World "needs wind-powered" server farms

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 18 Mar 2008 at 09:34

Computing should be moved away from data centres in the city to where sustainable power is plentiful, suggests a Cambridge University Professor.

With carbon emissions rising, and servers playing a large part in that growth, shifting data centres to where solar or wind power is more abundant could provide a perfect solution, claims Professor Andy Hopper.

"There's something very special about computing power which is very different from heating your house. Computing power can be moved around the world and can be done anywhere in the world where the energy is available," says Hopper, speaking to the Guardian.

Hopper proposes that fewer, but larger server farms be located in areas where a vast amount of wind or solar power can be harnessed.

"I think it is very interesting to contemplate a world with a smallish number of server farms, huge ones, which are deployed in places where the energy is produced," said Hopper, speaking at the Royal Society in London.

In recent years power efficiency has become an important area of research for hardware manufacturers, both because of rising energy costs and pressure to become less polluting.

Both Dell and Google have pledged to become carbon neutral, and many manufacturers such as VeryPC have brought power efficient PCs to market.