IBM is teaming with the US Department of Defense (DoD) research arm
to study methods of reducing the power consumption of computing
devices, the organisations announced yesterday.
The DoD's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will
contribute $2m (£1.3m) toward IBM's Low Power Center, a
ten-month-old initiative based at IBM's Texas research lab.
IBM's agreement with DARPA calls for it to develop technology for
increasing the reliability and energy efficiency of high-end
computing systems. Defence contractor BAE Systems plans to create
prototypes in 2003 for testing some military applications of the
research.
IBM also intends to use the power-conserving products internally
and to develop design-analysis tools for estimating and analysing
the power consumption and performance of systems utilising PowerPC
processors.
As computing technology has advanced to allow systems of
ever-increasing processing capacity, the power required to run and
cool those systems has also ballooned.
A 1994 Department of Energy study found that 10% of the energy
consumed in North America goes to supporting IT systems, according
to IBM. Such power demands also eat up a significant portion of
corporate datacentre budgets, the company said.
By studying low-power computing, with regard to hardware and
software, IBM hopes to develop more energy-efficient products.
Research from the Low Power Center has already been used in
designing IBM's 405LP PowerPC chip, planned for production later
this year and intended for use in devices such as handhelds, and in
a prototype of its Super Dense Server, an ongoing research project
aimed at improving high-end enterprise server technology.
The new IBM initiative falls within DARPA's three-year-old Power
Aware Computing/Communication (PACC) project, which aims to develop
technology that minimises the power needed to complete a given
task.
Power limitations constrain undertakings such as missile and
satellite missions, according to DARPA. PACC's goal is to reduce
that obstacle, facilitating cost reductions and new capabilities.
DARPA, best known as the agency that funded early Internet
development, has worked with IBM on a variety of projects in the
past, including research on parallel computing, security, cognitive
computer systems and advanced computer architecture.