INDUSTRY

As governments and customers have begun to encourage server makers to develop more power-efficient models, SGI announced that its award-winning SGI Altix server line has consistently ranked among the industry’s most efficient server systems. And with the latest generation of dual- and quad-core SGI Altix servers and clusters, those efficiencies continue to improve. As the cost of electricity continues to rise, energy-smart server designs can save companies, government agencies, and universities significant sums over the installed life of the server. For this reason, SGI has consistently chosen power-efficient components and incorporated them in a system architecture designed to maximize performance while minimizing physical server footprint, power consumption and cooling requirements. In fact, SGI has made power efficiency a priority since the company launched its Altix line in 2003. Altix blade servers, clusters and supercomputers feature a power supply and conversion architecture designed to efficiently convert AC power to DC voltages suitable to run Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 and Dual-Core and Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors. SGI Altix blade racks are also designed to minimize power loss. SGI Altix: More Efficient, Less Costly Today’s data centers consume an estimated $3.3 billion worth of energy every year. Utilizing efficient components helps trim the operating costs of Altix servers and clusters by thousands of dollars annually. For instance, Altix systems incorporate power supply units that have attained real-world power efficiency of greater than 90 percent – a significant advantage over most servers, whose power supplies are only 60 to 70 percent efficient, according to Ecos Consulting. As a result of this feature alone, users can expect the energy costs of operating a typically configured SGI Altix 4700 rack system over three years to be $7,824 to $13,719 less than a server equipped with commodity-quality power supplies and system architectures. On a large-scale system – SGI Altix 4700 scales to 128 racks – power savings over three years can easily reach $1 million or more. Energy-efficient servers like Altix also can multiply savings by lowering cooling costs. According to IDC, cooling a server deployment can add 50 to 100 percent to power consumption costs. For a 128-rack SGI Altix system, the resulting savings on both power and cooling costs over three years can total between $1.5 million to $3.3 million. Unlike competing server architectures, Altix allows customers to increase memory, even to terascale levels, without having to drive up processor counts. This saves energy and resource consumption while significantly reducing and cutting cooling costs. These additional efficiencies reduce TCO and lengthen the overall lifespan of a server resource, particularly with scalable server systems that can be deployed in highly dense configurations. “For years, deploying ‘green’ servers has been an added benefit of investing in our high-performance systems, but until recently, few customers made purchases based solely on a server’s environmental advantages,” said Dr. Eng Lim Goh, senior vice president and chief technology officer, SGI. “At SGI, we recognized all along that a more efficient system costs less to operate and maintain – a benefit that thousands of SGI Altix customers realize every year as the cost of electricity service soars. SGI is proud of its work to ensure that Altix delivers the optimum balance of performance, density and efficiency to deliver real and lasting value to our customers.” Organizations and governments worldwide are seeking to minimize the environmental impact of computer servers. In July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill “to study and promote the use of energy-efficient computer servers in the United States,” with the U.S. Senate currently reviewing a similar bill. The EPA, which recently purchased SGI Altix servers for its own environmental science research use, also is reviewing efforts to establish Energy Star ratings for computer servers. For more information on SGI Altix, visit its Web site.