I.T industry is doomed

EndOfGrowth · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:34 am Post subject: I.T industry is doomed

Webcast video interview which features a panel of experts including a cheif thermal architect who works for IBM and a director for AMD.The consensus seems to be that energy bills are becoming a serious headache for their clients and an "invisible crisis" is growing in data centres and server farms.

http://www.accelacast.com/programs/high_density/

your comments please

TommyJefferson · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:25 am Post subject: Re: I.T industry is doomed

pstarr · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:18 am Post subject: Re: I.T industry is doomed

Those are fancy fighting words. Hyperbole my shiny northern ass Razz

For a rugged texas country boy TommyJefferson you sure sound effete.

I'll bet you did not watch the video.

He talks about "embedded watts per $1,000 of IT/server spending." In 2000 it was 8 watts per $1,000 spending. Today it is 109 watts. The point is "if I spend the same amount of money on IT hardware today it is going to embed in it 14 times more power." And he points out no company spend less each year on IT.

And notes that "rack of equipment has gone from 1.5 kilowatts 6 years ago to 4.5 kilowatts three years ago to 15 kilowatts today" Google now builds it's data centers next to hydro plants for cheap power. But this is not the critical issue.

The critical issue is they are outgrowing their data centers. Will the capital be there to expand? The site cost now exceeds the server cost?
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EndOfGrowth · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:46 am Post subject: Re: I.T industry is doomed

steam_cannon · Expert Joined: Dec 28, 2006 Posts: 2425 Location: MA

A few years ago I did a cost analysis for a large server/desktop installation. Besides service and hardware costs I also factored in electricity and cooling. But as these costs were so low at the time people thought I was being a little too thorough. It looks like times are changing...

And yes it's true IT has a lot of things against it. When some code and documentation is written for a large project, like overhauling an offices data systems, when done that project may not need any serious work for the next 10 years. This phenomena meant there was a great need for IT and now their's not such a boom. But I think as long as industry is still rolling demand in this area will even out only because so many people are reaching retirement age.

Regarding the future of computers in general, I think a lot of coal will be burnt to entertain people with gadgets. But people telecommuting will not happen much as it doesn't work well and where it does work, outsourcing works better. And when we see a big shake up like Cuba had when their oil got cut off, FT (Farming Technology) will probably be a lot more employable. But in the short term Telecommuting may gain some popularity.

And for the near future, as long as cars and industry are still rolling, we will see a big move toward efficiency. Low power servers, low power chips... I suspect that if the stock market doesn't crash in the next few years, companies like Transmeta will actually gain some stock value. Personally, I wouldn't recommend the stock market right now, but this is what energy costs should do to the server and chip manufacturing market in the future.

"Transmeta develops and licenses efficient computing technologies..."
So far their stock has turned to junk even with the dollar losing 30% of it's value, plus hidden huge relative losses against real commodities such as oil or gold... They look like a very bad investment, but amusingly I wonder if as efficiency becomes vital to industry it's possible their performance might turn around for a couple years.

Four reasons to cultivate greener IT
"One of the biggest culprits: cooling costs for the datacenter. In fact, by 2010 IDC predicts that companies will be spending an additional 70 cents per dollar invested in a new server. That's up from 50 cents on the dollar in 2005 and 21 cents per buck in 2000. You'll certainly want to prepare as those costs creep up."
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/07/16/29FEgreenreasons_1.html

Ignore the data-center power crisis?
"Under the weight of these three factors-- quadrupling power consumption, double the number of servers, and the increasing cost of electricity -- they've all compounded and lead to a situation where expenditures for power and cooling has become a significant force to reckon with"
http://weblog.infoworld.com/sustainableit/archives/2007/04/ignore_the_data.html

pstarr · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:00 am Post subject: Re: I.T industry is doomed

I've seen this coming for a long time. Servers everywhere are strained under the sweaty groaning load of Sis and Junior's Youtube creations. Response time is way down from a year ago. I imagine we'll be grateful just for text-based emails on a sub-dialup service.
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JoeW · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:31 am Post subject: Re: I.T industry is doomed

I work in IT at an electric utility. Do you think they really care how many servers they add and how much power they use?

steam_cannon · Expert Joined: Dec 28, 2006 Posts: 2425 Location: MA

steam_cannon · Expert Joined: Dec 28, 2006 Posts: 2425 Location: MA

JoeW · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:12 pm Post subject: Re: I.T industry is doomed

seldom_seen · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Apr 12, 2005 Posts: 1950

I was working on a project in a state of the art data center in San Jose. The huge facility was about 50% full of servers.

That was it though. Their power was tapped out and they didn't know when they would get anymore.

MattSavinar · Elite Joined: May 09, 2004 Posts: 1990

pstarr · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:52 pm Post subject: Re: I.T industry is doomed

cube · Fusion Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 3386

Tyler_JC · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:59 pm Post subject: Re: I.T industry is doomed