Lean and mean, but how green?

Next-generation PCs promise to be energy-efficient and eco-friendly. But are they going far enough? Anand Parthasarathy checks out how leading computer players are ‘greening’ IT.

In the mid 1980s, the Government of India asked what was then Computer Maintenance Corporation (CMC) to come up with a technology solution for the Family Planning programme of the Ministry of Health. The problem? Family Planning volunteers were being provided Apple Macintosh laptops in some experimental areas, the machines loaded with audio visual instructional programmes on birth control techniques that were used to motivate women in the villages.
Unfortunately many of the villages lacked electricity — and the female volunteers found that their laptop batteries ran out before they could complete their day’s schedule. CMC came up with a neat solution. It found, in Australia, a supplier who manufactured photo voltaic solar panels in a flexible form, like a roll of cloth. CMC engineers used this material to create solar ‘thailas’ or shoulder bags in which to carry the laptop. As the volunteers walked from one meeting to the next, the bag recharged the laptop. It was an eco-friendly idea that harnessed non conventional energy in a meaningful way — but once the government’s pilot project ended, the idea was forgotten; it died prematurely, due to lack of official vision and support from government.
Today, in a new era where energy, or the lack of it, looms as a major global concern, the solar-operated laptop battery seems like an idea whose time has come. Then why is not a single mainstream laptop maker offering this eco-friendly option? CMC is now a Tata company. Maybe old-timers still serving with them should remind their current leaders about the green alternative that they once innovated. Maybe they could dust off the old project files and see if flexible solar panels can still be sourced — and CMC could re-invent the technology for a new generation of PC users.
A rapid search on the Web showed that Solar PCs — computers running solely on solar power — are largely ‘bespoke’ or custom-made items, offered by small outfits rather than major brand names. Based in London, UK, Aleutia Ltd ( www.aleutia.com) seems to specialise in sourcing such offbeat products.
The challenge in a solar-only PC is to keep the power requirement down to levels that can run on the fairly low trickle charge that typically flows from a solar photo voltaic panel. Aleutia’s E2 all-in-one has the power requirement down to 23 watts… enough to power the PC running Ubuntu Linux and a 15-inch LCD monitor.
The Prince of Wales Secondary School on the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone, lies, ironically, in the shadow of a large power distribution yard — but it has no electric power. Old students of the school based in the US have banded to turn the POW into a solar powered school, using some 30 solar panels to generate the 5 or 6 kilowatts required to power every PC and laptop as well as the satellite-based broadband Internet connection. IDG News reports that it is going to cost about $70,000 and major contracts have already been awarded. In other ways too, Africa has shown the way in harnessing green sources to drive its IT penetration, while in India there is little apparent cooperation between the central departments of Information Technology and non-conventional energy.
One way, albeit indirect, to attack the energy challenge is to drastically reduce the power required by PCs and peripherals. Intel’s recently launched Atom processor promises to do just that … a sharp departure from the days when leading chip makers flaunted processor clock speed and number crunching capability, while the power requirement crossed 150 watts and made such technologies ‘too hot to handle’. In addition to being frugal with power requirements — its 47 million transistors draw just 600 milliwatts of power, that is just over half a watt — the Atom is both lead and halogen-free. But it has enough muscle to power hand- held Internet access devices with basic PC functionality.
At the recently concluded Computex Taipei expo, a number of device makers, including Benq, Gigabyte, Panasonic, Sharp and Fujitsu, showcased Mobile Internet Devices or MIDS fuelled by the Atom. HCL, Zenith and Wipro, the Indian PC makers, have also announced Atom-based products for the local market. HCL, which makes the MiLeap ultra mobile PC to Intel’s Classmate PC design, will change the Celeron chip to an Atom in future editions.
Dell, a PC maker more known for its innovative direct marketing and aggressive pricing rather than design innovation, has made up for lost time in recent months and assumed leadership position in ‘greening’ its operations and offerings.
Putting its money where its mouth is, Dell has powered its main 2-lakh sq.m corporate office in Austin, Texas, totally from renewable sources of energy and challenged the entire IT industry, to offer free recycling of its products to all customers. It has created a Web site to encourage green awareness. ( http://www.regeneration.org/)
On World Environment Day this year, Dell previewed a soon-to-be launched ultra small consumer desktop, as yet un-named, that will be 81 per cent smaller in footprint and consume 70 per cent less energy than desktop machines of comparable performance.
When he unveiled a prototype at a Fortune magazine Green conference in Los Angeles, the Dell CEO, Michael Dell, also showed a variant that came with a bamboo casing. Though the Bamboo PC, as the media quickly dubbed it, is not being officially acknowledged, photos grabbed at the conference have appeared on ‘green’ Web sites such as earth2tech. Bamboo is being ‘discovered’ as an eco-friendly, light, strong and flexible alternative to metal housings — and not just for PCs. The West Drayton, Middlesex (UK)-based PlayEngine offers monitor, keyboard and mouse all housed in ‘environmentally friendly" laminated bamboo.
The new Energy Star 5.0 requirement currently in draft from the US government, and due to be mandated from June 2009, is a key piece of legislation that is driving the PC industry to achieve better power performance.
A PDF copy can be found at http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/prod_development/revisions/downloads/computer/Computer_Spec_Version5_%20Draft1.pdf
Major PC makers including HP have said they will cut the power demand of their desktop and portable PCs by at least 25 per cent by 2010.
This may become easier to achieve because Intel is not alone in offering a low power processing option: AMD, Samsung, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and, most recently, nVidia, have announced power-efficient versions of their flagship chips.
Yet it would appear that the industry has still a long way to go and has insufficient appreciation that greening has to go beyond shrinking the size and power budget of their devices and must go outside the covers of their products … to encompass alternative energy sources such as the sun or the wind.
And what about water?
Recently, IBM researchers joined the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin to deliver the first working prototype of a water-cooled supercomputer…. not pipes of cold water running around the installation, but within each chip!
Tiny rivulets as thin as a strand of hair will run behind tomorrow’s silicon chip and between the multiple layers, drawing the heat away from the hottest portions.
A water-cooled supercomputer, with 448 processors, nicknamed a Hydro Cluster, was realised a few weeks ago and it reduced the conventional air-conditioning load by 80 per cent.
(For details, see http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/23826.wss)Water inside, the wind and the sun outside….
Tomorrow’s PCs might turn out to be as earthy in their power requirement as the sand that goes to create the silicon within.
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