As server farms grow in size and complexity, the computer industry has realized that the cost of electricity (and the related cost of cooling) can be a huge expense. As a result, companies driven by market incentives have begun to offer their own solutions. Sun Microsystems, for instance, sells servers outfitted with a low-power "CoolThreads" microprocessor that uses less power than an average light bulb. Intel's "Woodcrest" and "Montecito" generation of processors will both consume about 30 watts less than their predecessor models. Sun, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Advanced Micro Devices, Dell and others have even created an association called The Green Grid to promote power efficiency. And here's a list of recent News.com headlines on the topic: # AMD unveils line of energy-aware chips May 15, 2006 # Electric slide for tech industry? February 1, 2006 # HP debuts water-cooling system January 29, 2006 # HP debuts water-cooling system January 29, 2006 # New Egenera blades get liquid cooling January 23, 2006 # Can IBM help cut your energy bill? January 11, 2006 # Start-up plans new energy-efficient processor October 23, 2005 But now our esteemed elected leaders in Congress seem to think they know better than an IT purchasing manager what's best for his or her business, and are offering official suggestions. Seriously. The House of Representatives this week approved by a 417-4 vote legislation instructing Americans to "give high priority to energy efficiency as a factor in determining best value and performance for purchases of computer servers": http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.05646: How many of the politicians who voted for this have ever bought a server? How many know the difference between RAID and NAS? Ethernet vs. Etherpeek? And if they don't, how useful is this one-size-fits-all advice really going to be? -Declan _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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