Convey computer tackles energy waste

Steven J Wallach, the computer architect behind the Data General MV 8000, is completing his newest machine, the Convey computer, which is intended to tackle energy waste, one of the principle limitations in the world of supercomputing, says the New York Times.

Supercomputers are assembled from thousands or even tens of thousands of microprocessors, and they often consume as much electricity as a small city. Moreover, they can prove to be difficult to program.

Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California, San Diego, believes the most important quality of the Convey computer is that it will be a green supercomputer.

Adaptec, a global provider of storage solutions, is demonstrating the company's energy-saving, intelligent, power management solution for high-performance storage, at SC08 this week in Austin, Texas, says The Earth Times.

The SC08 convention will showcase how high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in research, education and commerce.

Teaming-up with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Super Micro Computer, the live demo will showcase up to 40% savings in storage energy consumption using Adaptec Intelligent Power Management in enterprise-class storage environments, without sacrificing performance.

The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems, has put in place several steps designed to expand the consortium's community of industry, government and academic collaborators, states Market Watch.

In order to provide end-user companies with a strong voice within the organisation, The Green Grid has formed an end-user focused advisory council, which will report directly to the consortium's board of directors.

The advisory council will provide feedback and help influence the consortium's strategy for developing and promoting standards, measurement methods, processes and technologies to improve overall data centre energy efficiency worldwide.