Most times the chassis fan and the processor fan produce hardly any noise. Like most of you, I enjoy the quiet of noiseless computer fans. Only the constant clickety-clack sound of my original IBM keyboard fills my room, and it somehow invigorates me as I type away.

However, sometimes the fan rotates at high speeds for no obvious reason, even when it is idle and the room not hot. It is like the old days, when the fans inside our computers rotated at constant speed whether it was necessary or not. I have no clue as to why the thermostat that regulates the fan speed fails to work sometimes.

The annoying noise is one thing, and the increased energy consumption is another. For a single desktop PC, the increased cost — even after the government applies the new electricity tariff — may be negligible. But, if you have a data center crowded with servers, the cost will increase substantially.

In the past, according to High Performance Computing, energy cost was only 15 percent of data center cost. Today, it has grown to 50 percent, and a good chunk of it is for cooling. And, with sustainability reporting becoming important — see last week’s article — enterprises now have to report their scores in reducing energy waste to the stakeholders.

HP, one of the leading server makers in the world, has introduced a new set of features to help solve the problem. First, it has created what it calls the “Sea of Sensors”. It is included, for example, in the ProLiant G6 and the newer G7 servers — whether in a standard tower, rack and blade configuration.

“Actually, the solution is now embedded in every current generation of HP’s servers, including the Itanium-based Integrity server,” said Eder Ristanto, HP’s product manager.

How many sensors has HP put into the servers to warrant the description of the “Sea of Sensors”? Thirty two. They are all connected to an onboard Integrated Lights Out (ILO) chip. To enable the chip to do its work, there is the administrator software suite that comes bundled with every server.

Some of these sensors support HP thermal logic technology, which is responsible for power and cooling management. Remember that, when the workload increases, there will be more heat generated by the processors and memory chips, and more air circulation is required. The fan must then go faster. When the workload goes down, the fan speed should go down, too.

Another new feature is called “Dynamic Power Capping”. When we design a data center, we usually allocate the same power capacity as the average power supply. The tool enables us to put a tab to the power usage for every server so that no energy is wasted, said Eder.

Or, the excess power allocation can be shared with additional servers without overloading the power distribution system. “With the help of Dynamic Power Capping, an allocated capacity of 10,000 watts, for example, can now be used to feed up to 30 servers instead of just one,” he added.

Indonesia, as you should already know, is committed to reducing carbon emissions by 26 percent before 2020. But, what roles do the new Green IT technologies play in achieving the goal? Perhaps not much, but keep in mind that, on the global level, IT contributes to 2 percent of total carbon emissions.

Components used in the latest servers are also power efficient. “We can choose Intel processors with the code L, which are low-voltage. We can also choose the E-coded processors for mainstream use and we have the X processors for extreme computing power,” explained Eder. The power supplies that his company put in the servers also have an up to 92 percent efficiency rating. This level is labeled Platinum, and it means that 92 percent of the total input into the power supply is converted into energy and only the remaining 6 percent is wasted.

HP is of course not the only vendor for green computing. Other technology leaders have also chipped in helping reduce energy consumption through other means. The microprocessor vendors make their chips run at a lower clock speed when the workload is light, and even shut down some parts when the machine is not working.

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