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Filed under: AMD, Processors

Company bets on extreme efficiency with Barcelona — that’s textbook green advancement

I’ve always wanted to visit Spain. Catedrales. Museos. Tapas. Siestas. What’s not to like? But while I may not be running with the bulls anytime soon, I have enjoyed this week’s tour of Barcelona, AMD’s newly minted quad-core processor. While InfoWorld’s tests of the chip’s capabilities are still under way, this little piece of silicon has the potential to make the green-tech-conscious datacenter operator cheer, “Ole!”

For all the facts and features I’ve absorbed in my briefings about Barcelona — including a video interview with the company’s director of server operations Bruce Shaw — one stands out most for me: The chip delivers more than twice the combined integer and floating-point performance of its two-core predecessor at the same thermal envelope, according to AMD’s SPEC tests. That’s to say, despite the power boost, it effectively uses the same amount of energy and produces the same amount of heat as a two-core. One of the ways AMD accomplishes this feat: The cores are capable of powering down, or off, when they’re not being used.

That, to me, is a textbook example of a green technological advancement. It means AMD has minted a processor with significantly higher performance per watt than its predecessor, a metric that’s becoming increasingly important to datacenter operators compared to just raw speed. It would be like a car company unveiling an engine with twice the horsepower but the same gas mileage.

But Barcelona’s green promise doesn’t end there: Consider, also, that AMD designs its chips such that you can easily swap out an old one — in this case, a two-core Opteron — pop in a new four-quad, tweak the BIOS, and poof, you’ve got an upgraded machine. Not only is that a significant time-saver for upgrading your machines, but it means you can essentially double the overall processing power of your server farm without having to recycle or dispose of a single piece of otherwise-useful hardware. Therein lies another ecofriendly boon.

Rounding out the array of Barcelona’s green-tech benefits: It’s primed for virtualization. According to Shaw, AMD worked closely with the major virtualization vendors, including Microsoft, VMWare, and Xen to hone and accelerate the quad-core’s virtualization capabilities. For example, the chip has a new feature called Rapid Virtualization Indexing, which, according to AMD, transfers to the chip some of the virtualization functionality previous performed by the software. The payoff: AMD claims the chip can deliver 79 percent more virtual machines that can its fastest dual-core processor. (That’s a very conservative estimate, Shaw notes.)

Now, if the numbers AMD is sharing are correct, there’s cause indeed for excitement for datacenter operators who are feeling the pressure of limited datacenter space and high energy bills. When you combine the performance boost of the chip alone and add in the virtualization boost, you’re looking at a ton of potential to get far more work out of your machines.

There’s a lot more to Barcelona, and I suggest you not only watch my video interview with Shaw but also check out Tom Yager’s analysis. He’s been immersed in information about the chip for quite some time now, plus he’s testing it to see if it’s all that AMD claims. (He’s also put together a comparison of Intel’s and AMD’s respective four-quad CPUs right here.)

AMD has suffered some financial difficulty recently, and some analysts suggest that Barcelona is coming to the table too late to give the chipmaker the boost it needs. From my green-tech perspective, though, AMD appears to have created a piece of silicon that is very, very well suited for a day and age in which companies are becoming highly conscientious of their power consumption and limited datacenter space (not to mention their carbon footprints). This is an important piece of green technology, one that certainly warrants at least a close look from the enterprise.

Filed under: AMD, Intel, Processors

Following is essentially the content of today’s Green Tech Newsletter. I generally don’t post the newsletter verbatim in my blog, but it seemed important enough in the context of my piece about Barcelona. The newsletter, by the way, is free. You can subscribe here.

AMD and Intel have been locked in fierce races for quite a while now, the latest being the race to first deliver a quad-core processor. Intel managed to win by a nose there, unleashing Tigerton a few days before AMD presented Barcelona.

But speed alone won’t be the determining factor as to which of these two processors will reign in the datacenter. Driven by customer demand for more energy-efficient hardware, both companies are talking up the importance of a less-familiar metric called performance per watt (PPW). As Intel tells it, “performance per system watt is calculated by taking the performance score from a benchmark or application and dividing it by the average system power usage (AC power from the wall).”

At a press meeting with Randy Allen, VP in charge of AMD’s server and workstation division, Allen confirmed that there’s been a shift in what customers want from hardware. “The traditional buying criterion has been peak performance. People would buy at the highest peak performance they could or they would buy on performance per dollar. … This emergence of performance per watt has been dramatic over the last two years.”

The problem with PPW is it’s difficult to measure. To draw on a familiar example, what’s a better performer: a hybrid or a pickup? The hybrid will certainly deliver more miles to the gallon if you’re using it to get around town for work or play, but if the task is hauling lumber or heavy equipment, you’ll get better results with the truck. Then again, if speed truly is what you need, gas costs be darned, maybe that Porsche is right for you.

Back to servers, then, how does a datacenter operator go about assessing whether Machine A or Machine B will deliver better PPW for, say, the company’s accounting application? In my interview with Bruce Shaw, director of server operations at AMD, he told me the best approach is to load up your app on your server, then measure it at the wall.

Sure, that’s not as simple as being able to look at the vendor-provided figures and know for certain which machine is the best overall performer for your specific needs. Then again, the exercise is a valuable one, given that filling your racks with the machines that gives you the best PPW will save you money in the long run — just like filling your corporate fleet with hybrid trucks just might make more sense economically and ecologically than a fleet of Segways.

Filed under: Paper waste

I wanted to follow up on my article from yesterday about organizations finding various ways to reduce paper waste.

First, a while back, Test Center Contributor Mike Heck got his hands on Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), “a lightweight rich Internet application for easily downloading, organizing, and reading e-books and other digital publications. Beneath the hood is Flash Player 9 and Flex 2, which makes for an especially consumer-friendly experience. This starts with a bookshelf metaphor for organizing publications that you’ve borrowed, purchased, or read.”

Now at this point, it’s difficult for me to be too bullish about e-books. In theory, they’re great: You can carry around dozens of titles on, say, your Sony Reader instead of renting a pack-mule to shlep them for you. But the average consumer probably doesn’t want to invest that kind of money in an electronic gadget, and more important, isn’t ready to abandon the traditional tree-based form factor. With time, I can certainly see that changing, mind you, as members of society continue to grow increasingly comfortable with ingesting data digitally. (I know I can spend a lot more time reading from my monitor than I once could.)

E-books might not be fully embraced for years to come, but with a tool like ADE, I see a lot of promise today for technical documentation, such as white papers and manuals, and even digital versions of magazines. Aesthetically, they can be of the same quality as a paper counterpart — but as Mike notes, ADE lets you embed Flash video, which can be a tremendously useful (or entertaining) addition. Moreover, digital documents are easy to share with others, and, if you really, really need to, you can print them out.

And on a related note (and partially what prompted me to post this): You can sign up for the free weekly InfoWorld Express, a PDF package of some of the top content from InfoWorld.com. It doesn’t come embedded with any video, nor is it of quite as pretty as was our former print product. But it’s quite a useful resource, in case you missed one of our important features, reviews, or opinion pieces during the week.

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to do this, but here’s this week’s InfoWorld Express. Check it out. If you like it, you can sign up to get it free every Friday.

I’d love to know what you think about the pros and cons of digital versions of books, magazines, and other documents versus their paper counterparts. Feel free to comment below.

Filed under: Carbon emissions, Electronic document management, Waste reduction

Companies are finding digital paper more efficient, secure, and economical than the tree-pulp-based variety

A paperless world is a long way off, but many businesses are taking strides to at least create a less-paper world. Companies across various industries are finding ways to cut paper waste, from issuing electronic tickets and PDF receipts to incorporating electronic document management systems.

As with so many other green technologies out there, the driving influence here isn’t necessarily sparing trees nor reducing one’s carbon impact on the environment (though saving one ream of paper means five fewer pounds of CO2). Rather, it’s a matter of boosting efficiency; making an easier-to-maintain paper(less) trail (nice for compliance purposes); boosting continuity (a digital copy of your files is handy if a natural disaster hits); and saving cash in the long term on costs associated with printing and mailing. (For some perspective on mailing costs, U.S. businesses spent an estimated $800 billion on direct mail correspondence to potential and existing customers last year, which translates into over 115 billion pieces of mail.)

Also a boon: less time wasted tracking down evasive faxes and archived paper documents, as well as transferring the data on those pages to electronic format.

One of the growing trends is so-called paperless tickets. (”So-called” because there’s still paper involved; just far less.) Last week, the IATA (International Air Transport Association) — which represents more than 240 airlines comprising 94 percent of international scheduled air traffic — said that it would stop issuing paper tickets come May 31, 2008. The AITA says that airlines will save $9 per paper ticket that way, which adds up to $3 billion in annual savings for the industry. (Whether any of those savings will get passed on to Joe and Jane Aisle-Seat remains to be seen, but let’s not hold our breath, lest we cause that little oxygen mask to drop.)

The IATA says the move will also spare “the equivalent of 50,000 mature trees each year.”

Now, I’ve read some comments about this move, the authors of which have expressed concern that the cost of the paper tickets is essentially being passed on to the consumer, but I think that’s a misconception or an exaggeration, depending on how you look at it.

If you haven’t flown with a paperless ticket, here’s how it works: You make your reservation and receive a confirmation e-mail. Now, you could print up that itinerary, if you need a printed point of reference, but it’s not necessary. You could just access that info from your portable device, or jot down the basic on a piece of scrap paper. Then you show up at the airport before your flight and show your ID and a credit card to the nice person behind the counter (or better yet, you swipe it in one of those check-in kiosks). In turn, you’ll receive one slip of paper, your boarding pass, which includes all the pertinent info. That’s it.

So from a customer standpoint, it’s really a lot easier than having to worry about whether your tickets have arrived, or whether you’ve left them at home on the bed beside the clean underwear you’d meant to pack. Plus with an e-mail confirmation, you can easily get at your details through your wireless device, just in case you’ve forgotten whether you’re taking off at 1:27 a.m. Pacific or Eastern Time.

On a related note, The Boston Globe had an article last month about a company called Flash Seats, which is pushing electronic tickets to concerts, sporting events, and the like.

It works similarly to the e-tickets for airlines: When you order your tickets online, the order is associated with your credit card or identification. And when it’s time to go to the game or show, you don’t scour the house for the tickets or stand in line at will call; you swipe your credit card or driver’s license as you go in. In turn, you get a paper guide telling you where your seats are.

In case your card isn’t read, “venue officials verify the person’s identity by asking agreed-upon security questions, such as mother’s maiden name or first pet’s name.”

The Cleveland Cavaliers gave the system a spin last season. Participation was voluntary. “About 17 percent of season ticket holders used the system last season, a portion that [increased] to 50 percent during the club’s playoff run into the NBA Finals,” according to the Boston Globe article.

In addition to reducing paper waste, the system means potentially better control and security. “Team officials say they would like to maintain greater control to improve security, to prevent counterfeiting, and to reclaim some of the money that is going to third-party resellers such as eBay, StubHub, RazorGator, and AceTicket,” says the Globe article.

From an end-user perspective, though, you do lose some convenience. Rather than being able to give tickets to friends so they can meet you at a show later, you have to go through the steps of having the electronic tickets transferred to their names, or else be sure that everyone arrives on time to go in together.

I wrote about e-receipts a while back after learning that at Apple Stores, you can opt to have a receipt sent to you via e-mail instead of issued in paper form on the spot. To me, it seems like a natural evolution in receipts. That’s how my proofs of purchase show up when I order online, or when I pay bills online, so why not when I make an in-store purchase? (I might be a bit warier for purchases made with cash, but as long as there’s an electronic record stored with my bank or credit card company, I feel fine.)

But the paperless push doesn’t just end for end-user purchases. Environmental Leader reports that UPS is trying to convince SMBs to adopt electronic billing by tugging at their eco-conscious heartstrings: “UPS has partnered with the National Arbor Day Foundation to make a $1 donation to the organization for every customer who opts for the paperless PDF invoice.”

As UPS describes it, the benefits of a PDF receipt are numerous. It no doubt saves the company cash on printing and mailing receipts. And for customers, it means you receive receipts faster and in convenient electronic format.

Electronic tickets and receipts are, to me, really low-hanging fruit in the drive toward the paperless office. They represent the end part of complex workflows that are often tied to hard-to-change business practices and technology (or lack thereof).

One of the most obvious ways to cut paper (and print) waste at the office is to crack down on all the superfluous printing and copies end-users make. The average employee reportedly wastes $85 worth of printer paper and ink each year through unnecessary prints. Products such as GreenPrint offer an easy, non-disruptive tool for putting a dent in the pile. The utility lets users preview printouts and easily remove specific pages, text, or graphics from a print session.

But companies are taking further steps to reduce paper use, in the name of boosting efficiency. Insurance company Lloyd’s (of London) has most recently garnered attention in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Times Online for company CEO Richard Ward’s paper-cutting efforts. According to the Times, “a colleague in IT told him that each day Lloyd’s was sending four tons of documents to its sorting office in Chatham, all carried by those white vans.”

Ward told The Wall Street Journal that he’s tackling the paper deluge on a small scale, liking it to “eating an elephant with a teaspoon.” “We have to take small bites out of that elephant to make sure we can digest the changes we’re making,” he told The WSJ.

Among changes Ward has implemented, as he outlined in a speech in May: “Last year, we introduced an electronic filing cabinet - a document repository that enables claims and premiums to be handled quickly and efficiently without the need for paper files. … Currently a fifth of all in scope claims are being processed using the Electronic Claims File. This is a significant increase on the 5 percent at the beginning of the year.”

“In addition,” he added, “if you look at Accounting and Settlement, more than 80,000 premium-related transactions have been processed electronically. Once again there has been a significant increase from the beginning of the year.”

He says that the company’s processing 30 percent of its claims electronically now, but the the goal is to hit 100 percent by March 31. “We might have a symbolic crushing of a van, and it might become a piece of art somewhere inside or outside the building. That might be quite appropriate to do once we’ve reached our goals,” he told the Journal.

(Notably, crushing an otherwise useful van might not be the ideal way to celebrate an eco-friendly achievement of reducing paper waste and boosting efficiency, but that is another story.)

There are plenty of other recent examples I can point to of organizations strolling the paperless trail. Rosen Hotels and Resorts recently announced that it adopted a fax server solution called RightFax from Captaris and integrated its Microsoft Exchange, Cisco CallManager, and Canon MFPs (multifunction peripherals). The end result: a central document management solution, used at the company’s seven hotels, as well as its medical center and the insurance agency, to easily store and share documents that used to be passed around in paper format.

Among other features, the combined solution lets employees send faxes from just about any desktop app, or right from the MFPs, rather than having to deal with paper. Moreover, faxes are filed into SharePoint, where they can be accessed from within the network or remotely. Also handy: Employees on the go can receive immediate notifications when important documents are received.

Paper still plays a vital role in the business world, and no doubt will for years to come. But as more companies trade in reams of paper, stacks of pricey ink cartridges, and boxes of mailing supplies for PDFs, digital ink, e-mail, and document management systems, we’ll collectively reap the benefits of a less-paper world.

Filed under: Green technology

Fifty-five percent of large North American companies have established a detailed green datacenter strategy — despite the fact that 73 percent aren’t entirely sure just what constitutes a green datacenter.

These are just a couple of the findings from a survey recently conducted by Digital Realty Trust, which acquires, develops, and manages technology and datacenter-related real estate. The company polled datacenter decision-makers at 105 organizations, with revenues of at least $1 billion and at least 5,000 employees, to assess green datacenter trends.

According to Digital Realty, one of the overall takeaways from the survey is that “green datacenter trends have taken root more quickly and more deeply than previously understood — perhaps even more so than even energetic proponents of green IT would have guessed themselves.”

The company is basing that conclusion, in part, on the fact that 55 percent of respondents said they have mapped out a clear plan for greening up their datacenters. Of that 55 percent, 80 percent said their strategies encompass not only system hardware but the facility design and operations as well. That’s not surprising, given the recent attention being given to factors such as the high costs of cooling.

But interestingly, and again, perhaps not surprisingly, 73 percent said they weren’t entirely clear just what constitutes a green datacenter. Digital Realty attributes that stat to the fact that there aren’t really any clear standards out there. Individual companies as well as consortiums such as The Green Grid have devised some benchmarks and best practices and are working on more, but it’s true: There’s no textbook definition or blueprints for building a green datacenter.

Notably, though, that hasn’t stopped big-name companies such as Sun and IBM from moving forward in “greenovating” their datacenter facilities. Seems to me that there are plenty of tools and technologies out there that companies can embrace to define and build a green — that is, energy-efficient — datacenter that best suits their needs.

One last set of findings that I found interesting: “Only 25 percent of respondents said that their company required its datacenter vendors to have a ‘green’ strategy. And 64 percent said that they would work with partner that did not have a declared green strategy. Further, only 3 in 10 respondents indicated that it was ‘very’ or ‘extremely important’ that their datacenter partners delineate their own strategy for green operation.”

I guess this isn’t too surprising. Whereas some of the big-name vendors out there do hold their partner companies to a high eco-standard — and even help them along the way — I suspect leaders at other large companies don’t really see value in policing their partners’ environmental practices. It’s likely more a case of just wanting to use the supplier that offers the lowest prices or the best service — sort of like stores that buy materials or goods from socially irresponsible companies that employ sweatshops, for example, or food chains that purchase meat from providers that treat their animals inhumanely.

I do realize that morality is subjective and that some people might take issue with my likening a company that abuses its workers to a company that’s not as ecologically responsible as it could be. But the fact remains: There’s something to be said for choosing to work with partners whose corporate values are in line with your own. Plus, on both an individual level and an organizational level, we have the power to drive positive change with the dollars we spend. We can invest in companies whose practices are making the world a better place, or we can invest in the status quo.

Filed under: Waste reduction

Politicians aren’t the only leaders out there pushing for businesses and individuals to embrace green practices, such as reducing waste and carbon emissions for the sake of the planet (and the economy). Religious leaders are chiming in as well.

On Sunday at a gathering in Loreto, Italy, Pope Benedict XVI called for people (well, specifically young Catholics, according to the AP, but I bet he’d liked others to follow suit) to take steps to better protect the Earth. “Before it’s too late, we need to make courageous choices that will recreate a strong alliance between man and Earth. … We need a decisive ‘yes’ to care for creation and a strong commitment to reverse those trends that risk making the situation of decay irreversible.”

Apparently, the Vatican is taking steps of its own to be eco-friendly. According to the report, “the Vatican … has joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions, and has also said it was installing solar cells on the roof of its main auditorium.”

Moreover, at the gathering, participants received “biodegradable plates, recycling bags for their trash and a hand-cranked cell-phone recharger.” (I wonder if they saw my guide to green geek goodies?)

I find it fascinating and heartening how this green wave has spread, becoming a common bond among differing business, political, and religious leaders. But it really should not be a surprise. More and more people are beginning to realize that the beauty of “going green” is, it’s not only good for the planet and its inhabitants, but it’s good for business, giving companies a way to save money by eliminating wasteful practices. I think that’s been pretty well-documented.

And as I’ve said before, as more and more leaders and citizens of this little blue-green planet of ours clamor for ways to reduce waste, technologists will be continue to play a vital role in developing the tools to make that green dream a reality.

Filed under: AMD, Chips, Intel

In its latest round of power-efficiency tests pitting the AMD Opteron against the Intel Xeon, independent consulting firm Neal Nelson and Associates found that AMD’s offering outperformed Intel’s in 36 of 57 cases.

The results are by no means cut and dry. While the AMD appears to once again have an edge in terms of raw power effienecy, factors such as memory size, transaction type, and transcation loads made for notable and interesting differentiators.

Nelson performed this gauntlet of tests on servers — one equipped with the Opteron 2222 and the other with the Xeon (Woodcrest) 5160 — configured with two, four, six, and eight gigabytes of main memory at various transaction-processing load levels.

Overall, Nelson found that for certain configurations and at certain load levels, the Intel Xeon based server was 2.4 to 11.7 percent more power efficient while in other cases the AMD Opteron based server was 9.2 to 23.1 percent more power efficient.

Memory once again proved an important variable. In general, larger main memory sizes resulted in higher transaction throughput and higher power efficiency. Further, in cases where Intel outperformed AMD in power efficiency, the servers were configured with smaller larger memory sizes. “There was a visible trend that as the memory size increased that there was an increasing shift of power-efficiency toward the Opteron,” Nelson notes the white paper outlining his testing.

Importantly, Nelson discovered differences in power-performance depending on what type of work the servers were doing. At the maximum throughput, based on transactions per watt hour, the Intel system delivered better power-efficiency by 5.0 to 5.5 percent for calculation intensive workloads. For disk I/O intensive workloads, AMD delivered better power efficiency by 18.4 to 18.6 percent.

In addition, when the systems were idle and waiting for transactions to process, the AMD server was 30.4 to 53.1 percent more power efficient.

He put the machines through two different tests. One employed the Neal Nelson Transaction Benchmark, in which simulated Web clients present transaction requests to the server. As soon as the server responds to a request, the client submits a new request.

In the second test, employing the Neal Nelson Power-Efficiency Benchmark, he presented the servers with a set number of transactions, then measured the power expended for each transaction arrival rate.

For the loads, he simulated over-the-Web credit card transactions on the servers from RTE (Remote Terminal Emulator) nodes to the machines, which were running Apache2.

You can read the white paper outlining the testing and results here on the Neal Nelson and Associates Web site.

Filed under: Green technology