HP Looks To Improve Power Management Coordination 63
tringtring writes "Computer World reports on an HP Labs researcher who foretells a future in which power management features will be built into the processor, memory, server, software and cooling systems. Coordination will be paramount. 'What happens if you turn all these elements on at the same time?' the principal research scientist at HP Labs asks. 'How do I make sure that the system doesn't explode?' This future is the vision of Parthasarathy Ranganathan, the man behind the "No Power Struggles" project at Hewlett-Packard. Power management systems will have to operate holistically, without one component conflicting with another, Ranganathan says. Ranganathan is just one of many researchers at the tech industry's biggest labs researching on how future data centers will handle increasing demands for processing capability and energy efficiency while simplifying IT."
Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amen. (Score:5, Insightful)
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There, now I've both compared apples to oranges AND apples to apples. LOL
Re:Amen. (Score:4, Insightful)
You made the assumption that I had a 4750Mhz CPU, the same peripherals, the same size battery with the same battery chemistry and that similar peripherals use the same amount of power. You also failed to account for power management systems that are present in current laptops, which did not exist 10 years ago. Yet another thing you failed to account for is the supposed increase in efficiency (and decrease in overall power consumption) claimed by PC manufacturers, especially with regard to laptops. You even forgot to account for the age of the battery; 10 years vs. a week-old warranty replacement of a less-than-nine-month-old battery.
I have a battery with 8x the capacity in a system with less hardware and a supposedly more efficient CPU which is only about 3x faster, components which claim lower power consumption and over all better power management than my 10 year old laptop from the same manufacturer. Why am I seeing 1/3 the battery life of the old system rather than the 3x increase logic and mathematics tell me I should be seeing?
Someone, somewhere, is lying and it's not me.
Oh, and... first post!
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You made the assumption that to be 10x faster, a CPU needs to run at 10x the speed. The top Intel CPU on this chart is 3200 Mhz, and is 10x faster than the bottom (2800 Mhz).
Remember - Moore's law is about transistor density, not transistor speed.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechargeable_battery#Battery_types [wikipedia.org]
(and closer to 3x by mass). It would be better to compare the stated capacities, rather than your assumptions.
I imagine the newer screen is also faster and brighter, both of which increase power draw(LED backlights improve brightness per watt though, so if one of those is involved...). So you aren't lying, but you aren't being very careful.
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In the whole picture, hardware is just another layer of abstraction, built of more interacting layers. But, todays hardware comes from several magnitudes lower number of suppliers than software and is much more tightly controlled and built to specs.
Another thing: hardware engineers are usually taught in universities. Software "engineers" are usually not.
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This depends on where you are. In Canada, the title of engineer is protected by law(see wikipedia [wikipedia.org] or Engineers Canada on MSCEs [engineerscanada.ca]).
As for abstractions, they allow other things that were simply impossible before. Abstractions allow tuning a design on criteria such as maintainability, extensibility, supportability, etc. Yes, making software more maintainable can reduce performance, but it also reduces t
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I'd rather pay more for software that had the same amount of features but less years of krufty hack layered upon krufty hack.
Quite simply, we're talking about Windows here (and maybe Norton). Mac OS7 did a great job of providing both abstraction and speed in a maintainable environment on a 68030: a chip so slow that you wouldn't notice it if it was working as a co-processor on a modern machine.
Vista, on the other hand, requires a p
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You seem to be downplaying the costs that are incurred when throwing away working code to build new one. Non-trivial code takes a lot of time and effort to build. For example, let's look at Mozilla [wikipedia.org]. The Wikipedia article mentions the decision to scrap the codebase somewhere in 1998. When did the 1.0 version of Mozilla came out? 2002, four years later.
It clearly is not a viable opt
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The 10 year old laptop does none of this, everything runs at full power, full brightness, full speed, all the time.
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I would not recommend HP to write power mamagement software.
What the hell are HP selling now? (Score:5, Funny)
That's certainly a worry for me. The last thing I want when I turn on a "processor, memory, server, software and cooling systems" is for the system to explode. Being a dedicated slashdotter, and therefore Linux user, I have little worry that the software will cause any manner of combustion event, but I'd never really considered the dangers of using a processor and memory at the same time. I was thinking of getting more RAM, but given that I'm already running a dual-core, perhaps I should hold off on the extra gig until I hear from HP.
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WOW (Score:1)
coordination... between brands? (Score:1)
"-Your chip is sucking all the power and making mine look bad!
-No, yours is!"
I mean, we have enough problems with benchmarking as it is; I can't see how they would make that kind of "coordination" work, when not all pieces of the computer are of the same brand. Sure you can test what component takes the more power, but they can always say the others aren't sending enough info, etc...
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Hint: step 1 is user-control (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, this is the single biggest problem with the current HP DL360. The fans turn down to 30% and the memory overheats. A simple BIOS option to set the minimum fan speed to 60% would solve this.
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Automatic is better (Score:4, Interesting)
How many cars these days have manual chokes, advance/retard, mixture settings etc? None. They are all automatic. Give a user a knob and they will fiddle with it and break the system.
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Yes, your analogy is very valid for the Average Joe in terms of cars, but when a real user needs to make there car or truck do more, they have no way of doing it. If I want to give my truck more gear ratios for better mileage, I just slap on an over/under drive. Plus, automatic isn't always better, such as is the case with four-wheel-drive.
The very real, AND HO
Solution in search of a problem... (Score:2)
first task... (Score:2)
Although it seems bizarre (Score:5, Informative)
When you take a 1400 amp back up system and drop it up and down like a yo-yo in a lightning storm, stress tends to bring out the worst of Murphy's Law. If all the components in a data center were orchestrated, that can be mitigated. It can be mitigated into nearly 'not a worry' status.
Monitors? low priority in most cases. Redundant supplies, in some cases bring them up separately. Cooling fans could be delayed by some seconds depending on usage. It may seem negligent power use, but on startup each system will draw it's max current, and when all do at the same instant, the peak draw can be overwhelming. In fact, computers themselves could bring up hardware in an orchestrated manner to reduce the startup surge.
In addition to this, by adding power management, it's possible to reduce data center power use also. If you monitored temp and turned off fans when not needed, less power used, less heat generated, less cooling needed overall. If all hardware were built in such a way the hardware on a quad nic card that is not used could be powered off after configuration... as an example. Nic cards could be the last thing to be powered up.
This type of design is practically rocket science. If you look at systems that go into space you will see that they count every milliamp of current draw and manage it with precision. Power use is a big concern for space craft.
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Aw, now I want power redundancy systems that play the 1812 Overture as they fight epic brownout conditions. That would be sweet. Although, it would use a bit more power...
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Breaking WoL.
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If heat and energy usage were that much of a problem then the laws of capitalism dic
also go to a dc power bus for the data center (Score:2, Interesting)
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Duh. (Score:1)
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Enterprise users will pay big $ for this (Score:4, Insightful)
RAID controllers have been doing this for years (Score:1)
Finally! (Score:2)
Oh wait... nevermind.
BIOS & the OS (Score:2)
Can anyone tell me whether EFI (replacement of BIOS), provides a better way
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