There has been much talk of increased processing power, and the need for quicker and quicker reply times, but how efficient are today’s breed of server?

The surprising answer to that is that they are not very efficient at all, when it comes to using power, and the mighty Google have flagged this as a major concern for the future. While the last three generations of Google’s computing infrastructure have seen a doubling of actual performance, there has been no improved performance per watt ( i.e. the efficiency with which systems use the power supplied to them). As a consequence a doubling in system performance has resulted in a doubling of the power required - meaning that power costs have doubled over the last three generations of system.

Unless there are some marked improvements in watt efficiency, there will very soon be a situation whereby the actually hardware costs less to acquire than the power required to run it for 12 months. This has massive implications for Google who have thousands of servers all around the world. Unfortunately, any increase in the cost base of the company would be passed on to the consumer at some stage, resulting in an increase in the cost of internet use.

While many of the server manufacturers are working flat out to try and come up with a solution, it appears that performance has benefited at the cost of power usage efficiency - an equation which will need to be addressed as soon as possible.