Re: Power Consumption (was: Re: AMD's well may be running dry)

On Mar 14, 1:16 pm, Stephen Hoffman <H...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Andrew wrote:
Now you can understand Sun's motivation in this. The T1000/T2000 are
very very very likely to score whatever the highest efficiency grade
is...

It's as much about competition and marketing as anything else.

Yes, efficiency factors in just like having a portable operating
system platform definition has its benefits, but making money and
marketeering factor in, too.

If a vendor lock-out or a vendor lock-in exists or can be created, it
will almost certainly be used in a competitive situation. And these may
or may not be green -- there have been examples of so-called green
initiatives that have been inefficient, wasteful, energy-intensive or
polluting.

Eco-friendly has turned into the antiseptic hand soap or the latest
in the colored-ribbon-for-something marketeering. Usually with just
enough of a fig leaf involved to avoid charges of crass commercialism.

"Oh, how can so-and-so be against [insert strawman]?"

So what percentage of power would be reduced by, say, solid state
disks replacing mechanical disks, or by better-integrated water cooling
or other technologies into new systems. The vendor marketeering of late
often focuses on the processors, but where's all the power really going
inside a typical computer?

Spinning down disks, or moving to more efficient technologies, or
approaches such as the efficiencies gained from shared infrastructures
-- bigger fans or power supplies at efficient loads, for instance.

And then there are the occasional design "surprises." Halting a
processor can require more power than running it an idle loop, for instance.

If there's a straw-man argument that you can raise in marketing, you
can bet it will be used -- something that allows you to characterize
another organization, entity or product as inferior, wasteful, evil or
any other currently-derogatory term. This is all basic marketing.

Pardon my cynicism.

--www.HoffmanLabs.com
Services for OpenVMS

Power consumption and the amount of heat generated pretty much track
one to one. All the power eventually ends up as heat (in the case of
electronics due to electrical resistance and in the case of moving
mechanical parts, friction). So if one component is emitting heat at
twice the rate as another, it is also using twice the power.

For example, 15 100-watt light bulbs emit the same amount of heat as a
1500-watt space heater, assuming the light from the bulbs doesn't
escape the room. The light is absorbed by matter and its energy is
converted into heat. Humans emit an average of maybe 100 to 150 watts
worth of heat. This is why a small room with many people in it gets
very warm! This is also why the lighting dept. of a store is usually
very warm.

I can't answer precisely what components emit how much heat, but the
need for a fan to cool the processor means it likely uses a very
significant amount of the total power. Once disks are up and spinning
they probably use very little energy to keep spinning. Moving the
heads will of course use some energy.


AEF

.

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