The Green Lounge

The Green Lounge has a new home

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:44:42 +0100

New content and articles from The Green Lounge can now be found at VIA Arena (javascript:void(0);/*1226889221339*/). I look forward to seeing you over there. Thanks, Ben

Power Draw: A New Perspective

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:42:15 +0100

As many of you have probably seen, there have been a lot of reviews of VIA’s new Nano processor vs. Intel’s Atom processor cropping up in the news lately. With both processors having low power as one of the major selling points, there’s been a lot of interest in both the media and public as to how the two new CPUs would stack up against one another. If you’ve been following the coverage, you would know that in terms of performance, the VIA Nano came out on top by quite a margin. Here are links to a few of the articles if you’re interested in the finer details: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/757/1/ (javascript:void(0);/*1218699468940*/) http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15204 (javascript:void(0);/*1218699478166*/) http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/atom-nano-review.ars (javascript:void(0);/*1218699499160*/) In terms of straight out power consumption, most sites gave a slight edge to the Atom platform (although the VIA Nano still held a significant performance per watt advantage), but one site in particular, PC Perspective (javascript:void(0);/*1218699956105*/), had a very interesting take on the power draw issue. PC Perspective decided to use the Watts Up power meter to see how power consumption looked over time when comparing the VIA Nano and Intel Atom processors. In the graph below, the processors were set an MP3 encoding task. The Atom had the edge in power draw, but the Nano was definitely faster to complete the task. To analyze the results, the reviewer worked out just how much energy each platform took to complete then encoding. the VIA Nano processor used a total of 37,323 watt-seconds (Joules) of energy while the Intel Atom processor used 38,290 watt-seconds (Joules) of energy. Not much of a difference, but at the end of the day the VIA Nano was able to perform tasks faster (by as much as 30% in some cases) while still using less total energy than Intel's Atom. Certainly a new and interesting way to look at device power consumption.

The most power efficient x86 processor in the world

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:32:40 +0100

A week ago VIA launched its new VIA Nano processor (http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/nano/), which is based on the VIA Isaiah Architecture I wrote about back in January (../../../../index.php/VIA_Announces_New_Energy-Efficient_Architecture.html). At a press conference last Thursday during Computex 2008, VIA released some more information on the processor, including some performance per watt figures based on PCMark® Vantage benchmarks. In the chart below you can see the results – in red are the VIA Nano’s performance per watt figures, and in blue the results for an Intel Celeron-M 520 (both CPUs are 1.6GHz models, with 1GB of DDR2 memory). As you can see from the chart, the VIA Nano looks to have a distinct advantage over the Intel processor in terms of performance per watt in each of the key areas tested. Expect to see the new processor in small form factor desktop PCs, thin ‘n’ light laptops, and mini-note devices like the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC in the coming months.

Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3 test positive

Wed, 21 May 2008 15:35:10 +0100

Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/) has just come out with a new report examining the environmental friendliness of the three leading game consoles – and all of them tested positive for various hazardous chemicals. The analysis, published in Playing Dirty (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/press-center/reports4/playing-dirty), detected the use of hazardous chemicals and materials such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), phthalates, beryllium and bromine indicative of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in Nintendo’s Wii, Sony’s PlayStation 3 Elite, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. With the game consoles market one of the fastest growing in consumer electronics – over 60 million game consoles have been sold, with a 14 percent growth over the last year – manufacturers need to start using technology (which is already available) to design out harmful toxics and produce cleaner gaming systems.

Cut your computer's carbon emission by undervolting

Mon, 12 May 2008 18:40:07 +0100

The Go Green (http://gogreen.theconsortium.co.uk/make-your-pc-more-energy-efficient-or-extend-your-laptop-battery-life-with-%E2%80%98undervolting%E2%80%99/) blog has just published a great article on undervolting your computer’s processor. Now, this is an idea that’s been around for a while, but this new article offers a particularly good, step-by-step description of how to go about it. Manufacturers factor in safety margins when it comes to the voltage they feed their products. This means that you can feed your processor less energy usually without much adverse effect on performance. Not only will this reduction in energy cut down on the amount of carbon emitted and save you a few dollars on your power bill, but if you’re a laptop user, undervolting can lengthen your computer’s battery life. To top it off, this also lowers the amount of heat the CPU emits resulting in a cooler, longer-lasting system.

Is Bittorrent a green technology?

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:51:30 +0100

Check out this interview with Bittorrent CTO Eric Klinker from Beet.tv (http://www.beet.tv/2008/04/bittorrent-and.html). The interview was supposed to be about Bittorrent’s cooperation with Comcast but, as the interview was recorded on Earth Day, the interviewer asked about the environmental impact of P2P. It turns out Klinker thinks torrents are very green and the fact that the P2P technology makes use of end user's PCs reduces the need for power hungry servers. Have a look at the video below and make up your own mind – I’m not sure that having your computer continuously switched on so you can leech and seed torrents is particularly green, but Klinker puts a pretty good spin on it.

New Sections on The Green Lounge

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

If you take a look at the left-hand side bar you might notice a few changes. We’ve added two new sections: Green Computing News and Green RSS Feeds. Green Computing News aggregates all the online green computing news from around the web in an easy-to-view format. It’s updated daily and seeks to include all mention of green computing that crops up in the media. Green RSS Feeds has a slightly wider focus. This section takes RSS feeds from various sites and displays the title and a brief description of each article those sites post. You can scroll through the article titles and, by clicking on any link that you think might be worth a read, will have that article open in a new window. These feeds cover not just green computing matters, but also wider environmental and technological issues. These new sections should significantly increase the size of The Green Lounge’s database of green computing information, providing a more valuable resource for readers.

Happy Earth Day

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:45:11 +0100

Why do we celebrate Earth Day? According to Wikipedia, in 1969, at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (pictured) announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration designed to thrust the environment onto the national agenda. On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment, marking the birth of the modern environmental movement. Today, the Earth Day international network comprises over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, coordinating millions of community development and environmental protection activities throughout the year. Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year. So, time to celebrate – the Earth’s still here so it’s not too late to change how we treat it.

Watts Up with a Gaming PC?

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:56:50 +0100

Here’s the latest installment in The Green Lounge’s ‘Watts Up (../../../../index.php/Watts-Up-/)’ series of videos. This time around we used the Watt Up power meter to measure how much electricity it takes to run a high-end gaming computer. We borrowed a PC (many thanks to Stew over at TechnoVoyance (http://www.technovoyance.com/)) running a 3.2GHz AMD Athlon X2 6400+ processor, 2GB DDRII memory and an Nvidia 8800 GT graphics card with its own 512 MB of dedicated memory. Take a look at the video for the results. Not surprisingly, it had a peak power draw higher than anything we’ve measure so far, although what was interesting was the idle power – still high at around 100watts, but not as high as the average PC we tested a couple of weeks ago. Looks like the new advances in processor technology really are making a difference to power consumption… lZzwATDQTvg You’ll also notice a new section on the left-hand side bar. The ‘Watts Up? (../../../../index.php/Watts-Up-/)’ section is the new home for all the Watts Up videos and will hopefully grow into a decently sized green computing resource for consumers and businesses.

Go Green in 3 Steps: a Company Guide

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:06:37 +0100

With the gathering momentum around green computing, many companies are looking at starting their own green initiatives. However, according to Karen Larkowski, founder and chief evangelist at the Green Computing Impact Organization, it’s not always just as simple as jumping straight into it - no serious green computing project should begin without first doing a baseline audit to know where you are starting from. In this audit, which can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks depending upon how big your organisation is and how thorough you intend to be, you should first jot down some goals: is your aim to reduce the energy consumption of your IT equipment? Will you include the cooling gear? Do you want to take a comprehensive audit that includes lighting, heating, ventilation and other systems that draw power? Federal Computer Week (http://www.fcw.com/print/22_9/technology/152208-1.html) suggests the following three steps: