How Information Technology is Saving the Environment: The ...

We?re now entering a new era of computing, which many IT experts are calling the age of ?Big Data?. Companies are finding great value in giant data pools which must be analyzed by powerful server farms in order to extract insight and provide business insight.

This movement is being driven by the fact that computer processors are getting extremely cheap, small and powerful.

Companies like?Amazon.com, Facebook and Google are now managing datacenters the size of shopping malls, packed end-to-end with the latest in server technology. Thanks to the internet, cheap storage and abundant processing power, computers we?re seeing rapid growth in the cloud computing market as businesses with an insatiable hunger for information are finding new ways to put this capacity to good use.

But this technological shift also brings with it some important emerging environmental issues. Thanks to our ability to densely pack extremely powerful processors into a small space, we?re also seeing an exponential growth in the energy consumption of datacenters. This energy use relates to both the actual running of the servers, as well as the energy required to cool down these massive electronic furnaces.

We?re also reaching a critical tipping point in computer history, where the electricity costs required to run these servers are often higher than the cost of the hardware itself. And where companies set up datacenter, they often place a heavy burden on the local power grids.

In order to keep up with growing customer demand while also minimizing power usage, datacenter operators must constantly replace older hardware to update with the latest power-efficient technology. (Resulting in lots of digital waste and CO2 emissions)Of course, this is an incremental solution to a problem which is exponential in nature.

Another alternative which has been growing in popularity amongst datacenter operators has been to move their datacenter operations to colder regions such as the Arctic Circle. Of course, this required heavy investments in construction and upgrades to the local power infrastructure. And this approach also carries a number of undesirable consequences such as increased ping times for far-away users.

One proposed solution that can cut down on some of this energy usage would be Distributed Computing.

Distributed Computing works by taking a wasted digital resource and donating it to important scientific research projects. These projects would otherwise need to spend money on expensive, energy-hungry supercomputers.

The computer you?re using right now is equipped with a powerful and sophisticated processor, and it?s likely that you?ll never use more than 15% of its total lifetime processing capability. When you walk away from your computer to grab a snack or go to the bathroom, the processor in your machine just sits there, wasting energy.

Instead, you could place a program on your computer which only turns on when you aren?t using your machine. As soon as your screensaver comes on, the program downloads its mathematical ?homework? from a remote server and gets busy solving some very heavy and processor-intensive problems. Once these problems are solved, the results get uploaded to the server and the program requests its next assignment.

In a Distributed Computing environment, tens of thousands of laptops and desktops can work together to form a giant supercomputer of 10 teraflops or more! (That?s a lot of flops) Not only are you eliminating the deployment of unnecessary hardware, but you?re also making better use of your wasted processor cycles and helping to solve some very important scientific problems.

There are currently hundreds of Distributed Computing projects to choose from, and are solving problems relating to:

• ??????????Analyzing Data From Particle Accelerators
• ??????????Finding Alien Radio Signals
• ??????????Solving Chess Games
• ??????????Finding Cures For Cancer
• ??????????Solving Pi
• ??????????Analyzing Weather Patterns
• ??????????Stabilizing World Currencies
• ??????????Rendering 3D Animations For Film
• ??????????And Much More?

Distributed Computing is not a new idea. In fact, it?s been widely used since the late 1990s. But it?s an idea which has regained its importance thanks to recent innovations in the data sciences and the increasing importance of ?green computing?.

This is a guest post by Paul Rudo.

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Tagged as: distributed computing, eco-innovation, green computing, information technology

Source: http://livinggreenandsavingenergy.com/how-information-technology-is-saving-the-environment-the-benefits-of-distributed-computing.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-information-technology-is-saving-the-environment-the-benefits-of-distributed-computing

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