Project Big Green - a multi-year environmental program by IBM
Going Hollywood and Going Green
Project Big Green, IBM's $1 billion per year environmental initiative, donned its virtual sunglasses for the recent Hollywood Goes Green conference.
Driven by the demands of special effects, animation and new media entertainment, Hollywood operates some of the world's largest, most powerful data centers. "The Lord of the Rings" alone used some 6,000 servers to create digital special effects. IBM told the conference the company would apply a portion of Project Big Green to make the industry's massive banks of computers more energy efficient.
Specifically, by 2010, the IBM intends to help the industry:
- Cut server power use 50 percent,
- Eliminate the need for air conditioning in the datacenter,
- Increase compute density by a factor of 10, and
- Reduce the amount of servers disposed of in landfills or incinerated to less than 1 percent.
The US Energy Information Agency predicts that without new efficiencies, data center electric use (and bills) will double in less than 10 years. IBM is already designing technology that will use 50 percent less power by the end of the decade. The company is also working on technology that will increase compute capacity by a factor of 10, allowing clients to pack a lot more computing into the same amount of space.
And Project Big Green also helps data center owners to refurbish or environmentally dispose of their old IT equipment.
Project Big Green
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