Google requires more efficient servers

According to Google engineers, modern servers devour too much electricity, and urgently need to do something about it. According to Google, chip manufacturers can learn from manufacturers of mobile electronics, phones and laptops, who have made great progress in matters of energy-efficient operation of devices. There is nothing like it in the server market. Now it has reached the point that Google cannot locate its data centers anywhere, only next to some large power station. Otherwise it turns out too expensive, because hundreds of thousands of servers work in data centers.

“Maybe if we call it a pocket computer, then they will help us,” one of Google’s engineers joked , showing a slide with a photo of a data center from a bird's-eye view during a presentation at the O'Reilly Velocity conference.

Of course, all this is, at most, a joke. In fact, handheld devices and servers are completely different in their energy consumption model. Pocket devices spend most of their time in standby mode, and only occasionally “wake up” for active work. At the same time, the servers for the most part of the time work in normal mode and perform standard tasks, without idleness at all and occasionally reaching their activity peaks. At peak, the server consumes twice as much energy as it does with minimal load.

Accordingly, for energy efficient servers, you need to find ways to reduce energy consumption during normal operation and with minimal activity.