While computers alone are not being blamed for global warming, the phenomenal amounts of electricity used by some big computer centers are prompting a rethink about reducing waste.
At the CeBIT trade show in Germany from Tuesday to March 9, a collection of special exhibits dubbed the "Green IT Village" and technical seminars will highlight some of the ways that the computer industry could be kinder to the environment.
CeBIT's idea of green is a fairly mixed bag -- reducing toxic substances in computer manufacturing, recycling old computers instead of burying them in dumps and using electricity more efficiently.
PHOTO: AFP
Mobile computing has always had an eye on efficiency, because users hate having to recharge batteries all the time.
Now the same ideas are spreading to those who can get power from a socket 24 hours a day.
Industry analysts say environmental virtues are set to become potent selling arguments for a substantial number of private shoppers. But the biggest savings can be achieved by government and corporate computer centers.
Often their servers are packed so closely together and run so hot that extra electricity has to be used to air-condition the sites.
Germany's Environment Ministry surveyed computers at mid-sized companies and found that 1,000 running processors use as much power as 200 households. It added up power use by 50,000 German server centers in 2006 -- they alone used 8.7 terawatt-hours of electricity.
The ministry estimated that cutting power consumption in Germany's computers by 20 terawatt-hours would save annual carbon dioxide emissions of 13.5 million tonnes from fossil fuel-fired power stations.
Gartner, the US-based market researcher, has suggested three-quarters of western corporate buyers may be asking how "green" new computers are by 2010, prompted by a desire to cut power costs and avoid being sued for poisoning employees or the public.
Most will prefer to say they want to save the environment, since this sounds better, Gartner said.
A CeBIT executive, Sven Prueser, said the Green IT Village with about a dozen exhibitors would encourage fair visitors to look at the "carbon footprint" associated with their computers.
Among the exhibits will be two offices side by side. One will use technology from five years ago -- desktop computers with cathode-ray-tube monitors -- and the other will use notebooks and multi-functional printer-fax devices.
"A power meter will show how much power each office has used since the fair began. It's significant," said Marc Thylmann, a spokesman for the German computer industry federation Bitkom.
Gabriele Doerries, a CeBIT spokeswoman, said the village would function mainly as a place to answer questions and offer information about ways to reduce computer power consumption.
A US-based non-profit society, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which was founded and is co-chaired by semiconductor maker Intel and search company Google, will advocate a halving in power use by computers.
Lorie Wigle, an Intel executive working on the campaign as an "adjunct" to her corporate job, explained that computers could be redesigned to cut power waste. The rest would come from encouraging users to turn computers off when they are not in use.
Most computers already have automatic stand-by software, but users generally leave it inactive, running the computers at full power.
"Intel has built a lot of capability into the semiconductors to reduce power consumption, but the user has to activate the software to take advantage of this," Wigle said.
Wigle says there are already a couple of freeware tools which can advise users on how to calibrate power management.
Makers could also reduce the "embodied" energy that is required to manufacture the product in the first place, Wigle said.
Climate Savers will be launching its European campaign at CeBIT and is planning similar moves in Asia later this year.
One of its methods will be to invite both consumers and companies to make pledges to cut power use. Pledges are a familiar way of rounding up support in the US, but they may take a little more explaining to Europeans and Asians.
"I could not say I have seen a 100 percent green computer yet," said Ulrike Kallee, a German activist for environmental campaign group Greenpeace.
"But the Green IT campaign was a step in the right direction," Kallee said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to