GE shows its Platinum LEED certified data center in Kentucky

GE announced its Platinum LEED data center.

Calculating the Future: GE Unveils Platinum LEED®-Certified Data Center – a Sustainable Investment Supporting Global Business Growth

• GE Appliances & Lighting unveils first LEED^®-Platinum data center in Kentucky.
• GE’s data center is 34 percent better in terms of energy savings than a typical code-compliant building.¹
• Of all LEED-certified buildings globally, only 6 percent have achieved Platinum certification.²
• GE’s data center supports more than $1 billion in job-creating business investments.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.- August 18, 2011– (NYSE:GE) - GE Appliances & Lighting today announced the opening of a revolutionary new data center at its Louisville, Ky., Appliance Park headquarters. GE approached the design, construction and operation of this facility with the intent of reducing data center energy consumption and lowering environmental impact, while providing tremendous computing power to support major product and infrastructure investments now and well into the future.

GE’s Adrian Shanklin shows off GE’s new high-density servers that provide more computing power per square foot than GE’s previous data center for greater efficiency.

---

Of all LEED-certified buildings globally, only 6 percent have achieved Platinum certification, and GE’s new facility is the first LEED-Platinum data center in all of Kentucky.³ GE’s environmental achievement is made even more impressive considering data center emissions worldwide are growing faster than many other types of carbon emissions.⁴

Water and Renewable energy are part of the announcement.

• GE is reducing water consumption inside the building by 42 percent compared to the industry baseline⁷ by installing ultra low-flow fixtures. Outside the building, GE is reducing water consumption by 100 percent.⁸
• GE has offset 35 percent of the data center’s predicted annual energy consumption through the purchase of off-site renewable energy.⁹

^…

7 Baseline established in Energy Policy Act of 1992.

8 No permanent irrigation system was installed, reducing water consumption by 100% for landscaping purposes. Data for LEED analyzed and independently verified by the Green Building Certification Institute.

9 GE is matching 35 percent of the data center’s predicted annual energy consumption with renewable-energy certificates to help offset emissions. Green-e accredited Tradable Renewable Certificates (RECs) equal to 35 percent of predicted annual energy consumption over a two-year period.

A small team is forced to design small, for example original ARM designers

The success of the ARM processor vs. Intel is obvious in the mobile market.  Going back to the history of the ARM it is interesting to note the small UK design team vs. the US.

One of the reasons the ARM was designed as a small-scale processor was that the resources to design it were not sufficient to allow the creation of a large and complex device. While this is now presented as (and genuinely is) a technical plus for the ARM processor core, it began as a necessity for a processor designed by a team of talented but inexperienced designers (outside of university projects, most team members were programmers and board-level circuit designers) using new tools, some of which were far from state-of-the-art. With these restrictions on design and testing, it is hardly a surprise that a small device was developed.

While the ARM was developed as a custom device for a highly specific purpose, the team designing it felt that the best way to produce a good custom chip was to produce a chip with good all-round performance.

In the US the RISC teams at Intel, AMD, Sun and MIPS.

For example, Sun developed the SPARC RISC chip and architecture for its own computer workstations, while notable RISC processors from established chip producers include Intel's i860 graphics processor and AMD's 29000, which has mainly been used as a graphics accelerator or in printers. However, both Sun's and MIPS' efforts were based on earlier research efforts at Stanford and Berkeley universities respectively, while Acorn's project was effectively begun from scratch, although reports on the Berkeley and Stanford research were read by the Acorn team and were part of the inspiration behind designing a RISC processor.

The ARM team also was a team focused on price/performance.

The ARM processor has always differed from other commercially available RISC processors in that it is intended to meet a price/performance ratio rather than to be the most powerful processor available. Acorn's computers have always been aimed at the middle of the market, so the processor designed to power them was too. ARM processors are not the most powerful, but offer an extremely good price/performance ratio compared to other processors, at about a dollar per million instructions per second (MIPS) in the case of ARM6.

…

High performance for low power consumption

A further advantage of the small size of ARM devices is that they do not consume as much power as other, larger processors.

This has proved a critical key to the success of ARM processors. Unlike many other processor designs, the ARM was easily re-implemented in static form rather than the usual dynamic CMOS. This, along with the small die size, reduced power consumption, making ARM processors ideally suited for power consumption-critical products such as portable computers. Furthermore, it allows the clock to be stopped, a useful powersaver in portable designs.

Think about this when picking vendors.  Sometimes the biggest is not the best as they have the resources to create the most complex designs and to market it.

Texas customer is buying HP Containers, Active Power announces deal for HP POD 240a

Here is a press release on Active Power supplying power infrastructure for HP containers.

ACTIVE POWER : Receives Multiple Powerhouse Order from HP

Active Power (NASDAQ: ACPW), manufacturer of continuous power and infrastructure solutions, has received an order from HP for two containerized continuous power systems which will be deployed to support the HP POD 240a at a datacenter facility in Texas. The two PowerHouse^TM systems are part of a complete modular datacenter and infrastructure deployment and one of the most innovative and efficient IT solution packages available on the market today. Both systems will ship by the end of the year.

The two PowerHouse systems valued at nearly $2 million are each rated at 960 kW and will contain Active Power's high efficiency flywheel based CleanSource® UPS (uninterruptible power supply) system; switchgear; and monitoring and controls software. These systems will provide power conditioning and protection to the HP POD 240a, the world's most energy efficient modular datacenter, housing servers, storage, networking equipment, and other resources.

Who has more Water Rights a Data Center or a Farmer?

MSNBC covers the worsening drought conditions for Texas Farmers.

Drought so far cost Texas farms record $5.2 billion

'I think it's going to get bigger' once harvest is in, official says

Jae C. Hong  /  AP

Ranch owner Myron Calley loads empty bags in the back of his truck after feeding his cattle near Snyder, Texas on Aug. 12.

msnbc.com news services

LUBBOCK, Texas — The blistering drought in Texas has caused an estimated $5.2 billion in crop and livestock losses so far this agricultural season, a record figure likely to rise further, state officials said Wednesday.

1. Field surveys from November 2010 to Aug. 1 this year indicate livestock losses of $2.1 billion and crop losses of $3.1 billion in Texas.

So here is question for you in drought conditions who has more water rights the Farmer or data center operator?  I would say the Farmer does.

If your issues are within state then you may have this view.

Under the prior appropriation doctrine, water rights are "first in time, first in right." That is, the older, or senior, water right may operate to the exclusion of junior water rights. The concept of "priority date" is significant. The priority date is generally associated with the date that water was first put to beneficial use, or the date that a successful application for a water right was submitted, and indicates the relative status of seniority among competing users. Older rights are senior. More recent rights are junior.

I think most people and a judge could understand beneficial use of water for crops and livestock.  Try explaining them water use for a data center cooling system.

And, it is quite possible you may have Interstate Water Conflicts.

Resolution of Interstate Water Conflicts

Because water bodies may cross political and jurisdictional boundaries, conflicts may arise. In the United States, three basic approaches are used to settle such conflicts: 1) Litigation before the Supreme Court of the United States; 2) Legislative resolution by the Congress of the United States; and 3) Negotiation and ratification of interstate compacts between states. ^[3] In the western United States, for example, the 1922 Colorado River Compact divides the Colorado River basin into two areas, the Upper Division (comprising Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) and the Lower Division (Nevada, Arizona and California). A comprehensive review of existing interstate water compacts has been published by the Model Interstate Water Compact Project at the University of New Mexico School of Law's Utton Transboundary Resource Center.^[4]

Think Different switch back to the Mac from Windows

I worked at Apple from 1985 to 1992.  The Mac was introduced in 1985 and 1991 Apple shipped System 7. I spent much of time working on Mac OS 6.0.x and System 7 was years of being immersed in Mac development.  When I moved to Microsoft to work on Win3.1 my coworkers and I spent much of time using Macs as we were working TrueType and the vast majority of tools where on the Mac.

Even though many of my friends used Macs I didn't take the time to switch.  But, yesterday I switched to a 3rd generation MacBook Air and the Lion OS.

Switching from Windows to Mac is an interesting experience for me as it is bringing back a bunch of memories working on OS design.

The main reason I switched to the Mac were:

1. I needed a more powerful content creation laptop.  My Lenovo X200T was good, but not a good performer.  The MacBook Air i5 processor is much better with Sandy Bridge and SSD.
2. My main tools are Blogging, Photo Imaging, e-mail, Word, Excel and Powerpoint, so moving to the Mac is not a problem.
3. The Lenovo was light, but the MacBook Air is hard to beat for weight.

The funny thing is when I started using the Mac again, it brought back a bunch of memories of working at Apple and the way I used to work.  It's kind of old, 20 year old neurons were reconnecting on how the Mac has different priorities.

I have written a few blog entries with MarsEdit.  Downloaded photos from my Canon 7D.  Installed Office, Aperture, Lightroom as well.

I was much faster writing with Windows Live Writer, but it's only my  second day switching back to the Mac after almost 19 years.