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According to a recent study released by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL), enterprise data center servers—including the mega-computers that power the Internet and those used to house financial institution customer data—consumed approximately 123 billion kilowatt-hours of power worldwide in 2005.
The portion of power attributed to the memory modules used in those servers is estimated to be around 25 billion kilowatt-hours, according to memory manufacturer Micron Technology.
And in light of the energy-devouring tendencies of modern servers, Micron on Wednesday introduced its new Aspen memory family of energy-efficient products, including new low-voltage DDR2 DRAM memory modules.
The modules are specifically designed to lower server power consumption with no loss in performance, according to Brian Shirley, vice president of Microns memory group. The company also plans to eventually expand its Aspen memory product family by adding new memory modules for laptops as well.
Microns current DDR2 DRAMs for servers claim to save up to 24 percent in overall power—or about six billion kilowatt-hours—yet its still unclear if these products will be implemented in the short term as the parts are not yet JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council)-compliant and lack third-party chipset support.