Green Supercomputing

The arguments over the cost benefits of general purpose processors versus specialized application-specific processors is a long one that has been on going as long as there have been general purpose and application-specific process designs. The argument has gained a new wrinkle as organization wrestle with energy usage in data centers, per this post from Stacy Higginbotham on GigaOM.

Through the mid to late 90s I attended a half-dozen or so In-Stat Microprocessor Forums and was always intrigued by the pros and cons argued on each side of the debate. Of course, at that time specs on power consumption and heat dissipation seemed more like nice-to-have attributes rather than critical considerations outside of some specific applications. What's a couple more fans, after all? Now I can see the parallels between processor power and heat specs and automobile engine performance and mileage. Add more transistors and that's more active cooling to build into the server. Boost horse power by adding another couple cylinders to an engine and mileage may suffer through more energy consumption and greater vehicle weight.

This related GigaOM post on the collaboration between the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and chip maker Tensilica details the goals of redesigning what would have been a 200MW supercomputer to use only 4MW through specialized processors rather than general purpose x86 processors. (The description of the supercomputer reminds me of Thinking Machine's Connection Machine).

So what does this have to do with collaboration? Using SaaS (Software as a Service) has a number of green benefits, including those found through sharing data center resources across large numbers of organizations. The interesting idea put forth in the GigaOM article points to a future in which SaaS providers take the first leap to use more energy efficient and application-specific hardware to deliver services. This would, in turn, create even greater green benefits for users of SaaS.

Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx

Comments

[Lane]

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