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IBM Still Dominating Green500 List

Paul Lilly — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:02:14 -0600

Who would've guessed that 18 of the top 20 most energy efficient supercomputers on the planet are built with IBM hardware? Let's be honest, who wouldn't have guessed it? This isn't the first time IBM has dominated the Green500 list, which includes a range of energy efficient supercomputers all around the globe, but it's hard not to be impressed that the company holds 69 of the top 100 positions on the list.

"Supercomputers can no longer focus only on raw performance. The era of simply adding more processors is coming to a close," said David Turek, vice president, deep computing, IBM. "Clients need to be able to run supercomputers anywhere, not only places that have cheap power. As the Green500 proves, IBM has focused on this issue for some time and is well positioned to usher in performance breakthroughs along with efficiency gains."

IBM also claims the most energy efficient system in the world with a supercomputer built at the Julich supercoming center in Germany. The machine is capable of producing more than 732 Mflops per watt of energy.

IBM Shifting Focus to Zero-Emission Data Centers

Paul Lilly — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:48:43 -0600

IBM continues to focus on going green and is now hard at work developing technology that could lead to zero-emission data centers, according to a report at eWeek.com.

Bruno Michel, the guy in charge of Advanced Thermal Packaging at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory, said he and his team have put their heads together trying to figure out new ways of reducing emissions and waste in data centers. Among the ideas being tossed around are chip stacking and liquid cooling.

"High-performance liquid cooling allows data centers to operate with coolant temperatures above the free cooling limit in all climates, eliminating the need for chillers and allowing the thermal energy to be reused in cold climates," Michel said.

According to Michel, his team has been able to remove 85 percent the heat load from high-performance compute nodes at a temperature of 60C.

As data centers continue to consume more energy, expect more companies to devote increasing amounts of R&D into reducing emissions.

Image Credit: datacenterknowledge.com

Microsoft and Samsung Toot Each Other's Green Horns

Paul Lilly — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:00:54 -0600

Want to get in Mother Nature's good graces and maybe save a buck or two while doing so? Combine Samsung's memory chips with Microsoft's operating system. That's the message in a nutshell the two companies will work together to promote.

"There is not doubt that the combination of Windows 7 and 40nm DDR3 in new PCs will make users very happy," said Dong-Soo Jun, executive senior vice president of memory marketing at Samsung Electronics. "If you opt for 4GB of memory in a Windows 7-based system, over typical 2GB-based systems used today, you'll see an increase in performance, while using less power thanks to the efficiency of Samsung's 40nm DDR3 DRAM."

If this all sounds a little bit hokey, you may just have to get used to it. Depending on how this marketing campaign plays out, Samsung suggested it might further collaborate with Microsoft on more green IT efforts on a global scale.

Image Credit: Samsung via koreahereald.co.kr

Newsweek Says HP is the "Greenest" Fortune 500 Company

Paul Lilly — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:48:06 -0500

Dell in the past 12 months has been making a concerted effort to reduce its carbon footprint and go green, but according to Newsweek, Hewlett-Packard is the greenest Fortune 500 company around. That's an interesting position to put the OEM in, considering Greenpeace ranked HP No. 14.

So why the disparity? Well, according to Gizmodo, Newsweek takes a holistic view when ranking companies, which includes greenhouse emissions, water consumption, and supply chain management. Greenpeace, on the other hand, is about the benchmarks, such as how much toxic chemicals are being used.

One specific area in which the two rankings disagree is with HP's use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardant (BFR). Greenpeace was critical of their use, while Newsweek praised the company for its diminished usage.

As for Dell? The OEM still ranked high in Newsweek's report, taking the No. 2 spot. The rest of the top 5 included, in order, Johnson & Johnson, Intel, and IBM.

Sprint Announces Eco-Friendly Cellphone

Paul Lilly — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:00:36 -0500

Sprint on Thursday announced the Samsung Reclaim, the first phone in the U.S. constructed from eco-friendly bio-plastic materials. In addition to being constructed from 80 percent recyclable materials, Sprint said it will donate $2 to The Nature Conservancy's Adopt an Acre program each time a customer purchases a Reclaim.

"This generous donation from Sprint will help us protect and restore some of America's most beautiful and ecologically-important landscapes for future generations to enjoy," said Mark Tercek, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. "We applaud Sprint's sustainability efforts, as innovation and new technology are crucial to the future of conservation."

Features of the Reclaim include a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, Sprint Navigation with GPS support, 2MP camera with 3x digital zoom and camcorder, expandable memory up to 32GB, and an integrated web browser.

The Reclaim will be made available in choice of Earth Green or Ocean Blue starting August 16 for $50 (after $30 instant rebate and $50 MIR) with a two-year service agreement.

Image Credit: Sprint via geeky-gadgets.com

Maingear Makes First GeForce-Upgradeable Ion PC

Paul Lilly — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:14:10 -0500

Maingear this week announced the Pulse gaming PC, the first Ion-based rig to sport upgradeable Nvidia graphics. The company also claims its Pulse is the "world's greenest gaming PC."

Built around Nvidia's Ion platform, the Pulse comes standard with an Intel 65W Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad processor, integrated GeForce 9300 graphics upgradeable to a discrete 9800 GT ECO card which the company says consumes 40 percent less power than a standard 9800 GT, up to 8GB of DDR2-800 memory, up to a 500GB hard drive or 160GB SSD, and an 80+ certified 300W power supply.

"The Maingear Puls with Nvidia graphics perfect for anyone who wants a small, energy efficient, and stylish PC," Maingear stated in a press release. "With its Nvidia Ion-based motherboard, the Pulse delivers the best graphics solution available for low-power, small form factor designs.

The Pulse is available now starting at $800.

Image Credit: Maingear

Maximum Green: 5 Freeware Apps That Save the Environment (And Your Cash!)

David Murphy — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:30:17 -0500

Green. It's all the rage in the technology world nowadays. You've got green hard drives. Green laptops. Green desktops. Green printers (with soy ink!). Green displays. Green power strips. Louis Armstrong saw skies of blue and clouds of white, but any geek worth his electric bill sees nothing but green. It's the color of the environment, and it's the color of all the cash you'll be saving by using green-themed applications to curtail your out-of-control PC habits. Or normal PC habits, because anyone can benefit from the open-source and freeware applications we're profiling in this week's software roundup. Best of all, most of these applications automatically take care of your green actions for you--set them up to run, and you won't have to lift a finger to tap into increased savings and Captain Planet-style goodwill.

Edison

What it does: This helpful little freeware application lets you establish schedules for "work time" and "non-work" time. From there, you tell the application what kind of energy-savings (and money savings) you want to achieve, and the application automatically calculates and sets the appropriate times for turning off your display, powering down your hard drive, and slapping your computer into standby mode after a certain span of inactivity. It's a basic, simple way to achieve energy-savings on your computer. Best of all, the application calculates out exactly how much money, energy, and carbon-dioxide you'll be saving. If that's not inspirational, we don't know what is.

Download it here!

LocalCooling

What it does: LocalCooling is the Maximum PC of energy-saving applications. Unlike Edison, LocalCooling performs a fairly thorough analysis of your PC's components to give you a rundown of how much power your supercharged rig is eating up. Once you've cried Mother Earth's tears, you can select one of three predefined power-saving options that, like Edison, set times for the automatic turn-off of your monitor, the spinning down of your hard drives, and the complete shutting down of your PC. You can also customize your own times if you want to take a more hands-on approach to reducing your energy footprint (and electric bill). Select your intervals and LocalCooling will estimate how much you could save!

Download it here!

NoSleepHD

What it does: Okay. We'll confess. This application is the complete antithesis of power-savings. But just in case you secretly harbor a deep dislike of your planet and/or have a wad of cash to blow for usability's sake, NoSleepHD is your ticket. This application runs in your system tray and keeps your hard drives--internal and external--from spinning down into sleep cycles. NoSleepHD presents a crude solution to the problem, as the program writes a super-tiny file to your drives at specific intervals to keep them spinning forever. But hey, it reduces those precious seconds of spin-up time to zero. Take that, Earth.

Download it here!

Magic Packet Sender

What it does: It's often tempting to leave the ol' computer on during the day so you can dial back into your home system from work to access your files, control your webcam, and download things that you shouldn't really be looking at during a typical 9-to-5 day. Yeah, that's right. But even if these scenarios don't fit your typical use, there's really no reason to leave your computer on during the day just because. If you use Wake-on-LAN functionality to turn your PC on remotely, then you'll want to use Magic Packet Sender to process the tiny commands you send home to turn the system on in the first place. And if you have no idea what Wake-on-LAN even is, well... download this application and take a read!

Download it here!

GreenPrint World Edition

What it does: You know what's annoying? When you're printing a Web page or a document, and all of your pages come out correctly save for the last one, which is usually just a small paragraph of unnecessary text, or a URL, or some miscellaneous element that wastes an entire page of paper. GreenPrint World Edition eliminates this frustration by scanning the documents you're about to print, then automatically removing these unimportant pages from the mix. And if you think that this issue is so miniscule as to not warrant attention or save any energy whatsoever, that's why this helpful application keeps track of all the wasted pages you would have printed without its guidance. And that's why we love it--an energy-saving procedure that backs up its usefulness with raw facts.

Download it here!

Microsoft Promises to go 30% Greener by 2012

Paul Lilly — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:05:23 -0500

Microsoft makes its way to the increasingly popular green movement by announcing to its more than 90,000 employees plans to reduce its carbon emissions by more than 30 percent by 2012.

"As a technology company, we believe that our footprint goals will be met by leveraging software and technology," Microsoft's sustainability chief Rob Bernard wrote in a blog post. "We will work to provide advances in our building operations, we will continue to expand our use of our Unified Communications tools...and will look for new ways to reduce our use of resources in our datacenters by continuing to push the envelope on innovation in how datacenters are designed, built, and operated."

Bernard said Microsoft's goal can be achieved by improving energy use in its buildings and operations, reducing air travel, and increasing the use of renewable energy. Some of that work has already begun, and Bernard claims Microsoft was able to save over $90 million on travel by utilizing remote conferencing.