Computer Hardware: Meaner and Greener
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There was a time when speed was the only thing computer manufacturers considered. That time has passed, and now ecologically friendly machines are becoming more popular. What's a power-loving computer geek to do? Good news: you may not have to sacrifice performance to help save the planet.
Computer hardware is always in a state of change. It's hard to predict what will be coming in over a year’s time. This makes upgrading computer hardware difficult. Will it be compatible? Will it be that much better? There are plenty of "will it" type questions to ask. Years ago people predicted that computers would be as big as entire apartment floors and take a massive amount of power to run.
Luckily for us, they were wrong. Computers have decreased in size and use less power then predicted. Over the last few years we have seen a change in the computer industry. Before it was pack as much punch into this chip as possible, and some chips were pushed to the very edge. Now companies are becoming a little more environmentally conscious and have started putting energy per chip before punch per chip. This really isn't as much a web 2.0 digital revolution change as it is a hardware change, but you can't have the Internet without computers.
Why go green?
So why is there this big push to go green? No, Al Gore isn't having influence on the tech world, though he did claim to have invented the Internet. There are two huge reasons here: the price of power and the effects of fossil fuels on the earth. Ever since I saw that series on the Discovery Channel, I have really started believing in global warming. That, along with the changes in climate and the floods and tsunamis that are happening more frequently now, leads me to believe that it's real.
Even so, I think the price is the real nail in the coffin for power-hungry hardware. I drove to work recently and saw gas at $3.99 a gallon. Yeah, I know that computers don't run on gas, but this is a growing trend that covers all fossil fuels.
Computers produce heat, and heat is bad for computers. The old Prescott core was a horrible CPU as far as heat was concerned. They frequently overheated with the stock heatsink fan. Now if you were to throw a whole bunch of these CPUs into a server room, it is going to get really hot really quick in there. Cooling a room of CPUs is going to result in a nice electric bill for you. Now we have a need for more efficient CPUs, so we have seen a decrease in heat output, and it only looks like the downward spiral will continue.
Next: The Meaner Side >>
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