Chip manufacturer AMD has released a study revealing shifting
patterns in worldwide datacentre energy use at regional levels.
The study was
conducted by Jonathan Koomey, Ph.D., using data from industry
analyst firm IDC and documents energy use across five regions: the
United States, Western Europe, Japan, Asia/Pacific (excluding
Japan) and the rest of the world.
Based on current
growth trends, the US share of total world server electricity use
from datacentres will likely decline from 40% in 2000 to about
one-third by 2010, BY contrast, the Asia/Pacific region (excluding
Japan) will increase its share from 10% to about 16% over that
period.
“Our hope is that
this research helps bridge the gap between knowledge and action by
furthering worldwide understanding of the economic and
environmental costs associated with escalating datacentre energy
consumption ,” said Bruce Shaw, director, Server and Workstation
Marketing, AMD.
“According to a
recent U.S. EPA Report, datacentre energy consumption in the United
States five years from now could be cut by as much as 20% with
relatively minor efforts by datacentre managers, including turning
on available power management features, enabling higher rates of
resource consolidation, shutting off unused servers and improving
infrastructure operations.”
Dr. Koomey's
report shows that electricity used by servers in the United States
and Europe currently comprise about two thirds of the world’s
total, with Japan, Asia/Pacific and the rest of the world each
falling at between 10 and 15% of the total. The Western European
growth rate of 17% was slightly above the world average, while
growth rates in the other regions were lower than the world
average.
AMD calculates that if the 20% savings estimated in the report are
applied to Dr. Koomey’s projections for global datacentre
electricity use in 2010, total savings would equal approximately
five 1000 MW power plants. In other words, relatively modest
changes in the way datacentres are designed and operated could
offset approximately half the expected growth in global datacentre
electricity use in 2010.
For more on datacentre efficiency,
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