Government Technology - February 2008 - (Page S6)

HP Compaq 8710w Mobile Workstation part no. RM264UT#ABA • Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7500, 2.2 GHz, 800 MHz, 4 MB L2 Cache • Genuine Windows Vista® Business • 2,048 MB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (1 DIMM); 512 MB NVIDIA video graphics • 120 GB 7,200 rpm hard drive • DVD+/-RW with LightScribe drive • Intel PRO/Wireless 802.11a/b/g/n, integrated Bluetooth1 ® Energy-efficient solution HP’s pioneering research helps enterprises conserve energy. ENERGY STAR-compliant HP notebooks help enterprises save power. HP recommends Windows Vista® Business. Designing for the environment One more element in the global IT equation is the cost of energy used in making IT equipment. Mining, processing and refining the raw materials requires energy. So does man- • Eight-cell lithium-ion battery • 17” WXGA+ display • Standard service warranty: three-year parts and labor Not only is power consumption on the rise, the cost of that energy also is likely to increase in the future. When energy was inexpensive and often subsidized, reliability was more important than the cost of power. “The prevailing wisdom was that nobody in IT ever got fired for wasting energy. But people did get fired for bringing a server down,” said Patel. The thinking is changing. One inspiration for that is work that Patel initiated at HP, which shows that the overall cost of power to IT equipment (the burdened cost of power) now exceeds the depreciation cost of that equipment. (See HP technical reports Energy Flow in the Information Technology Stack: Introducing the Coefficient of the Ensemble and its Impact on Total Cost of Ownership and Cost Model for Planning, Development and Operation of a Data Center.) A part of the burdened cost of power calculation is the cost of putting your gear to full use—a problem endemic to data centers that can’t be fully populated by servers because they run too hot. At the same time, most data centers lack adequate airconditioning controls. For example, the fans run at only one speed—the highest one. “Would you buy a ceiling fan without a dial to alter its speed?” Patel asked. “Probably not. Yet most air conditioners in most data centers do not have such a dial.” Problems such as these prompted Patel to found HP Labs’ thermal technology research program and start a virtual thermal research community—the HP Cool Team. The team’s work led to the development of HP’s Dynamic Smart Cooling, where sensors direct cooling only to the places in the data center that really need it, allowing it to run at greater efficiency and lower total operating cost. ufacturing the equipment and delivering it. “Inevitably finite energy resources will be destroyed in that process,” said Patel. “We need to create a design system that takes into account the worldwide energy supply and minimizes destruction of available energy.” Such designs must consider the entire life cycle of a material, including the degree to which it can be repeatedly recycled and ultimately returned to as close to its original state as possible. All of these concerns are behind Patel’s drive for a new philosophy for developing the next generation of IT systems. “In the future, we will end up judging IT decisions based on the pool of available energy resources that we are depleting from the ground,” he said. Technically speaking, this is the second law of thermodynamics, which says that although using a resource (e.g., burning coal) does not result in destruction of energy, it does destroy its available energy— that is, its ability to do useful work. Such available energy is often called exergy and the unit in which it is measured is a joule. “In a flat world,” said Patel, “the only currency is going to be joules—not yuans, not rupees, not dollars. What we want to do in our future research is to look at the entire IT ecosystem from end to end and quantify the available energy destroyed.” $2,699 Government open market price HP Compaq 2510p Notebook PC part no. RM242UT#ABA • Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor U7500, 1.06 GHz, 533 MHz, 2 MB L2 Cache • Genuine Windows Vista® Business • 1,024 MB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (1 DIMM) • 60 GB 4,200 rpm PATA hard drive • DVD+/-RW SuperMulti with DL drive • Intel® PRO/Wireless 802.11 a/b/g, integrated Bluetooth1 • Three-cell lithium-ion battery • Conserves weight and power with Illumi-Lite display • 12.1” WXGA display • Standard service warranty: three-year parts and labor $1,499 Government open market price HP Compaq 6510b Notebook PC part no. RM332UT#ABA • Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7250, 2 GHz, 800 MHz, 2 MB L2 Cache • Genuine Windows Vista® Business • 1,024 MB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (1 DIMM) • 120 GB 5,400 rpm SATA hard drive • DVD/CD-RW combo drive • Intel® PRO/Wireless 802.11 a/b/g1 • Six-cell lithium-ion battery • 14.1” WXGA display • Standard service warranty: one-year parts and labor $979 Government open market price Exergy adviser As a first step, HP Labs is working with Van P. Carey, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, to build a tool called the Lifetime Exergy Adviser that would show product designers the total environmental impact of For the latest contract and pricing information, see www.hp.com/go/govmag or call 888/887-2081. 6 http://www.hp.com/go/govmag

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - February 2008

Government Technology - February 2008 Contents Point of View Big Picture The Last Mile On the Screen Products Four Questions for... CSI Effect Bad Medicine Making Health Care Personal Cashing In GIS for Less Nabbing Speedsters First Person: Records Management Chatter Box Oregon Data Centers Go Green Products Two Cents Spectrum Up Close Personal Computing signal:noise Government Solutions - Spring 2008 Power Play Double Duty Cleaning House Twice Prepared Smart Move The Path to Success Foundation for Service

Government Technology - February 2008

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