Tadpole and Platform Computing launch PowerbackCarlsbad 25 September 2001 Tadpole and Platform Computing launched "PowerBack", a pioneering initiative to reduce the escalating energy costs of data centres around the world. With PowerBack, data centres will be able to minimise their power requirements as computing demand fluctuates, or to take advantage of off-peak energy rates. They will also make further energy savings through reduced usage of kW-hungry air conditioning in rooms that house idle computer systems.
At the end of 2000, there were approximately 320 ISP data centres in the United States alone with total computer room space occupying 9.5 million square feet, an average of some 30,000 sq.ft. per data centre. According to the Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Outlook 2001, the average power consumption of a data centre is 50W/sq.ft. If 15 percent of an average data centre's 1.5 MW power demand is saved through investments in PowerBack, up to $200,000 (US) could be shaved off each company's energy bill each year.
Under the terms of the partnership, Tadpole will integrate Platform SiteAssure with the power management feature of its Sun-compatible compute servers to provide a sophisticated and dynamic energy saving solution. As workload demand for computing resources in data centres equipped with Tadpole Compute Servers drops, PowerBack will automatically power down unneeded servers. As workload demand increases, it will detect when the maximum pre-defined threshold of CPU use has been achieved, and automatically power up an idle Tadpole Compute Server to full operating status in seconds. The combination of this and Platform's complementary load sharing facility (LSF) scheduler will automatically ensure that workload is evenly balanced across large numbers of individual computers in company data centres.
A recent report from Salomon Smith Barney anticipated that there would be 17.9 million square feet of data centre rooms built or under construction in the U.S. by the end of 2001, an 80 percent increase over 2000. In her thesis Energy Needs In An Internet Economy: A Closer Look At Data Centers, published May 2001), Jennifer Mitchell-Jackson of the Energy Resources Group at UC Berkeley uses the growth rates from the Salomon Smith Barney report to estimate total data centre floor area in the United States at 25 million square feet by 2003.
The first Tadpole compute server line to integrate Platform SiteAssure is the Tadpole Compute Server 3300. The only UltraSPARC III high-density compute server available in a 19-inch, 3U form factor, this system can yield up to 25 percent greater rack density than other offerings.
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