Samsung Electronics, the leading DRAM maker, is hoping to capitalize on the world’s growing data storage needs by ramping up development and production of low-power RAM chips. Power savings aside, they hope to help reduce operating costs of data centers by reducing the need for cooling, since low-power RAM chips are dramatically cooler than the standard chips most of the world uses.
The world has seen a massive increase in centralized data storage in the last decade. Well-known companies like Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are only the tip of the iceberg made up of companies that need to keep ever-increasing amounts of data in centralized locations. The number of these data “warehouses” is expected to hit almost four million in the next few years. The larger ones house tens of thousands of servers. New large data centers are continually being built, and this trend will certainly continue. Google has an estimated one million server platforms in use at present. Apple spent $1 billion on its new data center to implement iCloud. The numbers are mind-boggling. And so is the amount of energy they use.
Somewhere between 2 and 3% of the total US energy consumption is data storage centers…it’s really a staggering figure. That’s enough to suck up the output of four or five medium-sized nuclear power plants. Samsung estimates that a combination of reduced operating costs due to lower power consumption and reduced energy spent on cooling can significantly reduce the operating costs of these facilities. Combined with lessons learned over the last decade by companies like Google and Facebook about designing large-scale data warehouses, the total savings could be as high as 30% overall–even more when the switch to solid-state drives is complete. Samsung, being the largest DRAM maker and having almost limitless money to throw at R&D and supply chain leveraging, is in a unique position to take advantage of this emerging market. The server RAM market is expected to double this year, and Samsung will likely be reaping the lion’s share of the rewards. Good for them, and good for us, as anything to reduce energy costs can only be a good thing.
It’s important to note it’s not just the big guys who consume this energy–millions of smaller companies and institutions use significant amounts of servers and associated support hardware. Here at Small Dog, for instance, there were at one point over twenty Intel and G4 XServe units in our Waitsfield server room!! We have started replacing them with much more energy-efficient and equally capable Mac minis and Mac Pro machines. In addition, the climate here gives us another way to reduce our consumption during part of the year: we have a system that lets us use outside air to cool the server room during the winter months. It’s almost totally passive and a great example of a low-tech tool to help keep energy costs and, more importantly, energy consumption lower.
