Limkokwing, Go Green!

Recently, the concept of Going Green is gaining its momentum. The magnitude of this movement spreads very quickly - in many institutions today, whether in schools, universities, offices or hospitals- supported and promoted the green-drive campaigns. It is about saving electricity, planting trees, reducing the use of plastic bags and paper, recycling and reuse of resources.

Our university, as one of the most innovative, should not lag behind the modern trends. The point is not to the increased popularity of the Go Green. Limkokwing campus takes quite a large area. Every day hundreds of people come to campus, and this means a consumption of huge amount of electricity, water, paper and other resources. Therefore, our university should certainly apply to measures of the Go Green.

What is green computing?

Green technology, green IT or green computing is the environmentally responsible use of computers and related resources. Such practices include the implementation of energy-efficient central processing units (CPUs), servers and peripherals as well as reduced resource consumption and proper disposal of electronic waste (e-waste).[1]

The main purpose of this technology is reducing amount of electro energy, carbon footprint and to minimize ecological consequences of computers and other related devices.

University computer laboratory

Often we have classes in a computer laboratory. There is a lot of electrical devices are used in labs, for the most part it is computers.

Electrical devices, and in particular such a powerful machine like a computer, require a large amount of energy. If this is multiplied by the number of computers and taking in account the fact that computers are being turned on during 8 hours, we get a great waste of energy.

The study showed that infrastructure of a 500 desktop enterprise, assuming PCs and LCD monitors left in idle state, consumes power at a rate equivalent to the emission of over 465 thousand lbs of CO2 per year.

Therefore, our group thought and decided to work on a theory of Go Green in terms of saving electricity. On the example of a laboratory, we counted the number of wasted electricity and came up with a way to reduce its consumption.

Problem and solution

Problem statement

 Our university tries to lead and inculcates new technologies. Recently Limkokwing University launched Digital Innovation Centre, which is full of new computers and other techniques. Nevertheless, our recent research has shown that there are whole University laboratories that need to be updated. We took as an example lab 14, where we found 25 old computers. Under “old computers” we mean that hardware and software need to be upgraded because of low overall computer performance.

• We have 25 computers to upgrade
•  Need to upgrade a hardware
• Need to install new software (first of all - operating system) 
•  Renewed laboratory should comply with Green Tech concept

Problem solution

• To design a renewed computer based on the old one
• To choose suitable hardware
• To choose suitable software
• To attract staff and IT students for updating work

Objective

•  To improve the performance of computers
•  To build a machine suitable for applications with heavy programs such as Adobe    Photoshop, 3Ds MAX, Real Tournament
• To introduce the concepts of Green IT

  

Scope

 This work can be used for upgrading another LUCT’s labs such as lab 24, lab 27, computer room in library.

Green computing in IT corporations

The term “green computer" appeared in 1992 and was proposed by Energy Star. More than 15 years passed away but still green computing has not been well taught in computer science.  But there are several successful projects regarding this theme.  

For example: IBM’s “Project Big Green” with a 42% power savings, a green computing project conducted at Indiana university reduces 48.3% energy by applying “sleep mode” on a cluster, project of University of Colorado shows how to achieve 80% energy savings in high performance computing and other.[2]

A huge American chip manufacturer INTEL proposed a new technology called Intel SpeedStep. SpeedStep, SpeedStep II, SpeedStep III builts into some Intel microprocessors. This technology manipulate a clock speed of the processor. Actually running a processor at high clock speed provides the best performance of the computer. But at the same time it provides a huge energy usage. Running a processor at lower speed supplies less power and lower performance. But we don’t need the highest performance all the time. So this Intel SpeedStep technology changes the clock speed automatically or allow user to change it manually at any time.

Check out this link to find out what is Intel SpeedUp Technology ---->

Enhanced Intel SpeedUp Technology Demo

Hardware

This graphic shows where our power goes.

As we can see from this pie graphic, the biggest part of energy wastes on display. The second place goes to memory controller hub, power supply and CPU.  Another leaders of power usage are hard drive, graphic card and miscellaneous. Also 5 percents used by clock. 

 

Lab 14 computer characteristics

Number of computers	25
Type of computers	Desktop pc
Unit	HP dx 5150 MT Base Unit
Monitor	HP L1506, 15 inch TFT LCD, 50-60 Hz frequency, typical power consumption 21W, max power consumption 23 W.
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 3800+, 1,99 GHz, Thermal Design Power 89 W
Video card	ATI Radeon xpress 200 series
Hard drive	80 GB, SATA driver
RAM	1 Gb, (958 Mb usable)
Power supply	200 Watts.

 

Changes:

• Our group decided to change, first of all, the processor. We choose Intel® Core™ i3-530 Processor, 2.93 GHz, 2 cores, 73W, with Intel SpeedStep technology . This model has higher frequency, which means better performance and speed, but at the same time requires 73 W instead of 89 W of old AMD processor. ( 16 W difference)

• 1 Gb of RAM in not enough for a good performance, so we change it to 2 Gb. The original motherboard has DDR I type memory slot, so it is impossible to use DDR III memory kit, which is greener. Anyway there is no point to chance a motherboard so we suggest PNY OPTIMA 2GB (2x1GB) Dual Channel Kit DDR 400 MHz. We need only 13 completes of this memory for upgrading 25 PCs, because an old memory can be combined.

• We already changed two most important parts and improve overall speed and performance. Now we need a new power supply, because old one in not powerful enough. We suggest Antec EA-380D Power Supply, 380Watt Bronze Certified ATX12V v2.3 power supply, with Dual 12V output circuits. Help save the environment with this EarthWatts Green PSU. The Antec EarthWatts EA-380D Green PC Power Supply meets the Bronze level of efficiency from 80 PLUS, the most widely recognized independent standard in power-supply efficiency. It means that the EA-380D is at least 80-percent (or greater) energy efficient, meaning you will save energy while reducing heat output and fan noise. [3]. 

What we didn’t change:

• Monitor with HP L1506, 15 inch TFT LCD, 50-60 Hz frequency, typical power consumption 21W, is satisfies work and green technology needs.
• Mouse and keyboard are standard and wired. Also mouse is optical. Usually this two output devices use 6-8 W, so changing mouse and keyboard is wasting of budget. 
• Motherboard is quite old, but we still can use it.  We think that there is no point to change motherboard, better to buy new PC. 
• Graphic card is integrated in motherboard, so we can’t change it. And at the same time it’s useless, because existing card works well.

 

Hardware	Price per 1 piece (MYR)	Quantity	Total price (MYR)
Intel® Core™ i3-530 Processor (4M Cache, 2.93 GHz)	360	25	9000
PNY OPTIMA 2GB (2x1GB) Dual Channel Kit DDR 400 MHz	150	13	1950
Antec EA-380D Power Supply EA-380D	130	25	3250
Total			14200

Software

Operating System 

The operating system can have just as big an influence as any other component in the computer.

Operating systems installed in a lab computers is Windows XP.

We suggest to upgrade the operation system to a Windows 7 Home Premium, due to following reason.

In 2009, Mindteck’s Advanced Smart Energy Lab released a study comparing Windows 7 power management features to Windows XP and found compelling results indicating that upgrading to Windows 7 can help to reduce energy consumption, so that organizations can save on energy costs.

This table shows Comparative Power Consumption (W) with varying driver configurations and older hardware.

The configuration of lab PCs is most close to the P4 with updated drivers.  Assuming we upgrade the operation system from Win XP to Win 7, we can simply calculate the percentage of improvement.

     Calculate the percentage watt difference in each mode:

1) Idle:  64.2-57.3=6.9

X= (6.9 x 100)/64.2=10.7 (%)

2) Low: 69.7-66.1=3.6

X=(3.6x100)/69.7= 5.1 (%)

3) High: 89.8-79.4=10.4

X=(10.4x100)/89.8=11.6 (%)

Calculate the mean:

M= (10.7+5.1+11.6) /3 =9.1 (%)

Assuming that computers are used equally in each mode- idle, low and high, we would get a 9.1 % improvement in energy consumption, if we upgrade from Win XP to Win 7.

  

Windows 7 Power Plan

For as long as Windows has had power management, Windows has had power schemes or power plans. The power plans allow you to easily change from one set of power settings to another, depending on your preferences.

Within a power plan, you can change a variety of Windows power-saving features, including inactivity timers for turning off the display, automatically putting the system to sleep or even creating a new custom power plan for the exact settings you want. The display and sleep idle features are very important for power savings and battery life. As above, the display can consume approximately 40% of the power budget on the typical PC.

Plan for saving energy:

1) Set the display idle timeout to 5 minutes.

Such short timeout seems very aggressive, but the fact is that display is the main energy-consuming part in a computer. Turning off the display wouldn’t bring a big inconvenience to users, because all the current processes will stay on

.

2) Set the computer sleep mode timeout to 20 minutes.

Sleep mode sets the computer in a low power mode. This mode save significant electrical consumption compared to leaving a device fully on and idle, but allow the user to avoid having to re-open the programs or wait for a machine to reboot.

3) Adjust screen brightness in range from minimum to the half.

On LCD monitor, reduction in brightness results in power saving. Brightness in range until 50 % is well enough for eyes.

3) Disable screen savers to allow the display to turn off.

Such useless thing as screen saver just brings additional load to RAM of a computer and better is being replaced by simple turning of the display.

Power management software

There is a plenty of power management software to measure and control energy consumption in computer network.  Some of them provide single-user control over PC power management, while others - control over the whole enterprise network.

In our case, having a network of computers, lab undoubtedly requires a network controlling. We choose Surveyor, which is Verdiem company’s enterprise class PC Power Management software.

What is Surveyor? 

This application allows the central administration of power management settings for networked PCs.

How we can apply it?

 Surveyor can automatically detect and organize devices in a network. As new computers are added to the network, application automatically groups IP of device ,it’s operating system, and more. This reduces the management overhead and greatly simplifies the work.

The next step is aligning a power management policy. Patterns of work and work hours vary in all labs. Surveyor allows  to create policies that accommodate specific needs for each lab. For example, a lab for multimedia students with Macs may need longer time display timeout, because mainly they are always work with displays. In case of IT students, display for us may have shorter time period, because very often we have a long breaks between using a computer.

Surveyor includes a database of watt draw information. Information of energy consumption can be measured separately for each lab. This information flows directly into savings calculations and reports.

What is the result we can get?

Developers of Surveyor application claim that  using Surveyor, enterprises can cut energy costs by up to 60 %

There is a dashboard function which reports quantitative results for money saved, energy consumption reduced, and CO2 emissions lowered. Also, the program is transparent to the end-users, means that it is visible only to he technician computer which maintains the network.

 

Internet and World Wide Web

Web Browser

The more efficiently a browser uses power the lower the electricity costs and the smaller the environment impact. While power might seem like a minor concern, with nearly two billion people now using the Internet the worldwide implications of browser power consumption are significant.

The following chart shows the power consumption of 5 most popular browsers- Internet Explorer 9, Opera 11, Firefox 4, Chrome 10 and Safari 4.

Most browsers are close to the system idle power usage, meaning they have little impact on power consumption. The exception is Opera 11 which is consuming about 5% more power than other browsers when idle.

But the leader of this chart is Internet Explorer 9, standard browser that comes with any Windows operating system. All computers in our lab have installed 4^th version of Firefox browser. On our own experience, we can say that among students Firefox is more popular and preferable browser than IE, because of important features like speed, convenient interface, status bar and etc.

Since lab computers have both browsers-standard IE 9 and Firefox 6, we do not recommend making any changes, because such combination is already effective in terms of energy consumption.

Conclusion

Our group came up with the idea of implementing go green technology in real university live and use one of the lab to propose Green upgrading. During this work our group found our many interesting facts about Green Technology. We did this work using our personal laptops with Windows 7 on them. Our group member concluded that our laptops also can be called green, because Win 7 and notebook requires less power as compared with desktop PC with Win XP.
Coming back to our work, we chose wisely to upgrade old computers instead of buying new ones, and certainly not to create a super computer. We tried to introduce green computer technologies and concepts to usual university PC. During researches, we suddenly realized that even old hardware sometimes can be considered as green, because it does not use a lot of electricity.

Why we have chosen this lab? Because previously we had multimedia classes in it, and it was hard to run heavy software such as Adobe Photoshop, 3Ds MAX, Unreal Tournament and some other. Also this lab is not the only one which needs to be upgraded and renewed. We hope that this work will help university staff to make some changes.

References

List of references:

1) What is green computing? - Definition from Whatis.com. 2011. What is green computing? - Definition from Whatis.com. [ONLINE] Available at: http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/green-computing. [Accessed 15 September 2011].

2) Dan Lo, C.-T., (2010). Green Computing Methodology for Next Generation Computing Scientists. In 2010 IEEE 34th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference. JW Marriott Seoul, Korea (South), 19 Jul - 23 Jul. JW Marriott Seoul, Korea (South): IEEE. 1-8.

3) Intel® Core™ i3-530 Processor (4M Cache, 2.93 GHz). 2011. Intel® Core™ i3-530 Processor (4M Cache, 2.93 GHz). [ONLINE] Available at: http://ark.intel.com/products/46472/Intel-Core-i3-530-Processor-(4M-Cache-2_93-GHz). [Accessed 20 October 2011].

4) Green Computing. 2011. Green Computing. [ONLINE] Available at: http://thefutureofthings.com/articles/1003/green-computing.html. [Accessed 21 October 2011]

5) Green Technology Information And Facts » Blog Archive » What Is Green Technology. 2011. Green Technology Information And Facts » Blog Archive » What Is Green Technology. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.wedogreentechnology.com/what-is-green-technology. [Accessed 24 October 2011].

6) Baseline Energy Efficiency for PC Power Management with Verdiem. 2011. Baseline Energy Efficiency for PC Power Management with Verdiem. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.verdiem.com/product-tour/analyze-usage. [Accessed 26 October 2011].

7) 2011. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.mindteck.com/whitepapers/Enabling-Green-Computing.pdf. [Accessed 15 October 2011].

8) MSDN Blogs . 2011. MSDN Blogs . [ONLINE] Available at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/03/28/browser-power-consumption-leading-the-industry-with-internet-explorer-9.aspx. [Accessed 22 October 2011].