Green Computing
Green Computing
• Green computing is the study and
practice of using computing resources
efficiently.
• criteria for measuring organizational
success: The triple bottom line, TBL
– economic, ecological and social
– or people, planet, profit
"People" (human capital)
• "People" pertains to fair and beneficial business
practices toward labor and the community and region in
which a corporation conducts its business.
• a TBL business would not knowingly use child labour,
would pay fair salaries to its workers, would maintain a
safe work environment and tolerable working hours, and
would not otherwise exploit a community or its labour
force. A TBL business also typically seeks to "give back"
by contributing to the strength and growth of its
community with such things as health care and
education.
"Planet" (natural capital)
• "Planet" (natural capital) refers to sustainable
environmental practices. A TBL company endeavors to
benefit the natural order as much as possible or at the
least do no harm and curtail environmental impact.
• A TBL endeavor reduces its ecological footprint, a
measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems.
– carefully managing its consumption of energy and nonrenewables
– reducing manufacturing waste
– rendering waste less toxic before disposing of it in a safe and
legal manner.
– avoiding ecologically destructive practices, such as overfishing
or other endangering depletions of resources.
"Profit"
• "Profit" is the bottom line shared by all
commerce, conscientious or not.
– the economic benefit enjoyed by the host
society.
– not limited to the internal profit made by a
company or organization.
Approaches to green computing
•
Algorithmic efficiency
– the cost of hardware has declined relative to the cost of energy
•
Virtualization
– With virtualization, several physical systems are combined into one single system,
thereby unplugging the original hardware and reducing power and cooling
consumption.
•
Terminal Servers
– When using terminal servers, users connect to a central server; all of the
computing is done at the server.
– Thin client
•
Power management
– The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), an open industry
standard, allows an operating system to directly control the power saving aspects
of its underlying hardware.
– Sleep mode
•
Energy saving Devices
– Solid State storage, LCD monitor with cold-cathode fluorescent bulb or lightemitting diodes (LEDs)
•
•
Recycling: e-Waste
Telecommuting
– Teleconference, VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)
Research Reveals Environmental
Impact of Google Searches
• A typical search generates about 7 grams of CO2.
Boiling a kettle generates about 15 grams.
• Google generated as much greenhouse gas as the
world's airlines — about 2 percent of global CO2
emissions.
• Google operates huge data centers around the world
that consume a great deal of power.
– Google has servers in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China.
• your request doesn't go to just one server. It goes to
several competing against each other and sends you
data from whichever produces the answer fastest. The
system minimizes delays but raises energy consumption.
Performance per watt
• In computing, performance per watt is a
measure of the energy efficiency of a
particular computer architecture or
computer hardware. Literally, it measures
the rate of computation that can be
delivered by a computer for every watt of
power consumed.
• FLOPS per watt
The Green Grid
• The Green Grid is an international non-profit
organization with a mandate to increase energy
efficiency in the IT sector. The objectives of this
organization include helping to create and
promote adoption of metrics and standards to
measure datacenter power efficiency, as well as
processes and technologies that can help data
centers improve performance against those
metrics.
• Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and data
center infrastructure efficiency (DCiE)
• http://www.thegreengrid.org/