HP Looks To Improve Power Management Coordination

tringtring writes "Computer World reports on an HP Labs researcher who foretells a future in which power management features will be built into the processor, memory, server, software and cooling systems. Coordination will be paramount. 'What happens if you turn all these elements on at the same time?' the principal research scientist at HP Labs asks. 'How do I make sure that the system doesn't explode?' This future is the vision of Parthasarathy Ranganathan, the man behind the "No Power Struggles" project at Hewlett-Packard. Power management systems will have to operate holistically, without one component conflicting with another, Ranganathan says. Ranganathan is just one of many researchers at the tech industry's biggest labs researching on how future data centers will handle increasing demands for processing capability and energy efficiency while simplifying IT."

Hint: step 1 is user-control

[Spazmania]

Step 1 is user control for turning up the cooling features. If the user determines that the fans should run faster then the fans should run faster regardless of what the "holisitic" system thinks.

Seriously, this is the single biggest problem with the current HP DL360. The fans turn down to 30% and the memory overheats. A simple BIOS option to set the minimum fan speed to 60% would solve this.

Automatic is better

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The crap design you mention is jsut that: a crap design. It is possible to make a good automatic design.

How many cars these days have manual chokes, advance/retard, mixture settings etc? None. They are all automatic. Give a user a knob and they will fiddle with it and break the system.

also go to a dc power bus for the data center

[Joe The Dragon]

dropping ac to dc psu in each system and replacing them with dc to dc ones will drop heat and power use.