10 Emerging Technologies 2008, reports Technology Review

Technology Review has an interesting list of their 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008 that are most likely to change way we live.

Here are some possible Green ones for the data center.

Probabilistic Chips
Krishna Palem thinks a little uncertainty in chips could extend battery life in mobile devices--and maybe the duration of Moore's Law, too.
Offline Web Applications
Offline Web Applications
Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.

And one I was surprised (no pun intended) to see

Modeling Surprise
Combining massive quantities of data, insights into human psychology, and machine learning can help manage surprising events, says Eric Horvitz.

A video of Eric Horvitz explains his ideas.  I've known Eric since he joined Microsoft and have had numerous meetings on enterprise applications for Modeling Surprise. In going through his recent research he is another Microsoft Researcher who has used Microsoft's Data Center information to test some of his theories. His current public demonstration is surprise modeling system for Seattle traffic.

What would be awesome is to see Eric apply his ideas to detect the surprises in data center operations. You know those surprises that get people fired or at minimum dragged in front of the executives to explain why something broke in IT. Hopefully I can get his interest on this idea given there is tons of data, lots of opportunity, and the impact is substantial.

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Washington State Gov't uses Interpretation of Manufacturing Tax Law to Tax Data Centers

DataCenterKnowledge reports on the action by the Washington State Legislation to tax data center construction, removing a tax incentive all other gov'ts offer.

Legislation in Washington state that would have restored a tax break for data centers won't be passed in 2008, leaving Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) to mull the future of their plans to continue building in the state. Last month Microsoft and Yahoo halted construction on their multi-facility data center campuses in Quincy, Washington while state legislators debated the tax bill.

The tax package was drafted after the state ruled that data centers were no longer covered by a state sales tax break for manufacturing enterprises, and thus must pay a 7.9 percent tax on data center construction and equipment. Gov. Chris Gregoire requested an exemption in Senate Bill 6666, which would restore the exemption for data centers. The bill was caught up in tax politics, with media terming it a $1 billion tax break for high-tech giants.

The details of what is in the interpretation are:

In their Nov. 21 written response to Holmquist, McKenna and Assistant Attorney General Suzanne Shaw found that the state law establishing the tax break intends that "manufacturing does not include 'the production of computer software if the computer software is delivered from the seller to the purchaser by means other than tangible storage media, including the delivery by use of a tangible storage media where the tangible storage media is not physically transferred to the purchaser.' As we understand it, with respect to data accessed and manipulated by the Internet companies' customers under the circumstances about which you inquire, there neither is a sale nor transfer of electronic data through a tangible storage medium."

So, if there was an energy consuming wasteful retail software facility, the companies would get the tax break.  But, given they use the Internet to deliver software, no tax break. How wasteful is that?

Ultimately, this is all about Washington State going after tax revenue in a year when they are going to have shortfalls, and long term they are going to drive data centers to other states.

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Don't Blame the Geeks, Management Deserves the Heat for Failure to Identify, says WSJ

The WSJ had an article about the failure of Wall St's Credit risks, and the blame does not fall on the geeks, but management. I liked the article because you can apply most of what is said to the issues of energy efficiency in the data center. Don't blame your energy geeks, its management that causes the energy inefficiency behavior.

The stereotype of a bank risk manager is a geek scrawling Greek letters on a whiteboard. But mathematical errors by the pocket-protector crowd aren't to blame for Wall Street's woes. Regulators from five countries just published a report analyzing 11 banks' risk management practices. From their conclusions, it appears the losses were due to amateurish management blunders.

[Views]

First, the big losers didn't have effective firm-wide systems for collecting data on, and evaluating, their risks. They allowed business heads too much leeway in setting and enforcing risk limits, and didn't work to break down bureaucratic barriers that kept bad news from flowing upwards. The result was a profusion of disparate businesses indulging their own short-term appetites for profits, largely immune from having their performance evaluated on a risk-adjusted basis.

Those that dodged bullets were constantly updating and tweaking their models and used them to supplement, rather than replace, their market judgment.

It might have been more comforting if the regulators had been able to blame the mess on some poor quant's slide-rule mishap. Such a mistake could be easily corrected. The periodic recurrence of banker stupidity is a less tractable problem.

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The Monetary Value of Energy in the Data Center

With the interest of Greening a Data Center, the cost of energy has a behavior impact on your organization.

Lewis Curtis and I were chatting earlier today and he posted his ideas on his blog.  It gets you thinking and to save you time I cut and paste the complete post below.  I am working on my own ideas and it will be out next month.

Datacenter energy consumption is rarely a operating cost issue.

From a chat with Dave O'hara today,  I thought I would blog some thoughts around datacenter energy consumption and some common confusion concerning costs.

Do organizations with dedicated datacenters save money when they install more efficient servers and reduce energy consumption? 

Short Answer:  Rarely

Why?

It all is associated with how most dedicated datacenters negotiate energy consumption with utility companies (operating cost issue).   Usually, they negotiate rates at blocks of energy consumption in fixed buckets.

Therefore rule #1:  do not run out of energy,  rule #2: do not leave energy supply stranded (pay for it and not use it).   In other words:  Overprovisioning and Underprovising

Overprovisioning:  you run out of energy in the datacenter (worst sin in the datacenter)

  • TTM (time to market) is significantly impacted
  • Datacenter systems become brittle  (small energy changes can down center)

Underprovisioning: you strand energy your organization already paid for: (very bad)

  • company is wasting money (that's money that could be going into something useful)

There is fine balancing act to managing these issues in your datacenter.

At the end of the day,  we usually have a fixed bucket of energy consumption at a given rate which manage for our datacenter.

So why architect IT solutions which reduces the consumption of energy? 

Answer: Reducing the velocity of datacenter expansion in your organization (capital costs)

As your organization grows in scale and complexity at a given rate, the need build more and more competitive  IT solutions increases at a related velocity.   

As IT solutions expands, organizations need more datacenter capacity to accommodate the business's growth needs.   This expansion is only successful as long as the given IT solutions provide value above the capital of costs of building and operating new datacenter capacity. 

Some Challenges of building new datacenters:

  • Regulations and oversight cost are increasing
  • Cost of datacenter infrastructure are significantly increasing  (PDUs, Cooling solutions, etc..)
  • Negotiated blocks of energy consumption are significantly increasing in price

Therefore, energy efficiency ultimately is about slowing the velocity of datacenter expansion for organization (capital costs).

If you can slow your build cycle from 1 new datacenter every 9 months to 1 datacenter to every 13 months can be a significant business value for your organization.    Slowing forecasted datacenter expansion velocity.

And ultimately, this is not only good for the environment, it's good for the bottom line. 

Lewis

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Whale-Inspired Hydrodynamic Edge, doubles performance of Wind Turbines - Are fans in the data center another application?

Technology Review has a article about Harvard Universities Research on the Hydrodynamic edge on the humpback whale

Marine scientists have long suspected that humpback whales' incredible agility comes from the bumps on the leading edges of their flippers. Now Harvard University researchers have come up with a mathematical model that helps explain this hydrodynamic edge. The work gives theoretical weight to a growing body of empirical evidence that similar bumps could lead to more-stable airplane designs, submarines with greater agility, and turbine blades that can capture more energy from the wind and water.

Already, attempts are being made to incorporate the tubercle design into commercial products. Fish is president of a venture based in Toronto, Ontario, called WhalePower, which has begun demonstrating the advantages of tubercles when they're integrated into the leading edges of wind-turbine and fan blades.

Prototypes of wind-turbine blades (see image below) have shown that the delayed stall doubles the performance of the turbines at wind speeds of about 17 miles per hour and allows the turbine to capture more energy out of lower-speed winds. For example, the turbines generate the same amount of power at 10 miles per hour that conventional turbines generate at 17 miles per hour. The tubercles effectively channel the air flow across the blades and create swirling vortices that enhance lift.

There is a company who is using this technology called Whale Power. Let's hope these guys are successful and can apply their ideas to the data center's cooling systems.

Whalepower Tubercle Technology

A FUNDAMENTAL ADVANCE

Inspired by the flippers of Humpback Whales,  WhalePower has developed something truly remarkable – Tubercle Technology – which takes its name from the bumps on the leading edge of the whale’s flippers.

THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY   … AND RIGHT ON TIME

Tubercle Technology is more than just another blade design: It is a fundamental advance in fluid dynamics which will transform a host of machines built on that challenging science. Just when the world needs it most, Tubercle Technology offers new options. Turbines, compressors, pumps and fans will never be the same again.

Standby! The Whale is about to break through conventional limitations.

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