Slashdot Log In
Server Power Consumption Doubled Over Past 5 years
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Feb 16, 2007 04:05 PM
from the lets-get-that-fusion-thing-going-huh dept.
from the lets-get-that-fusion-thing-going-huh dept.
Watt's up writes "A new study shows an alarming increase in server power consumption over the past five years. In the US, servers (including cooling equipment) consumes 1.2% of all the electricity in 2005, up from 0.6% in 2000. The trend is similar worldwide. 'If current trends continue, server electricity usage will jump 40 percent by 2010, driven in part by the rise of cheap blade servers, which increase overall power use faster than larger ones. Virtualization and consolidation of servers will work against this trend, though, and it's difficult to predict what will happen as data centers increasingly standardize on power-efficient chips." We also had a recent discussion of power consumption in consumer PCs that you might find interesting.
Related Stories
[+]
The Power Consumption of Modern PCs 122 comments
janp writes "The power consumption of modern PCs has skyrocketed the past few years. Hardware.Info has done some fairly extensive research on the power usage of various configurations. It turns out the a high-end gaming rig can easily use more than 400 W, and that putting a system in stand-by isn't as saving as you might think. The article has some interesting tips to save on power costs."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Inconvenient Truth (Score:5, Funny)
Blasphemy! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
That's because (Score:2)
Server consumption doubles? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nitpicking, I know...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wanted to add, I'm sure that means the number has more than doubled; I'm sure power consumption has grown, so if the percentage doubled, that needs to be multiplied by whatever factor energy consumption OVERALL has increased.
I got too excited about my nitpicking to post my actual though.
Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I think what it would take is for UPS manufacturers to standardize a set of voltages (12, 5, 3.3 perhaps) and a plug so that it would be very easy to replace standard power supplies wi
Re: (Score:2)
So switch to Redback gear. It can all be powered by telco-standard 48VDC supplies. B-)
Re: (Score:2)
So how do you get 12 volt, 5 volt, 3.3 volt, and 1.5 volt DC from that?
48 VDC (Score:2)
Re:Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
High-efficiency switching regulators on the blades. (They're actually getting so good that you have less heat loss by putting a local switcher near a power-hungry chip than by bringing its high current in at its low voltages through the PC-board power planes.)
Getting the raw AC->DC conversion out of the way outside the air-conditioned environment saves you a bunch of heat load, as does distributing at a relatively high voltage (such as "relay-rack" standard 48VDC) to reduce I-squared-R losses. And switchers are more efficient with higher raw DC supplies, so going to 48V (about the highest you can while avoiding touch-it-and-die shock hazard - which is why Bell standardized on it) is much better than 12 or 24.
Parent
Re:Solution (Score:4, Informative)
That's not what the Google paper said. It proposed that power supplies should output only 12V and motherboards should contain many DC-DC converters to generate voltages needed by chips. As chip fabrication technology changes, newer chips need lower voltages to operate optimally (not to mention that lower voltage = lower power); since different chips in a computer are made with different technologies, they need different voltages ranging from 1.8V down to 1.0V.
Parent
Re:Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do servers have AC to DC power supplies at all? I don't know about you, but I have my servers on UPSes. So the whole thing goes AC from wall to DC in the UPS to the batteries then from DC to AC to the computer where it converts it back to DC.
I'm not an EE, but why cant AC come from the wall into the UPS and then the UPS spits out DC to the computer?
Granted the UPS power supply needs to be redundant because they are the 2nd most likely thing to fail in servers after disks, but what am I missing here? I know there are telco grade computers that take DC, but these are not available in many options and are typically lower end boxes. But to me, none of these additional conversions to AC and DC an back again with the added likelihood of a failure anywhere in the chain seems a bit non-optimal.
Parent
Re:Solution (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
While individual systems may vary, I've noticed that the older the facility where I was working, the more likely they were to have DC power - since the facilities were "telco" before they were "telecom", and most telco stuff is DC. Even in newer datacenters, it's only the small outfits that haven't had DC, most of the larger ones have had DC available.
Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a grip on reality.
Even if you switch to 48V DC, you still have to convert 120 VAC to 48 V DC, then down to 12/5/3.3/1.x volts for motors and logic, so all you're doing is moving the conversion from a decentralized setup (a power supply in each computer) to a centralized one (a single large power supply). In the end, however, you still have to get from 120 down to around 1 volt for the CPU, and you're not going to suddenly make an order-of-magnitude change in the efficiency of that - or even near a doubling.
To keep it in perspective, though, there are vastly overshadowing losses which make the small differences in centralized/decentralized conversion efficiency moot. Your 120 VAC leg is probably coming from a 440 VAC lead coming into the building, and going through a very large transformer to get 120 VAC - and the 440 VAC that comes in is coming from a much higher voltage that was converted down at least once (and perhaps more) after being transmitted very long distances. The losses in all of that are much, much higher than the losses in conversion that you mention.
Sure, if you could generate and transmit a nice, smooth, regulated 48V DC from the power station to your computer, that would be great - but that's so unfeasable that you might as well wish for a pink unicorn while you're at it.
Parent
Fing Amazing (Score:2)
The servers are actually doing something (Score:3, Informative)
Sun's David Douglas, VP Eco Responsibility, estimates that the cost of running computers (power use) will exceed the cost of buying computers in about 5 years: http://www.ase.org/uploaded_files/geed_2007/dougl
--
Get abundant, get solar. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>> cost of running computers (power use) will exceed the cost of
>> buying computers in about 5 years
i think if you're running linux/intel it's already the case.
maybe the cost of sun's hardware is so high that the problem is still 5 years out for them.
Moore's law (Score:5, Insightful)
"Alarming" increase in "alarming" statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
1. More computers are classed as "servers." I'd bet that before many of the workgroup and corporate IT computers and mainframes weren't classed as "servers." It's the trend toward hosted services, web farms, ASPs, etc. that is moving more computers from dispersed offices to concentrated server farms.
2. More of the economy runs on servers - this would be like issuing a report during the industrial revolution that power consumption by factories increased at an "alarming" rate. Moreover, I'd wager that a good chunk of that server power is paid for by exporting internet and IT-related services.
3. Electricity is only a small fraction of U.S. energy consumption. Most of the energy (about 2/3) goes into transportation (of atoms, not bits).
It's only natural and proper that server power consumption should rise with the increasing use of the internet in global commerce. This report should be cause for celebration, not cause for alarm. (but then celebration does sell news, does it.)
Re:"Alarming" increase in "alarming" statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also safe to say th
Computers are powerhogs (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Performance per watt is a biggie for chip manufactures. Having a less than 10 watt server chip is possible, but who wants to use a Palm Pilot for a transaction server?
Having the performance to handle a slashdotting is what is needed in many servers. Performance is first, power consumption is second. That is why the performance per watt i
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All the time this power increase has been happening, chips have been getting more efficient (in terms of power per operation). However, they're also doing a lot more work. 6 years ago a typical new computer was something like a 700-1000 MHz Pentium III (except for the Celeron cheapies) with 128-256 MB of RAM. The computer I built myself this last Christmas is 2.1 GHz dual core with a Gig (for now) of RAM. That's 4-6 times the clock cycles (at 64 bits, nonetheless) and 4
cheap blade servers... (Score:2, Informative)
Rubbish. One of the biggest myths in server sales today is that blades consume more power. If you fill racks full of them they consume more power per square metre of floor space, not per server. If you need the same number of servers they should consume less power, largely due to the centralised AC/DC conversion.
HP especially are working to make blades some of the most efficient servers on the market.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Calibrate your BS detectors.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just pointing that out.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that current trends have continued for 30 years in the case of Moore's law.
Did you know disco record sales were up 300%? (Score:3, Interesting)
And how much energy did those computers save? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, computers are using more power than 5 years ago? Who cares? If it bothers you, then get off the grid and fun in your cave.
Don't you see the looming crisis? (Score:3, Funny)
There's your problem, right there. You are thinking on such a short time scale. If you look back 100 years, the amount of electricity being used by computers is INFINITELY more than before. In no time at all, COMPUTERS WILL USE ALL THE ELECTRICITY IN THE UNIVERSE.
Clearly this is a problem. Think about it - those electrical cords have two wires. Electricity comes in one side, swirls around your computer for a bit, heating things up and showing you devil imag
Forced Change (Score:2)
I'm not a physicist but isn't heat the problem? (Score:2)
But Other Efficiencies Are Gained (Score:3, Informative)
While it may seem disturbing that computers are consuming a larger percentage of energy usage, one has to realize they probably more than offset their own energy use -- this by allowing other resources to either be used more efficiently or by enabling other economic activity that discovers and distributes resources, energy among them.
We darkened the sky... (Score:2)
Then we'll all have that inconvenient blue/red pill choice thingy.
Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Yea as computing has gotten cheaper and people are using more of it, but thats because the relative cost of powering them have remained cheap. Don't expect the trend to continue once it becomes expensive compared to other things.
Quite believable (Score:2)
I can attest to this personally.
I have several white-box servers in a co-lo that together with a good stiff tailwind draw about 4 amps total.
I also have several Dell 1950 and 2950 servers in a data center for my day job. Each one by itself draws about 3 amps (dual supply, 1.5 amps per supply, surging to 3 amps when one of the supplies is turned off for whatever reason). Granted, there are many more fans in the Dell servers than in my whitebox servers, but I have more storage in my whitebox servers.
Re: (Score:2)
Dell servers load balance incoming power over both PSUs, which is why power consumption spikes when you pull the power on one.
Did you measure power factor on your white-box servers? If they don't have power factor correction (preferably active PFC), they likely show
Trends (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, so power use doubled... (Score:4, Interesting)
overcapacity, spam, botnets (Score:3, Interesting)
- You can't get webhosting with good support and reliability unless you pay for the level of webhosting that gets you your own box.
- I need my server to be able to stand up to a spike in demand caused by ten thousand spams hitting it in three seconds...
... or 1000 ssh login requests in one minute from a bot searching for weak pasword... ... or a brain-dead bot requesting the same 5 Mb pdf file 10,000 times in one hour, and sucking down 60 Mb worth of partial-content responses.
Similar deal with multi-core CPUs. People are talking about making desktop machines into the equivalent of 1980 supercomputer, and one of the main justifications seems to be that anti-virus software can run all the time without affecting responsiveness. This is nuts. The internet and its protocols weren't designed for a world infested by Windows machines controlled by malware.Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if anyone has bothered to do a study of server power consumption per teraflop or web page served? In the same time frame, how much has the number of servers increased and how many transactions per second do each server perform?
Unlike cars which have decreased gas consumption per vehicle on average of only about 20% while carying the same number of passangers per ve
Re: (Score:2)
If you use water to cool electricity-based computing, wouldn't it make sense to use electricity to cool water-based computing? Where's your head, man?!