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Microsoft, Google Battle Over Energy Efficiency
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Oct 21, 2008 05:45 AM
from the anything-you-can-light-i-can-light-cheaper dept.
from the anything-you-can-light-i-can-light-cheaper dept.
1sockchuck writes "Microsoft and Google have opened a new front in their battle for global domination: data center energy efficiency. Just weeks after Google published data on the extreme efficiency of its previously secret data centers, Microsoft says it has achieved similar results with shipping containers (despite Google's patent) packed with up to 2,500 servers. The geeky benchmark for the battle is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), a green data-center metric advanced by The Green Grid. Microsoft says its containers tested at a PUE of 1.22, while Google reported an average PUE of 1.21 for its data centers, which apparently are also now using containers."
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Containers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Containers (Score:5, Insightful)
Most businesses care about being green when it means spending less of the green ones.
Parent
Re:Containers (Score:4, Funny)
it takes a container full of servers to run Vista?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Joe the plumber can't afford to be green! Most small business owners making under $250,000 can't afford to be green! Won't somebody please think of the small business owners?!
Re:Containers (Score:5, Funny)
You sir, have the economic intelligence of a bullfrog.
Excellent! Bullfrogs are green!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> That's why I'd wish we'd tax the Hell out of the most non-green businesses.
It should not be (called a) tax actually: it should not depend on being profitable or not. When said company pollutes, dumps etc. then it should pay for the cleanup. The only shift we need is to realize that clean water, clean air, clean soil etc. is not free.
In Europe they have a "product fee", supposed to cover the safe disposal/reuse etc. of the product at the end of its life. A step in the right direction. I would calcu
Power usage effectiveness isn't the whole story (Score:5, Interesting)
OK so if you have a PUE of 1.2 then five-sixths of the input energy is used to power the computer equipment. But that doesn't say how energy efficient the machines themselves are. You could be running 150W Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors, or whatever, and still get a higher 'efficiency' than someone using Atom processors giving the same computational speed with lower power usage.
In the old days I would have suggested that Microsoft was limited to x86 processors and so they would necessarily have higher power usage than Google, who would be free to use more power-efficient architectures like ARM or PowerPC. But I get the feeling this isn't true nowadays. In servers and high-end desktops, do Intel x86 chips now offer the best bang per watt?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
True - But it still means that 5/6ths of the power goes to adding computational resources rather than pure-waste overhead.
Idle data centers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why? (Score:2)
Microsoft, which is currently putting the finishing touches on a huge new data center near Chicago. The bottom floor of the $550 million facility will house at least 150 data center containers packed with servers.
So they put servers in containers, then put the containers in a warehouse? What good does the container do at that point? You're just compartmentalizing the warehouse, with really unwieldy compartments (I'll bet you can't move the containers once installed, so you're stuck with the form factor chosen at installation). Why not install modular walls instead (if it's the compartmentalization that yields the extra efficiency)?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Fat people... (Score:5, Insightful)
PUE is a rubbish metric for this (Score:5, Interesting)
PUE is a rubbish metric for this. The definition is nothing more than "power at utility meter" / "power used directly by IT kit". There's no account of WHAT that power is doing. Is it running one PC or a thousand? Is it hitting Gigaflops or nanoflops? You could put a laptop without a battery into a datacentre and get a PUE better than someone who has a thousand rackmounts all running at full speed. All PUE measures is the efficiency of the power conversion gear and associated equipment (e.g. UPS, etc.). In fact, UPS is an interesting measure too because the PUE of kit with a UPS would be greatly hindered in PUE stakes even against otherwise identical equipment.
Now, "Total Teraflops / Power at utility meter" - that's a more accurate metric to be comparing. And I'd guess that there Google's containers would wipe the floor with MS's (unless, of course, some trickery is being done in the TFlops measurement - you would have to carefully define what's needed). And even then, throwing a bucket load of low-power ARM processors running Linux into every square inch possible would probably thrash even Google in those stakes (unless they already do that?).
If you're going to have a contest over a metric, at least understand the metric and its shortcomings before you start claiming that X is better than Y.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The true energy savings happen at the source. We need to find ways to increase coal-to-electricity efficiency conversion to 90% or higher.
Telling Microsoft that Google are battling? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep (Score:3, Interesting)
It is a written rule of journalists, they economize the amount of letters in a headline. It makes sense with printed press, but at the web they should follow some different gidelines.
"Green Grid" has no Green Organizations as Members (Score:3, Insightful)
The Green Grid: Members List [thegreengrid.org]
Re:Geography (Score:4, Insightful)
Since it is mostly irrelevant where a data center physically is
Actually I think latency is a major issue for both Microsoft and Google as they chase the market for online applications.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Since it is mostly irrelevant where a data center physically is,
well, "near a high-capacity internet link" is a pretty big issue for datacenters, and AFAIK the main reason datacenters are still being built in stupid places.
Re:What a joke... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
you have to include the PSU too (Score:3, Informative)
The PC electronics only burns 1-2 watts in standby, but the large and idle power supply will burn another 8 or so.
Or at least that's the way my imac is. I got a watt meter and it's 70w at full power, 40w in low-power mode, 10w in standby and 10w when off. It only goes to zero when you unplug it.
My laptop is the same: the charger burns 7w even when you don't plug it in to the laptop.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
True, but switches on the outlet are pretty much UK-only, as are plugs that include a fuse. Other 230 V-countries don't use them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A "typical" PC, of which there are none, will likely pull 125-200W at startup. It runs full out, afaik, until power management kicks in. For my laptop, it takes nearly 5 minutes* from power switch to useful (as judged by both disc activity and inability to accept keystrokes in realtime). So 1/12 hr x 125W = 10 watt-hours. That's ten hours in standby if standby is 1W over hibernation/off.
It has a huge benefit to usability, though. Being able to "turn on" the machine and have a working browser over a wireless
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)