Carroll County Times Articles
What is Green Computing?
by Jeannine Morber – April 24, 2008
The term "green computing" has been popping up often in the press lately, and as a result so has the questions to the Tech Council office. At first glance it would seem that the concept of green computing could be explained in a paragraph or two. After all, what else could be behind it other than Energy Star compliant monitors and power saving sleep modes?
After a bit of online research, it soon became apparent that there is a lot behind it, much more than can be explained in a few paragraphs. In fact, there are approximately one half million web pages devoted to the subject.
So just what is green computing?
One aspect of green computing of course, is all about computer systems and tools that use less energy or use energy more efficiently. In February 2007, The Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org) was launched by key computing companies such as Intel, Dell, IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and VMware. The goal of The Green Grid is to increase energy efficiency in large data centers and other large computing business environments. According to The Green Grid website, one way they are trying to reach this goal is by "developing standards, measurement methods, processes and new technologies to improve data center performance".
Green computing also involves using the by-products of large computing facilities to support other facilities. For example, IBM plans to heat a public swimming pool in Zurich with 2,800 megawatts of excess heat generated from a nearby data center. Intel has also developed a system to heat an entire building from the excess heat generated in the building's data center. The system has saved approximately $250,000 a year in heating costs.
In addition to using the heat generated by data centers, some companies are trying to reduce the abundance of heat produced by the centers in the first place. IBM has also introduced the Power 575 supercomputer which uses water chilled copper plates to remove excess heat rather than a fan. IBM estimates that the water-cooled system will reduce energy consumption by approximately 40%.
Other companies such as Hewlett-Packard are also developing liquid-cooled systems for large data centers, some that even use specially treated nonconductive, noncorrosive water. Hewlett-Packard has also been hard at work developing a technique using ink-jet spray heads from their own printers to spray a coolant directly onto microprocessors. Other companies have developed thermal jackets that are designed to cover and cool servers.
The above projects, products and organizations just scratch the surface of the global green computing concept. For more information about green computing and environmentally-friendly computing practices, check out the following websites:
Greener Computing - www.greenercomputing.comThe Green Grid - www.thegreengrid.org
IBM Project big Green - www.ibm.com/press/greendatacenter
The Green Lounge - www.thegreenlounge.org
About the Author
Jeannine Morber, the Director of the Carroll Technology Council, has BS in Computer Science and is currently working on a Masters degree in Computer and Information Sciences. Questions are welcome and may be addressed in future articles. Email jeannine@carrolltechcouncil.org or go to www.carrolltechcouncil.org for more information.
