Energy Efficient Memory Blog

Sustainable IT

We recently spent some time talking with Ted Sampson over InfoWorld about the role of Memory in Server power consumption. He writes their Sustainable IT Blog ... Check it out.

Kevin Kilbuck, Senior Marketing Manager, Micron Technology, Inc.

Turns out, you don’t know what you don’t know. Really.

So we just recently we had a meeting with some of the guys that run the data center here at Micron. One of the topics of discussion was the role of memory as a power consumer in those big-iron systems ... basically we wanted to get their take on memory and also get a grounded opinion from guys in the trenches on all the buzz around green(ish) data centers.

Needless to say, it was an enlightening conversation. For me, the big take-away was that while these operations guys were looking at many different ways to reduce power, they hadn't really dug into the consumption specs around memory yet. Their assumption (and probably the assumptions of most people for that matter) was that the power requirement for memory "is what it is" ...

So, one of our smart-guy engineering types heads for the whiteboard (frankly he’ll do that any chance he gets) and starts cracking off equations that calculate the benefits of dropping the voltage from 1.8V to 1.5V, and the roll of reduced chip count (RCC) modules. It really opened everyone’s eyes.

So--we tossed all of this into a really simple calculator that will take your total data center capacity and your local electricity rate and do the fancy white-board stuff for you ... Pretty cool. And funny really, brings home that old cliché about change beginning at home.