Computing goes green?

THE people, places and things inside “Second Life,” a thriving online virtual world with millions of residents, may be imaginary*but the power consumption of the computers that maintain the illusion is all too real. Nicholas Carr, a business writer and blogger, recently worked out that each of the 15,000 or so residents logged in at any one time consumes electricity as a result of their activities in the virtual world faster than the average inhabitant of Brazil does in real life. Second Life’s residents, Mr Carr concluded, “don’t have bodies, but they do leave footprints.”

It is just one example of the growing concern over the increasing power consumption and environmental impact of computers, and in particular the warehouses full of corporate machines known as data centres. According to IDC, a market-research firm, power consumption is now one of the top five concerns among systems managers. A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, released last month, found that the power consumption of data centres doubled between 2000 and 2005, and now accounts for 1.2% of American electricity consumption (though other estimates put the figure at 4%). Most firms spend 4-10% of their technology budgets on energy, says Rakesh Kumar of Gartner, a consultancy. (Only around half of this is used to run computers; much of it goes on cooling.)

Power consumption has increased because of the rise of the internet, of course, but also because of way in which computers have historically been designed: to maximise performance at all costs. Between 1996 and 2006, says Jed Scaramella of IDC, the number of servers in use went from 6m to 28m, and the average power consumption of each server grew from 150 watts to 400 watts. But things are now starting to change, and the computer industry has been seized with enthusiasm for “green computing”.