GREEN COMPUTING

Submitted by
ALVIN T VINCENT (FK-2195)
PAWAS DAYAL (FN-136)
 GREEN COMPUTING

Green computing is the study and practice of using computing resources

efficiently. The goals are similar to green chemistry; that is reduce the use of hazardous
materials, maximize energy efficiency during the product’s lifetime and promote
recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste.

Opportunities lie in green technology like never before in history and

organizations are seeing it as a way to create new profit centres while trying to helping the
environmental cause. The plan towards green IT should include new electronic products and
services with optimum efficiency and all possible options towards energy savings.

APPROACHES TO GREEN COMPUTING

VIRTUALIZATION:
Computer virtualization is the process of running two or more logical computer
systems on one set of physical hardware. The concept originated with the IBM mainframe
OS of the 1960’s, but was commercialized for x86- compatible computers only in the
1990’s.With virtualization, a system administrator could combine several physical systems
into virtual machines on one single, powerful system, thereby unplugging the original
hardware and reducing power and cooling consumption.

POWER MANAGEMENT:
Power management for computer systems are desired for many reasons particularly:

Prolong battery life

Reduce cooling requirements

Reduce noise

Reduce operating costs for energy and cooling

Lower power consumption also means lower heat dissipation, which increases
system stability and less energy use which saves money and reduces the impact on the
environment. The advanced configuration and power interface (ACPI),an open industry
standard, allows an operating system to directly control the power saving aspects of its
underlying hardware. This allows a system to automatically turn off components such as
monitors and hard drives after set periods of inactivity. In addition, a system may hibernate,
where most components (including the CPU and the system RAM) are turned off.

Some programs allow the user to manually adjust the voltages supplied to the CPU,
which reduces both the amount of heat produced and electricity consumed. This process is
called under Volting.

POWER SUPPLY
The 80 plus program is a voluntary certification system for power supply
manufactures. If a PSU meets the certification, it will use only the power it needs at a given
load: In other words, it won’t use more power than it needs. It’s the heart of a green PC,
since it manages the power for all the other components. An industry initiative called 80
PLUS certificates PSUs that are at least 80% efficient.

STORAGE
The most conventional route is the 3.5’’ desktop hard drive. Recently, major drive
manufacturers have begun to focus on reduced power consumption, resulting in such
features as the reduced RPM low-power idle mode with fixed rotation speed for reduced
power consumption.

The second option, which also tends itself to affordability, is to use a 2.5’’ laptop
hard drive. These consume less power than larger disks as a result of their smaller platters,
smaller motors.

The lowest-power option is to use a solid state hard drive (SSD), which typically draw
less than one –third the power of a 2.5’’ disk.

VIDEO CARD:
 No video card – use a shared terminal,
 Use mother board video output – typically low 3D performance and low power.
 Select a GPU based on average wattage
 The easiest way is to go for integrated video. This is the lowest-performance option.

DISPLAYS:
LCD monitors typically use a cold-cathode fluorescent bulb to provide light for the
display. Some newer displays use an array of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in place of the
fluorescent bulb, which reduces the amount of electricity used by the display. LCD monitors
uses three times less when active, and ten times less energy when in sleep mode. LCDs are
up to 66% more energy efficient than CRTs, LCDs are also upwards of 80% smaller in size and
weight, leading to fuel savings in shipping. LCDs also produce less heat.
MATERIALS RECYCLING:

Computer recycling refers to recycling or reuse of a computer or electronic waste.

This can include finding another use for the system, or having the system dismantled in a
manner that allows for the safe extraction of the constituent materials for reuse in other
products.
Electronic devices, including audio-visual components, mobile phones and other
hand-held devices, and computer components, contain valuable elements and substances
suitable for reclamation, including lead, copper, and gold. They also contain a plethora of
toxic substance, such as dioxins, PCBs, cadmium, chromium, radioactive isotopes, and
mercury.

TELECOMMUTING

Teleconferencing technologies are often implemented in green computing initiatives. The

advantages are many; increased worker satisfaction, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions
related to travel and increased profit margins as a result of lower overhead costs for office
space, heat, lighting etc.

FUTURE OF GREEN COMPUTING

As 21 st century belongs to computers, gizmos and electronic items and energy

issues will get serious ring in the coming days, as the public debate on carbon emissions,
global warming and climatic change gets hotter. If we think computers are non polluting and
consume very little energy, we need to think again. It is estimated that out of $250 billion
per year spent on powering computers worldwide, only about 15% of that power is spent
computing-the rest is wasted. Thus, energy saved on computer hardware and computing
will equate tonnes of carbon emissions saved per year. Taking into consideration the
popular use of information technology industry, it has to lead a revolution of sorts by
turning green in a manner no industry has ever done before.

GREEN IT: NEXT BURNING ISSUE FOR BUSINESS

It is becoming widely understood that the way in which we are behaving as a

society is environmentally unsustainable, causing irreparable damage to our planet. Rising
energy prices, together with government-imposed levies on carbon production are
increasingly impacting on the cost of doing business, making many current businesses
practice economically unsustainable. It is becoming progressively more important for all
business to act in an environmentally responsible manner, both to fulfil their legal and
moral obligations, but also to enhance the brand and to improve corporate image. The
whole purpose of IT is to make business more productive and efficient, and to save money.

THE PROBLEM
Rising energy costs will have an impact on all business, and all businesses will
increasingly be judged according to their environmental credentials, by legislators,
customers and shareholders.

THE SOLUTION

A fresh approach to IT and power is now needed, putting power consumption at the
force in all aspects of IT – from basic hardware design to architectural standards, from bolt-
on point solutions to bottom-up infrastructure build. IBM has a real appreciation of the
issues, thanks to its size, experience and expertise, and can help its customers to avoid the
‘wrong ways’ of doing things, by helping to identify the most appropriate solutions.

Modern IT systems provide more computing power per unit of energy and thus
reduce energy consumption per unit of computing power. Despite this, they are actually
responsible for an overall increase in energy consumption and for an increase in the cost of
energy as a proportion of IT cost this is because users are not simply using the same amount
of computing hour as before, while using the new technology to reduce their power
consumption nor are they using technology to leverage savings in a energy cost.

STRATEGIES OF CHANGE

Businesses are competitive bodies, used to having to ‘do more with less’ in order to
remain competitive. They will have to learn to use less electricity in just the same the way,
using green computing to save money. This will demand major changes in IT uses and
policies.

Companies will have to take modest steps, simply making sure that desktop PC’s
monitors and printers are turned off at night, and/or using more effective power-saving
modes on unused equipments. New dual core processors are faster than traditional chips
and yet used less energy, and the latest generation of dual-core processors promise to
consume about one third less power than their predecessors while offering up to 80% better
performance.

Other IT uses may need to investigate the use of DC power. Most energy suppliers
provide AC power because it is easier to transport over long distances, although most PC’s
run on DC, so that the AC current has to convert to DC before it reaches the hardware, with
inevitable losses of energy in conversion. Virtualization and server consolidation can allow
users to ‘do’ more with less’, allowing one large server to replace several smaller machines.

The US environmental protection Agency’s Energy Star programme is already

promoting more energy-efficient IT infrastructures and polices, while IBM, Hewlett-Packard,
Sun Microsystems and AMD have joined forces to launch the Green Grid environment lobby,
aimed at reducing energy consumption at computer data centres by encouraging and
improving power saving measures.

RECENT IMPLEMENTATIONS:

BLACKLE

It is a search engine site powered by Google search. It came into being on the
concept that when a computer screen is white presenting the Google home web page, your
computer consumes 74W.When the screen is black it consumes only 59W.Based on this
theory if everyone switched from Google to Blackle, mother earth would save 750MW each
year.

FIT-PC
Fit – PC is the size of a paperback and absolutely silent, yet fit enough to run
Windows Xp or Linux. Fit-PC is designed to fit where a standard PC is too bulky, noisy and
power hungry. Fit-PC draws only 5 Watts, consuming in a day less power than a traditional
PC consumes in 1 hour.

ZONBU PC
The Zonbu is a new, very energy efficient PC. The Zonbu consumes just one third of
the power of a typical light bulb. The devices run the Linux operating system using a 1.2
gigahertz processor and 512 MG of RAM.

SUNRAY
A sun Ray on a desktop consumes 4 to 8 watts of power, because most of the heavy
computation is performed by a server.
Sun says Sunrays are particularly well suited for cost-sensitive environments such as
call centres, education, healthcare, service providers, and finance.

ASUS EEE PC
The “ultra-portable” class of personal computers is characterized by a small size,
fairly low power CPU, compact screen, low cost and innonvations such as using flash
memory for storage rather than hard drives with spinning platters.
CONCLUSION

So far, consumers haven’t cared about ecological impact when buying computers,
they’ve cared only about speed and price .New green materials are developed every year,
and many toxic ones are already being replaced by them. The greenest computer will not
miraculously fall from the sky one day; it will be the product of years of improvements. The
features of a green computer of tomorrow would be like: efficiency, manufacturing and
materials, recyclability, server model, self-powering and other trends.