Server Farms as Polluting as Air Traffic

Computer centers and even individual PCs are responsible for massive amounts of carbon dioxide, and the problem is growing

by Manfred Dworschak

When Professor Heinz-Gerd Hegering orders a new supercomputer, he first warns the power company. The power lines in the surrounding Bavarian countryside must be able to handle the additional load. "It's enough to make the engineers break into a sweat," Hegering says.

Hegering's new giant computer, which he plans to install in 2011, won't exactly be energy-efficient. In fact, it sucks as much power from the grid as it takes for a fully loaded, 400-ton high-speed train to accelerate from zero to 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph).

Hegering runs the Leibniz Computer Center, built for Munich's universities, in the nearby town of Garching. The center is already home to one of the world's most powerful supercomputers. The computer is housed in a shimmering cube as tall as a 10-story building. Researchers at the facility conduct simulations of the birth of galaxies or the expansion of seismic waves. That much computing generates a lot of heat.

Metal tubes as thick as tree trunks are suspended from the ceiling, constantly suctioning off the heat rising from the computer cabinets. Without them, professors working there would melt. Powerful pumps inject blasts of cold air through the floors. Visitors, their hair aflutter and surrounded by the roar of the air-conditioning system, experience what it feels like when a frightening amount of data turns into a physical force. The center has a monthly electric bill of €120,000 ($185,000).

Several floors of the cube-like building are filled with power sets and refrigeration machines that keep the computers running. The loudest machines are the ones with heavy flywheels, which produce a loud whine with their ceaseless rotation. If the power fails, the machines jump into action with lightning speed, feeding their energy back into the building's power grid. They provide enough power in those critical first few seconds to protect the computers before the backup power supplies and diesel generators kick in.

Impact in Numbers

While computerized devices continue to shrink, the auxiliary machinery surrounding them is constantly growing. The Leibniz Computer Center, which opened only two years ago, is already too small. The next computer will contain about 100,000 processors -- compared with the current incarnation's 9,728 -- in the same amount of space. But electricity and cooling requirements, as well as the need to supply and extract energy, will increase so substantially that the computer center will have to expand. The current cube-like structure will be transformed into an elongated rectangular block, floor space will increase by half, and power requirements will rise from two to almost eight megawatts.

"Operating costs were not as important in the past," says Hegering. "Today, it's a critical factor."

This change is not limited to the exclusive world of supercomputers. In fact, it is far more significant among ordinary PCs, as their numbers are growing so rapidly. The Internet, in particular, is responsible for consuming a growing proportion of global power production. The computer centers of network operators often contain thousands of PCs used as servers. According to surveys conducted by the market research firm IDC, between 2000 and 2005, the power consumption of network computers doubled worldwide.

PCs, which are derided in professional circles as "heat blowers," can hardly be operated in an energy-saving manner, partly because it is impossible to utilize thousands of individual computers in a computer center at the same level. In fact, most of them are chronically underutilized.

For years, no one cared. In the frenzy of the Internet boom, companies kept adding new computers, and when things got too hot in their computer rooms, they simply ordered additional cooling machines. But now that electricity prices have risen sharply, this power consumption is suddenly painfully noticeable. "Nowadays," says IDC expert Thomas Meyer, "there are 50 cents in electricity costs for every euro in the price of a server. It'll be 70 cents by 2009."