Power-Hungry Data Centers Demand Memory Innovations

It might have been at one time that a data center was a collection of servers inside a corporation; servers that do things like your e-mail and the like. But today we've got data centers all over the world, and they are doing things like running the Web. I was really surprised when digging into this a little bit and discovered that worldwide, data centers consume over a 100 billion kilowatt hours annually. A hundred billion kilowatt hours; it's almost unfathomable.

In this trend of more and more rich data being moved through these server centers, it's just all going to add up to consume more and more power. If you look at the overall piece, 100-plus billion kilowatt hours, and if you just look at the memory piece of that and think about what we can save, we're still talking about some pretty significant numbers here. Roughly five to six billion kilowatt hours of memory power consumption could be saved just by adopting the new Micron parts the 1Gb-based, DDR2 reduced chip count (RCC) modules and 1.5V DDR2 FBDIMMs.

Dean Klein, VP of Market Development, Micron Technology, Inc.

Comments

[John Parsons]

This is an issue & opportunity that needs a much wider media exposure--especially in terms of how such energy savings relate to other social concerns.

For example, Micron is based in Boise. One of the long-running hot button issues in that region is the removal of some Lower Snake River dams to benefit salmon. Four dams (Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Ice Harbor) together purportedly generate only 1.2 billion watts. (See Page #10 Source: http://www.wildsalmon.org/library_files/revenuestream8.pdf)

I wish there was a way for Micron to immediately see their energy-savings chips installed in enough data centers to make up for this hydro so those dams could be removed.

Wishful thinking aside, my point is that people--whether data center managers or regular public--need to have a grasp of just how consumption figures equate to real life social issues, concerns and opportunities.

I hope that you include some other such energy equivalents here for your readers to ponder. I will be "talking up" various points of this blog and the white paper for a long time to come! Thank YOU!