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Relationship between computer and energy usage
 
 
Since humanity started working automated the energy consumption of computer equipment has been a subject that has received little attention. The benefits of automation are always widely reported: "By having an email message it is no longer physically necessary to travel from A to B. It will save fuel." and "Videoconferencing allows people around the world to be in personal contact, without traveling".

In recent years, this is gradually improving. The power consumption of servers was an important step forward. By server virtualization, the power consumption of data centers can be decreased by a large percentage.

Oddly enough at the level of the user, very little progress has been made in terms of energy saving. This is odd, since it is logical that there more individual workstations, laptops, PCs or desktops than there are servers.

ESSaver helps in measuring the power consumption of computer equipment. It provides insight into the degree of locking and use and where savings are within the organization.

The basic idea behind ESSaver is the software. The programs running on the computer are for a large part responsible for the power consumption of the computer. With the rise of computing power (speed) each year there has been a large increase in power consumption as well. Despite the development of more efficient techniques for the computers, the displays are getting larger as time increases as well.

Moore's Law. Source: Avi Mendelsson ISSM 2006

The picture above shows Moore's Law, which states that every year, the number of transistors in a CPU doubles. Mr. Moore has a secondary law, which states that computing power doubles every three years.

The relationship above is good news for humanity. It also has a drawback, namely that power increases as the number of transistors rises. A transistor needs a bit of power to maintain its state.


Relationship between CPU type and power consumption. Source: Avi Mendelsson ISSM 2006




Relationship between CPU usage and power consumption. Source: Measurements by ESSaver conducted with Voltlogger 2000
 

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