distributedlife

On Saturday I installed my new 1000w power supply unit. Since then the problems that I have been experiencing with my computer turning off has ceased. Whilst it may still be early days, it was not often I went three days without a forced shutdown.

If my power issues have been solved and just a few extra watts have made the difference, an 850w may have been suitable, and the only difference is a change in operating system. Does this mean that Windows Vista is a less energy efficient operating system than Windows XP? If I knew the energy requirements of my hardware and Operating System at idle, standard usage and maximum power then working out which PSU to use may have been easier.

In the age of energy efficiency and eco-marketing, I am surprised that some of the more savvy operating system marketing departments, or some of the market-share starved OS’s, are not bandying about their ability to consume less energy.

Beyond eco-software, consider cloud computing. Microsoft are considering rolling out “many millions” of servers to massive data centres. To quote Chris Capossela of Microsoft “The key for Microsoft will be to run its computers systems as efficiently as possible to reduce hardware costs.“. If their cloud computing operating system is more energy expensive to run than Linux then they may find it difficult to compete.

So I did a bit of a search on energy performance of Windows Servers vs Linux. Windows Server 2008 came out most efficient when the power saving features were turned to the maximum. Red Hat linux coming in the leader in most of the other tests.

Does this mean that for Microsoft any additional performance they can leverage from their operating system will be offset by the cost of more clients using the same machine or will they maintain their competitive advantage by turning up energy efficient savings at the expensive of raw computing power?

There is a third option with a smart algorithm that scales up energy savings as CPU usage decreases. This would enable the performance benefits whilst trying to maximise energy savings.

An interesting thought when you consider virtualisation. A powerful hardware configuration running multiple instances of an Operating System. Each one virtually it’s own operating system. The power usage of a virtualisation server may now be more than that of a single powerful computer running multiple application instances.

Some useful links:

• eweek – Microsoft Braces for Major Customer Shift
• Greeener Computing – Linux touted as most efficient operating system
• Windows Server 2008 – Enabling Energy Efficient Performance
• Bill Gates – Tech Ed 2008 – Keynote
• Nicholas Carr – Microsoft to put “many millions” of servers in cloud
• Nicholas Carr – Cloud may squeeze margins, says Microsoft exec