In what could be called a major step towards green computing, scientists in Germany claim to have developed a system that substantially reduces the energy consumption for processing huge amounts of data.
A team from Goethe University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Frankfurt has used seemingly unconventional hardware, processors of Intel Atom type (instead of server processors with high power) and microprocessors originally developed for netbooks.
Their lower processing power compared to server systems was compensated by the usage of highly efficient algorithms. Instead of hard drives, which consume a lot of power for the mechanics, the team employed solid state disks, which are faster and more power-economical.
Thus, the German team improved over the power efficiency of the former record holders from Stanford University by a factor of three to four. The record pops the question if the increasing hunger for energy in information technology could be strongly reduced. “In the long run, many small, power-efficient and cooperating systems are going to replace the so far used, heavy weighted ones,” said lead scientist Peter Sanders.