The keynote at the 22nd EDA Interoperability Forum was delivered by Subodh Bapat, Vice President, Energy Efficiency and Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. Titled “Groovy Green Computing: Battling the Mushrooming Use of Power”, his presentation was not simply interesting, it was relevant to what many of us talk about and work towards – sustainability.

Sustainability, a.k.a. green, is a topic of much visibility in the world today. With increasing global demand for more compute power comes increasing hunger for energy. Sun and countless other companies, organizations, and governments are finding ways to curb the appetite. Subodh’s keynote was full of thought-provoking information such as data center power consumption increases 10X every 12 years. (Hm. Sounds like a “More’s Law” to me.) Floor size of the data center increases accordingly, too. By 2012, worldwide data center power consumption costs could be as high as $250B, compared to $30B-40B a couple of years ago. An enormous data center – 750,000 sq. ft., needing 80MW of power – is being planned for Miami to route Latin American and Caribbean data traffic. And it will need a special power plant for itself! A power supply for a computer is only 60% efficient. (Here we semiconductor people are, lowering power consumption of chips and the savings are swamped by the power supply.) Cooling fans and other things also contribute to a computing system’s energy requirements. It’s important then, to analyze the entire system -  and data center – to minimize overall power use.

Energy consumption will come under more scrutiny and government regulation. Several advanced and not-so-advanced techniques are being deployed to meet data center goals of getting maximum work out for the amount of power consumed and ensuring minimum power usage when idle. Facilities and IT departments – typically the ones who deal with power consumption challenges – are beginning to work together for better solutions. Creative ideas are being tested. “Hot Aisle Containment” doesn’t let hot air generated by server racks mix with cool air coming in. Putting a data center underground in an abandoned coal mine allows the earth to absorb heat without energy required for air-conditioners (although this sounds dangerous for workers to me). Pumping hot air from a data center through underground “earth pipes” also uses earth for cooling. A hospital saves energy by using water warmed in their data center to do their laundry. A wastewater treatment facility needing warm water to maintain algae growth gets it from a nearby data center. And my favorite is “Air Side Economization”, which is a fancy term for opening the windows. Data centers in cool climates need not use energy for air-conditioning when it’s free with ASE.

Subodh described three aspects to be considered together for reducing data center power consumption: proportionality + totality + agility. Proportionality is balancing workload with power consumption. Totality is looking at every component, not just optimizing one. Agility is being responsive to fluctuations.

At the end of his keynote, he said that yes, we in the semiconductor industry are helping, too. Our low-power design and verification methodologies along with advanced semiconductor technologies are helping make a sustainable planet for us all. Thank goodness.