerbooks are not slower except for possibly the PCI bus speed (I'm not sure); Apple uses virtually the same motherboard on all models, using their UMA (unified motherboard architecture).
This is true, except that there are power saving measures that are built into the system (Like CPU cycling, etc) and the fact that all parts in a laptop are designed for low power, not speed. It doesn't make them a whole bunch slower, but like 5-10% maybe. Using UMA board means their just fully compatible with each other, not the same.
> * Powerbooks have the same CPU's as desktops. I heard that the G3 cpu is the size of a person's thumbnail.
In some cases. I'm not sure how it is for the new Broze G3's, but on my old 1400cs/117, it *does* uses a special mobile 603e. Size has nothing to do with it, it's voltage and power usage.
What I was saying was not for some kind of high-power server farm, but a medium load system. It you actually *need* a multi-firewire drive setup and 500mhz plus for a web site, just go buy a cube or a black&white G4.
Fusion power vs. green energy (Score:1)
Until we get lots of lovely clean (well, mostly) fusion power we have a problem.
If we had lots of fusion power it would be a serious environmental problem since it would be so expensive (by all current estimates).
Power is vastly underproduced. Ecology demands that we produce exponentially more and that we do this with nuclear fission plants.
Re:Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly (Score:2)
Also, I'm not sure where you get that laptops are not made for constant use. Maybe they aren't. Again, I don't use 'em, and I don't buy 'em. But they are certainly sold and reviewed as such.
Let me reiterate: there's a difference between throwing a laptop onto a desk and plugging in a monitor, and what the story is about. The story (in my estimation) is asking why not build one of those dinky PC's, but with low consumption, probably notebook based, parts.
Laptops (Score:3)
Regarding servers: I was thinking myself this question a while ago, myself - the most logical choice being a laptop as the server.
In my case, I could probaly pick up a used p233 laptop with a busted screen for only a few hundred, buy two PCMCIA ethernet cards, drop Linux, *bsd (or even NT4 or Win2k) on it and it could do all my web serving and firewalling/NATing.
Laptop Servers (Score:1)
well..duh. (Score:1)
Re:Laptops (Score:2)
If you can wait... (Score:1)
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Re:Dams Cause Earthquakes (Score:1)
I would have a hard time believing that the weight of lakes by itself could cause earthquakes.
Re:Using a low wattage processor is a good start (Score:2)
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NetWinders use 15W (Score:1)
They include iRDA, speaker, mic, dual NIC, all the usual ports. The desktop takes up the same sort of size as a paperback book and the rackmount takes up half of a 1U chassis.
The next generation of NetWinders will be based on Transmeta's Crusoe instead of StrongARM. Shame, because a NetWinder based on a 1GHz Intel XScale (successor to StrongARM) would have been very nice.
I think that answers the question :-)
Re:Saving energy vs. environmentally friendly (Score:2)
But I'm no engineer.
Malthusian (Score:2)
Of course, we're ignoring fission plants. Not that it matters when nobody is building power plants. Well, we can all fire up our backyard generators and see what that does to air quality.
Re:Motivation (Score:1)
Here in the state of California, we're rapidly getting away from this attitude, as our power rates have almost quadrupled since 'deregulation'. If this holds (there's immense political pressure coming to bear, as the politicians begin to realize that the largesse they've enjoyed due to a booming economy is completely dependent on business continuing to generate profits. What a radical concept. But I digress.), then the incentives to shave every kilowatthour are going to be very high. I can see low-power servers being of interest especially to the 'server-farm' businesses that have hundreds or thousands of computers in a single building. The lower the power requirements, the less expense, not only to power the servers themselves, but also for the air-conditioning, which can be just as costly.
Desktop machines with notebook parts. (Score:1)