Energy efficiency, its benefits and methods to close the efficiency gap

In an age when the fuel shortage, global warming, and reduction of carbon footprint are becoming urgent issues, it is important that all appliances, equipments and other heavy usage machinery operate as efficiently as possible. It is for this reason that power technology is becoming an important field of specialization as most of the heavy machinery operates on AC or DC electrical power. Various energy efficiency initiatives such as green grid initiative by data center operators, climate saver computing initiative (CSCI) by electronic equipment manufacturers, and efforts by large corporations to reduce the consumption of energy are becoming the topic of intense debate. Many corporations are announcing energy saving methods not only for the equipments but also for their facilities under the banner of "Going Green." It is not GHz processors or TB of storage which is the hot topic of conversation among technology experts all over the world but tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. Not long time back, every expert in the industry was designing electronic equipment for the best performance from the processors, memory and I/O devices, energy consumption was not the issue. That era is behind us, and the new industry Mantra is "Go Green". Today this requirement is not being imposed by EPA or DOE or by any agency but by the customers. Every customer wants to know the exact energy consumed by a system he is buying. The marketing folks are flooded with the request to provide the actual load profile in addition to the efficiency from 20 % to 100% of the load. The power supply designers are being asked to improve efficiency as high as the technology will permit. The things have changed so much in the last few months that power efficiency has become the top priority instead of the cost. What has changed in such a short time? One, the processor and memory power demand has overwhelmed the system to a point that it is hard to be cooled by air cooling. Not only it could not be cooled, the energy cost is almost reaching 30% of the cost of the infrastructure. There is a message here - "Either solve the customer problem by efficient systems or lose the business.