The U.S. data center industry is in the midst of a major growth period fueled by increasing demand for data processing and storage. As demands on data centers increase, and power usage and costs rise, the industry is looking for ways to increase efficiency. There is significant potential for energy-efficiency improvements in servers and in data centers today using methods and technologies currently available. Sustainable computing is not a hardware choice: it is a methodology. In situations where ecological concerns and business interests intersect, there is no single solution that will result in “green computing”, but a comprhensive approach toward energy efficiency can yield signifcant improvements in data center energy usage.

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David Bryan is one of the founders of Silicon Mechanics and the company’s product development visionary. He guided the development of key innovations, including its online cluster configurator, blade configurator and dynamic power calculator applications. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington.