Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread David Lyon 
On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 1:57 PM, Michael Chesterton  wrote:

> Its primary goal is safety though, not efficiency.
>
> I want to add a linux angle, but can't think of one.
>
>
The powers-that-be-here don't even want you to know what can
actually be achieved with Linux.

In Tokyo they have a crazy robot train (crazy for a sydney person) that
runs into town and back. Anyway, you can sit where the driver would
normally be.

It's fully automated, and therefore, without doubt consumes less power
than having a human being driving the train. I say this because an
industrial pc having about 5w energy consumption.

No metal is needed for the drivers compartment, or aircon, so there's
definitely an energy saving there.

The trains use a Linux RTOS like QNX. Which is very popular over there.

The Japanese systems are very safe. They look at it the other way
around in that when there are deaths, it's caused by human error. Not
the machines. I tend to agree with their perspective.

The issue is about Jobs. The Japanese don't mind having 10x Linux
Engineers in preference to 10x Train Drivers.

In Sydney, sadly, they seemingly would prefer to have 10x train drivers and
less Linux Engineers than have the balance the other way around.

The assertion is that Linux Engineers are dangerous and train-drivers
and people that ride bicycles are not. We have to accept our backwards
looking leaders. That's just how it is.
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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Marghanita da Cruz 

Michael Chesterton wrote:


Sydney trains have been planning to computerise since the waterfall
accident. There will be constant monitoring of speed and position and
overrides if something goes out of whack, too fast, too close, or whatever.
Its primary goal is safety though, not efficiency.

I want to add a linux angle, but can't think of one.



Maybe Rocrail?

Rocrail is an Innovative Model Railroad Control System that runs on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows. Written in C/C++, it is based on the wxwidgets.org_images_blocks2.jpgwxWidgets class library, and is Open Source. 



But more seriously, you didn't try hard enough!
UC-8481 - New! RISC-based mobile Linux computer with cellular, Wi-Fi, and GPS modules, 2 Ethernet, 2 serial, 2 USB 2.0 ports, & 2 mini PCIe sockets 



Marghanita
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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Michael Chesterton 
On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 12:43 PM, David Lyon <
david.lyon.preissh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In fact, if anything, Sydney/NSW Governments are more adverse
> to automation and programming than other countries (say the US,
> Japan, Europe) and simply won't entertain having computer operated
> systems such as trains, cars and other things like that. Perhaps
> on the grounds that having such systems do use too much power.
>
> When in fact, precisely the reverse is true..


Sydney trains have been planning to computerise since the waterfall
accident. There will be constant monitoring of speed and position and
overrides if something goes out of whack, too fast, too close, or whatever.
Its primary goal is safety though, not efficiency.

I want to add a linux angle, but can't think of one.

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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Marghanita da Cruz 

James Linder wrote:


(laptop power 10w to 50w (say), efficiency of charger (say) 70%, efficiency of 
batteries (say) 70%)

what is worse: toxic chemicals from landfill, or toxic chemicals from power 
generation using coal ...
(most fish in the USA have mercury, that is largely from coal fired electricity)

in the gaming world it is "your move"


There is also the impact of mining for Lithium and Tantalum for Batteries
and Capacitors - which we aren't recycling enough


Marghanita
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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread James Linder 

On 19/10/2012, at 7:47 AM, slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote:

>> In the last few days, I've been reading studies showing that
>> average power consumption of a PC is about 12W. Which
>> is not incredibly high.
> 
> Makes me wonder how much I’m killing the planet with the 700W power
> supply in my PC.

Jeremy the size of your power supply is pretty irrelevant (to your power 
consumption, ie amount of power wasted by virtue of it being available)
What does count is *what you use*
so ... lots of disks ... old cpu (that uses lots of power) ... machine working 
hard ... GRAPHICS CARDS (fancy cards use lots of power)
and cards that do not throttle back when not being used is/are significant.

All sensible stuff. So dont have fancy graphics in your 24/7 box. Use the 
wheelie bin for old disks (you can feel - they are the one's that get hot) .

Anyone who thinks that charging their lappie off peak is not an engineer who 
understands the laws of thermodynamics:

You cant win
You can't break even
You can't get out of the system

(laptop power 10w to 50w (say), efficiency of charger (say) 70%, efficiency of 
batteries (say) 70%)

what is worse: toxic chemicals from landfill, or toxic chemicals from power 
generation using coal ...
(most fish in the USA have mercury, that is largely from coal fired electricity)

in the gaming world it is "your move"
James


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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Marghanita da Cruz 

Tom Worthington wrote:

See the chapter "Energy saving - Data Centres and Client Equipment" in 
my book "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon 
Future": http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/saving.shtml


> Low-energy equipment: Select low energy component and equipment, such as 
processors, monitors, power supplies, RAM, flash memory and hard disks.



The energy use of the entire configuration as well
as the components needs to be considered.

My mantra is upsize the RAM!!! downsize the CPUs!

Marghanita
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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Marghanita da Cruz 

David Lyon wrote:


In any case just because it is rated at 700W doesn't mean that the
computer is using 700W.



Unfortunately, when it comes to power generation, it is the peak load that
needs to be catered for.

So, if on a hot day, you do a CPU hungry simulation or compile, which
causes your computer to increase its power intake and the heat it generates,
which  increases the demand on the air conditioning
and this happens all over Sydney...then we have to decide, whether something
gives or we build an even bigger power station.

Unless ofcourse, on hot days we can have the confidence or agree to rely
on an increase in Solar Energy generation to meet the peak demand.

Alternatively, we could build old fashioned fuses into our electrical circuits
to limit peak demand.


Marghanita
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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread David Lyon 
On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Jeremy Visser  wrote:

> Makes me wonder how much I’m killing the planet with the 700W power
> supply in my PC.
>

You won't kill the planet, on account of it having an iron core. Don't
worry.

You'd need thousands of megawatts (at least) for your power-supply
to damage the planet. You can read here to see where 700w fits into
the orders of energy magnitude scale:

 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28energy%29

In any case just because it is rated at 700W doesn't mean that the
computer is using 700W.

btw, 700W is about 1hp, which is the power output of a fit human
running at full speed. Or, using a metal demolition hammer to hit
the ground as hard as you can. Can't do to much damage to the
planet with a hammer like that - lol.
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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Mark Walkom 
On 19 October 2012 10:09,  wrote:

> Not many people are aware, but I was surprised, after discussing with some
> engineers a few years ago, that the physical vibrations of equipment in
> their racks can actually cause power increases and performance issues
> purely as a result of the vibrations interfering with disk seek times and
> so on. The sympathetic vibrations of the disk and media is actually
> perceptible when tests are run. As the vibrations are constant, this will
> affect the way the heads on the disk access the data. When the vibrations
> were suppressed, disk seeks improved commensurately and a noted decrease in
> power consumption and response time was noted.
>

Reminds me of this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread grove 
Not many people are aware, but I was surprised, after discussing with some engineers a few years ago, 
that the physical vibrations of equipment in their racks can actually cause power increases 
and performance issues purely as a result of the vibrations interfering with disk seek times 
and so on. The sympathetic vibrations of the disk and media is actually perceptible 
when tests are run. As the vibrations are constant, this will affect the way the heads on the 
disk access the data. When the vibrations were suppressed, disk seeks improved commensurately and a noted decrease in power consumption and response time was noted.


Multiply these factors when taking large SAN based media stores into 
consideration
and then it is clear that careful setup of servers and storage in their racks can actually 
improve performance and reduce power loads a lot mre than you would expect


And, so I do not appear to be coming from this angle as a Jonesian fact maker, 
here is some research to back it up!

http://www.dbms2.com/2010/05/08/disk-vibration-data-warehouse-performance-problem/

It is just as amazing to me, as when an engineer demonstrated SCSI reflections by 
bending a cable beyond a certain limit, whereupon all data transmission ceased.  The waveform
of the electonic stream had a period that meant it could not "bend" around the pathway made by the cable and the data just stopped moving.    I find things like this amazing because it is like 
observing some kinds of weird "quantum" behaviour you would not expect, manifesting 
in the physical world.



rachel

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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Tom Worthington 

On 18/10/12 10:02, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:


Has anyone done any work/know of any research on the effect of Tuning ICT
systems and direct energy use/indirect energy use ...


See the chapter "Energy saving - Data Centres and Client Equipment" in 
my book "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon 
Future": http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/saving.shtml



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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Jake Anderson 

just because you have a 700w psu doesn't mean you will be using 700w.
The actual load from the cpu/gpu/hdds etc combined with the efficiency 
of the power supply gives you the at the wall consumption.
Most "office" machines will pull ~60-100W depending on cpu vintage and 
work load.

gaming machine in full swing 300W+

If you want to save some power get a psu rated for efficiency
80+ bronze is a good place to start.

Also keep in mind that a 700W psu running with 50W load will be quite 
inefficient, you could be pulling 100W from the wall and burning 50 just 
heating up the psu.


My I3 tv computer pulls ~30-40W with 4HDDs,nvidia 260 gpu and a SSD in 
it, up to around 50W with all the drives spinning.
I put that together with some mind toward power consumption but not 
going nuts.


My mothers tv computer, dual core atom with 1x 2Tb hdd and onboard 9400M 
pulls 28-30W.


I don't know who is saying desktop pc's are pulling 12W but I haven't 
seen a system that will pull that from the wall outside a laptop.




On 18/10/12 20:51, Jeremy Visser wrote:

On 18/10/12 10:58, David Lyon wrote:

In the last few days, I've been reading studies showing that
average power consumption of a PC is about 12W. Which
is not incredibly high.

Makes me wonder how much I’m killing the planet with the 700W power
supply in my PC.



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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Mark Walkom 
That's a max rating, if you are running s PSU with high efficiency and low
voltage hardware (eg slower CPU/RAM, SSD), then you will be a lot better
off than owning a dual GPU, i7 gaming beast.

On 18 October 2012 20:51, Jeremy Visser  wrote:

> On 18/10/12 10:58, David Lyon wrote:
> > In the last few days, I've been reading studies showing that
> > average power consumption of a PC is about 12W. Which
> > is not incredibly high.
>
> Makes me wonder how much I’m killing the planet with the 700W power
> supply in my PC.
>
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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Jeremy Visser 
On 18/10/12 10:58, David Lyon wrote:
> In the last few days, I've been reading studies showing that
> average power consumption of a PC is about 12W. Which
> is not incredibly high.

Makes me wonder how much I’m killing the planet with the 700W power
supply in my PC.

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Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles andResponsibilities)

2012-10-18 Thread Marghanita da Cruz 

David wrote:

On 18/10/12 11:18, David Lyon wrote:

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 11:14 AM,  wrote:

What does 12W translate to in $ terms for 12 months use, knowing that 
most

PC's are not switched off at work.


That seem low. However, 12W adds up.

I generally use a laptop and external monitor (with separate power source).
which raises the idea of charging at offpeak (reducing demand for power
generation - or perhaps for effectively dealing with spikes from
Wind/Solar Power or where power is unreliable.



I assume that the screen is most of the cost for electricity.



Here's a link that I find by google:

  - http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html



I did some very rough numbers using this guy's site... it seems like I 
need to turn the lights off more! I think you get better savings by 
going to LED light bulbs.


LED Lighting should be a high priority and there is some very rapid
evolution happening in that space. I have been gathering info into a guide at


Marghanita
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