Green computing

Green computing
Introduction
Green computing or green IT, refers to environmentally sustainable
computing or IT.
Green computing is defined as "the study and practice of designing,
manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated
subsystems—such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking
and communications systems — efficiently and effectively with minimal
or no impact on the environment.
The goals of green computing are reduce the use of hazardous materials,
maximize energy efficient during the product's lifetime, and promote the
recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste.
Research continues into key areas such as making the use of computers
as energy-efficient as possible, and designing algorithms and systems
for efficiency-related computer technologies.
Green ComputingSeminar Report 1

History of Green Computing
In 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency launched Energy Star ,
a voluntary labeling program which is designed to promote and recognize
energy-efficiency in monitors, climate control equipment, and other
technologies. This resulted in the widespread adoption of sleep
mode among consumer electronics.
The term "green computing" was probably coined shortly after the Energy
Star program began; there are several USENET posts dating back to 1992
which use the term in this manner.
Concurrently, the Swedish organization TCO Development launched
the TCO Certification program to promote low magnetic and electrical
emissions from CRT-based Computer display;
This program was later expanded to include criteria on energy
consumption, ergonomics and the use of hazardous materials in
construction.

Why Green Computing is needed?
 Computer Energy is often wasteful.
E.g. Leaving the Computer ON when not in use (CPU and fan consume
power, screen savers consume power)
 Printing is wasteful.
print out your emails or meeting agendas, partial drafts.
 Pollution.
E.g. Due to manufacturing, packaging, disposal techniques.
 Toxicity.
E.g. Due to toxic chemicals involved in manufacturing.

Core Objectives of Green
Computing Strategies
Minimizing energy consumption
Purchasing green energy
Reducing the paper and other consumables used
Minimizing equipment disposal requirements
Reducing travel requirements for
employees/customers

Chapter 2
Detail about Green Computing
Roads to Green Computing
• To comprehensively and effectively address the environmental
impacts of computing/IT, we must adopt a holistic approach and
make the entire IT lifecycle greener by addressing environmental
sustainability along the following four complementary paths.
• Green use — reducing the energy consumption of computers and
other information systems as well as using them in an
environmentally sound manner .
• Green disposal — refurbishing and reusing old computers and
properly recycling unwanted computers and other electronic
equipment .

– Reuse: donate your computer components to people who don’t have
or have lesser quality computers.
– Refurbish: rather than discarding your computer upgrade it. Change
its parts to make it new.
– Recycle: One of the major challenges is recycling the printed circuit
boards from electronic wastes. The circuit board contains such
precious metals as gold, silver, platinum etc
• Green design — designing energy-efficient and environmentally sound
components, computers, servers, cooling equipment, and data centers .
• Green manufacturing — manufacturing electronic components,
computers, and other associated subsystems with minimal impact on
the environment

Bamboo: is becoming increasingly popular for making casings for
computers and peripherals.
Recyclable plastics: computers are constructed from non-recyclable
plastics i.e. recyclable polycarbonate resin.
Eco-friendly flame retardant: there are flame retardant silicone
compounds available that are flame retardant and completely non-toxic.
Inventory management: reducing the quantity of both hazardous
materials used in the process and the amount of excess raw materials.
Volume reduction: removes hazardous portion of waste from non
hazardous portion.
Fig1 Examples of bamboo usage

Energy Use of PCs
 CPU uses 120 Watts
 CRT uses 150 Watts
8 hours of usage, 5 days a week = 562 KWatts
If the computer is left on all the time without proper power saver
modes, this can lead to 1,600 KWatts
For a large institution, say a university of 40,000 students and faculty,
the power bill for just computers can come to $2 million / year
 Energy use comes from
Electrical current to run the CPU, motherboard, memory
Running the fan and spinning the disk(s)
Monitor (CRTs consume more power than any other computer
component)

Manufacturing of PC’s
 Lead: used in soldering of printed circuit boards.
 Lead can cause damage to the central and Peripheral nervous
system, blood systems and kidneys
 Mercury: used in batteries, switches.
 Mercury spreads out in water transforming into methylated
mercury that can cause chronic brain damage.
 Cadmium: used in resistors for chips and in semiconductors.
 Cadmium is classified as toxic.
These compounds accumulate in the human body, particularly the
kidneys.

Reducing Energy Consumption
Turn off the computer when not in use, even if
just for an hour
Turn off the monitor when not in use
Use power saver mode
Use hardware/software with the Energy Star
label
Don’t print unless necessary and you are ready
Use LCDs instead of CRTs as they are more
power efficient

How to save energy while working on
the computer?
Sleep mode
Sleep or standby mode conserves energy by cutting
off power to your display, hard drives and
peripherals.
After a pre-set period of inactivity, your computer
switches to a low power state.
Hibernate mode
 Saves energy and protects your work by copying
system data to a reserved area on your hard drive and
then completely turning off your computer.
Reduces wear and tear on your components

How to save energy while working on
the internet?
 Blackle is a website powered by Google Custom Search and
created by Heap Media, which aims to save energy by displaying a
black background and using grayish-white font color for search
results.
 Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black
 Set Blackle as your homepage.
Green Computing12Seminar Report

Approaches to green computing
Virtualization
 It is the process of running two or more logical computer systems on one
set of physical hardware.
 With virtualization, a system administrator could combine several physical
systems into virtual machines on one single, powerful system, thereby
unplugging the original hardware and reducing power and cooling
consumption. It can make the most efficient use of available system
resources.
Power Supply
 Desktop Computer Power Supplies(PSUs) are in general 70–75% efficient,
dissipating the remaining energy as heat.
 An industry initiative called 80 PLUS certifies PSUs that are at least 80%
efficient; typically these models are drop-in replacements for older, less efficient
PSUs of the same form factor.
 As of July 20, 2007, all new Energy Star 4.0-certified desktop PSUs
must be at least 80% efficient.

Power Management
 The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface(ACPI), an open
industry standard, allows an operating system to directly control the
power-saving aspects of its underlying hardware.
 This allows a system to automatically turn off components such as
monitors and hard drives after set periods of inactivity.
 In addition, a system may hibernate, where most components (including
the CPU and the system RAM) are turned off.
 Some programs allow the user to manually adjust the voltages supplied to
the CPU, which reduces both the amount of heat produced and electricity
consumed. This process is called undervolting.
 Some CPUs can automatically undervolt the processor, depending
on the workload; this technology is called “SpeedStep" on Intel
processors.

Storage:
 Smaller form factor (e.g., 2.5 inch) hard disk drives often consume less
power per gigabyte than physically larger drives.
 Unlike hard disk drives, solid -state -drives store data in flash memory or
DRAM. With no moving parts, power consumption may be reduced
somewhat for low-capacity flash-based devices.
Video Card:
A fast GPU may be the largest power consumer in a computer.
Energy-efficient display options include:
 No video card - use a shared terminal, shared thin-client, or desktop
sharing software if display required.
 Use motherboard video output - typically low 3D performance and low
power.
 Select a GPU based on low idle power, average wattage, or
performance-per -watt

Materials Recycling
 Recycling computing equipment can keep harmful materials such as lead,
mercury, and hexavalent chromium out of landfills, and can also replace
equipment that otherwise would need to be manufactured, saving further
energy and emissions.
 Computer systems that have outlived their particular function can be re-
purposed, or donated to various charities and non-profit organizations.
 However, many charities have recently imposed minimum system
requirements for donated equipment. Additionally, parts from outdated
systems may be salvaged and recycled through certain retail outlets and
municipal or private recycling centers.
 Computing supplies, such as printer cartridges, paper, and batteries may be
recycled as well.

Display
 CRT monitors typically use more power than LCD monitors. They also contain
significant amounts of lead.
 LCD monitors typically use a cold-cathode fluorescent bulb to provide light for the
display.
 Some newer displays use an array of light-emitting diodes(LEDs) in place of the
fluorescent bulb, which reduces the amount of electricity used by the display.
Fluorescent back-lights also contain mercury, whereas LED back-lights do not.
Telecommuting
Employees working from home reduce the fuel emission that is created
during commuting by vehicles.
Moreover, there is reduction in overhead costs like light, electricity, etc. All
this results in increased power and energy savings.

Teleconferencing and telepresence technologies are often
implemented in green computing initiatives. The advantages are
many;
 increased worker satisfaction,
 reduction of greenhouse gas emissions related to travel,
 and increased profit margins as a result of lower overhead costs for office
space, heat, lighting, etc.
The savings are significant; the average annual energy consumption
for U.S. office buildings is over 23 kilowatt hours per square foot,
with heat, air conditioning and lighting accounting for 70% of all
energy consumed.

Advantage and disadvantage of
Green Computing
Advantages:
 Environmental Sustainability
 Save more money per year.
 Energy Efficiency
 Green computing techniques will actually translate into a
much lower carbon dioxide emission.
Disadvantages:
 High start up cost
 Still in experimental stages

Recent Implementation of Green
Computing
Blackle
 Blackle is a search-engine site powered by Google Custom Search.
 Blackle came into being based on the concept that when a
computer screen is white, presenting an empty word page or the
Google home page, your computer consumes 74W.
 When the screen is black it consumes only 59W.
Fig 2 Blackle

Computing
Zonbu Computer
The Zonbu is a new, very energy efficient PC.
The Zonbu consumes just one third of the power of a typical light
bulb.
The device runs the Linux operating system using a 1.2 GHz
processor and 512 MB of RAM.
Fig 3 Zonbu Computer

Computing
Fit- PC
Fit-PC is the size of a paperback and absolutely silent, yet fit enough
to run Windows XP or Linux.
Fit-PC is designed to fit where a standard PC is too bulky, noisy and
power hungry .
Fit-PC draws only 5 Watts, consuming in a day less power than a
traditional PC consumes in 1 hour.
Fig 4 Fit-PC

Computing
SunRay Thin Client
Thin clients like the Sun Ray consume far less electricity than conventional
desktops.
A SunRay on a desktop consumes 4 to 8 watts of power, because most of the
heavy computation is performed by a server.
Sunrays are particularly well suited for cost-sensitive environments such as
call centres, education, healthcare, service providers and finance.
Fig 5 SunRay Thin Client

Computing
Asus Eee PC & ultra portables
Small Size
Fairly low- power CPU.
Compact screen
Low cost.
Uses flash memory for storage.
Fig 6 Eee PC

CHAPTER 3
Conclusion
 Green Computing is the environmentally responsible use of
computers and related resources.
 So far, consumers haven't cared about ecological impact when
buying computers, they've cared only about speed and price.
 Devices use less and less power while renewable energy gets more
and more portable and effective.
 The greenest computer will not miraculously fall from the sky one
day, it’ll be the product of years of improvements.

Continued…
Here's how designers plan to make future computer more eco-friendly
across its entire life span, from manufacture to recycling:
Energy-intensive manufacturing of computer parts can be minimized by
making manufacturing process more energy efficient.
By replacing petroleum-filled plastic with bioplastics—plant-based
polymers— require less oil and energy to produce than traditional
plastics with a challenge to keep these bioplastic computers cool so that
electronics won't melt them.
Landfills can be controlled by making best use of the device by
upgrading and repairing in time with a need to make such processes (i.e.,
up gradation and repairing) easier and cheaper.

Continued…
Avoiding the discarding will not only control e-waste out of dumps but
also save energy and materials needed for a whole new computer.
Power-sucking displays can be replaced with green light displays made of
OLEDs, or organic light-emitting diodes.
Use of toxic materials like lead can be replaced by silver and
copper.
Making recycling of computers (which is expensive and time
consuming at present) more effective by recycling computer parts
separately with a option of reuse or resale.
Future computers could knock 10 percent off their energy use just
by replacing
Hard drives with solid-state, or flash, memory, which has no watt-
hungry moving parts.

Thank you!
“Go green, Think green”
Green ComputingSeminar Report

Green computing

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