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It is interesting to see the recent commentary regarding the environmental effects of Cloud Computing, and I’m happy to see the dialog coming while the industry is still in its infancy.  If only the same could have happened with the automotive industry - what a different world we’d live in today!

As Reuven Cohen (CTO of Enomaly, a Cloud provider) writes,

“The general consensus says that reducing the number of hardware components and replacing them with remote cloud computing systems reduces energy costs for running hardware and cooling as well as reduces your carbon foot print while higher DC consolidation / optimization will conserve energy.”

But as Mr. Cohen and James Urquhart (Product Marketing Manager, Cloud Computing and Virtualized Data Centers at Cisco) agree - there is no proof.  There is no standard measurement or parameter that everyone agrees indicates that the net result is better or worse for the environment.  And so for now we’re really discussing the hypothetical and using deduction to point us in the right direction.

One point we can all agree on - as a civilization, we’re doing more computational work now than ever before.  Of course, this will only continue to grow, and exponentially. 

Think about the rate of increase in the number of people performing some sort of computation (for example, the 300+ million members of Facebook all uploading photographs and playing Mafia Wars) and the rate of increase in the amount of data to be manipulated (consider a 5 megapixel camera built into everyone’s phone, or everyone watching Avatar in HD on Hulu).  All the while, in the cloud, processors will be running algorithms to deliver the experience while constantly making adjustments as they dynamically navigate the trade-off between data size, connection speed, and client performance (processor and screen resolution).

The question is, are we more environmentally friendly doing all of this in a shared Cloud or on our own datacenters?

Mr. Urquhart’s reasoning takes us in a positive direction,

“I believe one thing to be true: the increased efficiency of the hardware components in most cloud data centers and the increased utilization of these components mean that we are almost certainly doing more work per unit of energy consumed than before.”

But on the face of it, I can only agree with part of this.  Indeed, greater efficiency built into the hardware is a good thing for the environment - the lower the power consumed and the greater the amount of work done per clock tick of the processor is good.  However, greater utilization of that hardware due to virtualization could take us in the opposite direction with respect to the environment.

Firstly, (as both Mr. Urquhart and Cohen agree) the more compute cycles available, the more we’ll use.  It’s what we do.  Therefore, increased utilization due to virtualization will actually increase energy consumption and impact the environment negatively in absolute terms.

But more subtly, how the compute power is delivered is actually more important in comparing a datacenter to a virtualized cloud.  Virtualization improves utilization, but does it improve system energy efficiency over the same workload?

Whether the hardware is virtualized or not - the processor still needs to tick.  In fact, through virtualization, the processor needs to work harder with more fetches from cache, DRAM, or the hard drive to deliver the same calculated result to the end user.  And so, on the face of it, greater utilization due to virtualization actually impacts the environment negatively…for now.

We need to go back to the hardware to turn this around.  Virtualized servers drive the high-end of the processor lines of the physical servers that support them.  The increased demands of compute power per square millimeter of the processor and parallelization/efficiency within them will drive overall energy efficiency of the system in the right direction.

One additional point to consider is data distribution.  The power it takes to deliver the compute power from the cloud/data center to the remote user has an impact.  A centralized cloud vs multiple distributed datacenters (from different service vendors) and their proximity to the users needs to be added into the equation.  If we’re talking about consumer services sharing a cloud, the impact of centralization will be significant and detrimental.  However, corporations using their own local datacenters on-site are much more energy efficient in data transport energy costs.

Clearly, the calculation is not straight forward, and when all’s said and done, it may only be interesting from an academic perspective.

Fortunately for all of us, being green is considered by many to be a tier one value proposition during the purchase process of equipment and services.  This demand will get baked into the product definition process and we’ll all move in the right direction.  One point that is without argument however - it’s a heck of a lot greener to work remotely on a cloud or datacenter, than either shipping CDROMs or getting on a plane and working on-site.

Posted under industry

The realities of the new economy are upon us.  Finance pundits are no longer debating if the “R word” is an appropriate descriptor, but when it actually started.

In bringing the electronic design industry together, the Xuropa Platform was envisioned to address a number of issues.  The most timely one is costs.  How do you reduce costs using Xuropa?

Reduce Travel Budgets: Use Xuropa Online Labs

Electronic design tools are extremely complex and sophisticated pieces of software.  Educating potential users of your tools can take time and several costly trips (long gone are the days when all of your users were in Silicon Valley).  The process looks something like this:

1. Introductory presentation
2. In-depth technical presentation
3. Demonstration
4. Demonstration to a larger team
5. Training
6. Installation and evaluation
7. Probably more training to a larger team

Sometimes these steps iterate through the same design team.  Alternatively the wider audience to be brought in is at a different location requiring a different on-site visit.

To keep things simple, let’s say everything went smoothly and only 4 different visits were needed.  There are two employees (applications engineer and a business person at minimum) over 4 trips lasting five nights each.  (You’d want to make it a week long trip and meet with other potential users.)  We’ll use flights from San Francisco to Frankfurt as representative and not include any intra-European flights to keep it simple.

Looking at an economy class trip (I used Kayak and took almost the cheapest of everything) including hotel room, flights, rental car, minimum per diem and the cost of your two employees’ time.  The cost to the company is $32,815.  (Nearly a third of this cost is direct expenses, the rest is hidden in salary broken down to an hourly rate.  There were no executives on this trip by the way.)

These costs quickly get out of control once we consider how disaggregated our industry now is.  For example, a single SoC design team can have locations on three different continents and all need to be brought into the decision making process and be trained.

Hidden Costs and Challenges

Unfortunately it’s not always even this simple though.  There’s the opportunity cost of these trips.  Choosing between which users to see and also choosing between the support of existing users and bringing in new ones.  These are tough decisions, especially for small to medium-sized companies.  Unfortunately, the impacts of these decisions are not seen until well after the fact.

The Solution: Xuropa Online Labs

At some point your team will get on a plane and meet with users.  It has to happen.  However, the objectives of the Xuropa Online Labs are to ensure the following:

• Only absolutely necessary trips are made and you have data to decide which
• Your users are as educated as possible before you step on a plane
• Your team is focused on the right users at the right time
• Your team is leveraged across multiple teams from their desk - not spending most of their productive time in the air or in hotel rooms

How to Use Xuropa Online Labs

A Xuropa Online Lab provides an interactive environment where users and applications engineers can collaborate and communicate to accelerate the early stages of the education process.

• Online presentations, flash demonstrations, videos and technical collateral
• Online interactive demonstration
• Online interactive training
• Online self-driven training
• Online self-driven pre-evaluation
• On-site installation and training for evaluation

All of the online education work is using your tool in a secure environment.  The user does not make any downloads, there’s no configuration and no setup required.  It’s ready to go when they are.

Crucially, a key aspect of the process is to provide all of this within the same controlled and secure environment that is easily managed and maintained.

Conclusion

The Xuropa Online Lab enables your application engineering team to support and educate in parallel multiple new prospective users independent of geography or time zone.

A key aspect of the process is the ability of new users to learn about your technology on their own time independent of your applications engineers.

And crucially, this is how a Xuropa Online Lab can reduce those 4 trips down to one very productive one with a high probability of success.  Xuropa saves you money and saves you time.

Posted under Features, business