FEATURE
PUTTING IN
PLACE THE RIGHT
PROCESSING
HARDWARE
SUCH AS GPU,
SMARTNICS, OR
EVEN AN FPGA
COULD HELP
TO ACHIEVE
BETTER COMPUTE
RESULTS AND
UTILISE LESS
POWER IN THE
PROCESS.
the future helps to reduce the amount of
energy used.
Another way of operating more
sustainably is to simply utilise more
energy-efficient network, server and
storage equipment as these require less
energy initially. These also tend to be more
powerful and as such, results in fewer
resources required to run the same or
greater workloads.
Making operations greener
As technology improves, we are no
longer seeing Moors law in action –
our processors are not suddenly more
powerful, but they are half the size. In my
role, this means I must consider various
ways to maintain the momentum of green
operations. It requires a multifaceted
approach looking at hardware, software
and optimisation.
An example of this approach is storage.
Utilising newer drives that allow for
more terabytes but use less disk reduces
the hardware requirement. The storage
operating system also plays a key
role – if the storage efficiencies can be
increased release on release, we can
store more on less.
36 Issue 15
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