Posts Tagged ‘Computing’
Green Computing
Green computing or green IT, refers to environmentally sustainable computing or IT. It is “the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems—such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems—efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment. Green IT also strives to achieve economic viability and improved system performance and use, while abiding by our social and ethical responsibilities. It’s resultant of global warming but actually it is ‘Desktop Warming’.
To comprehensively and effectively address the environmental impacts of computing/IT, we must adopt a holistic approach and make the entire IT lifecycle greener by addressing environmental sustainability along the following four complementary paths:
Green use — reducing the energy consumption of computers and other information systems as well as using them in an environmentally sound manner
Green disposal — refurbishing and reusing old computers and properly recycling unwanted computers and other electronic equipment
Green design — designing energy-efficient and environmentally sound components, computers, servers, cooling equipment, and data centers
Green manufacturing — manufacturing electronic components, computers, and other associated subsystems with minimal impact on the environment
Background information: The U.S Environment Protection Agency launched energy star’, a voluntary labeling program in year 1992, which is designed to promote and recognize energy-efficiency in monitors, climate control equipment, and other technologies. This resulted in the widespread adoption of sleep mode in computers and electronics popular among consumer electronics. The term “green computing” was probably introduced after the Energy Star program began; there are several USENET posts dating back to 1992 which use the term in this manner. Concurrently, the Swedish organization TCO Development launched the TCO certification program to promote low magnetic and electrical emissions from CRT-based COMPUTER DISPLAYS; this program was later expanded to include criteria on energy consumption, ergonomics, and the use of hazardous materials in construction. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published a survey of over 90 government and industry initiatives on “Green ICTs”, i.e. information and communication technologies, the environment and climate change. The report concludes that initiatives concentrate on greening ICTs rather than tackling global warming and environmental degradation through the use of ICT applications. In general, only 20% of initiatives have measurable targets, with government programmes including them more frequently than business associations.Many governmental agencies have continued to implement standards and regulations that encourage green computing. The energy star program was revised in October 2006 to include stricter efficiency requirements for computer equipment, along with a tiered ranking system for approved products. More than 26 US States that have established state-wide recycling programs for obsolete computers and consumer electronics equipment. Green Computing Impact Organisation (GCIO) is a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting the end-users of computing products in being environmentally responsible motivating community of environmentally concerned IT leaders who pool their time, resources, and buying power to educate, broaden the use, and improve the efficiency of, green computing products and services. Members work to increase the ROI of green computing products through a more thorough understanding of real measurable and sustainable savings incurred by peers; enforcing a greater drive toward efficiency of vendor products by keeping a community accounting of savings generated; and through group negotiation power.
It is becoming widely understood that the way in which we are behaving as a society is environmentally unsustainable, causing irreparable damage to our planet. Rising energy prices, together with government-imposed levies on carbon production, are increasingly impacting on the cost of doing business, making many current business practices economically unsustainable. It is becoming progressively more important for all businesses to act (and to be seen to act) in an environmentally responsible manner, both to fulfill their legal and moral obligations, but also to enhance the brand and to improve corporate image. Companies are competing in an increasingly ‘green’ market, and must avoid the real and growing financial penalties that are increasingly being levied against carbon production.
IT has a large part to play in all this. With the increasing drive towards centralized mega data centers alongside the huge growth in power hungry blade technologies in some companies, and with a shift to an equally power-hungry distributed architecture in others, the IT function of business is driving an exponential increase in demand for energy, and, along with it, is having to bear the associated cost increases.
How to Contribute in Green Computing
As computers play an ever-larger role in our lives, energy demands, costs, and waste
are escalating dramatically. Consider the following from the Climate Savers Computing
Initiative:
In a typical desktop computer, nearly half the power coming out of the wall is wasted
and never reaches the processor, memory, disks, or other components. The added heat from inefficient computers can increase the demand on air conditioners and cooling systems, making your computing equipment even more expensive to run. Even though most of today’s desktop computers are capable of automatically transitioning to a sleep or hibernate state when inactive, about 90 percent of systems have this function disabled. Some 25 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics—computers, DVD players, stereos, TVs—is consumed while the products are turned off. Turn off your computer at night so it runs only eight hours a day—you’ll reduce your energy use by 810 kWh per year and net a 67 percent annual savings. Purchase flat-screen monitors—they use significantly less energy and are not as hard on your eyes as CRTs.Purchase an Energy Star–compliant computer. Note that laptop models use much less energy than desktop units. Plug your computer into a surge protector with a master control outlet, which automatically senses when the computer is not in use and cuts power to it and all your peripherals. Plan your computer-related activities so you can do them all at once, keeping the computer off at
other times. Consider a smaller monitor—a 14-inch display uses 40 percent less energy than a 17-inch one. Enable the standby/sleep mode and power management settings on your computer. Forgo the screen saver—it doesn’t save energy or your screen unless you’re using an old monochrome monitor. Review document drafts and e-mails onscreen instead of printing them out. Power off your monitor when you are not using it instead of using screen savers. Consider using an ink-jet printer—although a bit slower than laser printers, inkjets use 80 to 90 percent less energy. Buy vegetable or non-petroleum-based inks—
they are made from renewable resources, require fewer hazardous solvents, and often
produce brighter, cleaner colors. Turn off all printers and peripherals unless you are using them. Do not leave the computer running overnight or on weekends. Choose dark backgrounds for your screen display—bright-colored displays consumer more power. Reduce the light level in your room when you are working on your computer.
Network and share printers where possible. Print on recycled-content paper. Look for non-chlorine bleached papers with 50 to 100 percent post-consumer waste. Use double-sided printing functions. E-mail communications as an alternative to paper memos and fax documents.
Create Green Machines:
Activating the power management features on your computer saves energy and money while helping the environment. Your computer’s SLEEP and HIBERNATE settings are two of the most effective ways for you to make your computer more environmentally friendly. You can activate these functions manually or through your operating system’s pre-set power management settings.
Sleep Mode
Sleep or standby mode conserves energy by cutting off power to your display, hard drive, and peripherals. After a pre-set period of inactivity, your computer switches to a low power state. When you move your mouse or press any computer key, you exit sleep mode and your computer takes you back to its previous operating state. Sleep mode is an especially effective way to conserve battery power in a laptop computer. However, if your computer loses power for any reason while in sleep mode, you may lose unsaved work.
Hibernate Mode
Hibernate mode saves energy and protects your work by copying system data to a reserved area on your hard drive and then completely turning off your computer. It also reduces wear and tear on your components. When you turn power back on, your files and your documents appear on your desktop just as you left them. Be sure to set your system to automatically go into hibernate mode any time your battery power reaches a critically low level.
Computing Meets the Physical World
Rapid changes in computing will continue for the foreseeable future.
The field of computing has always changed rapidly, and it is still doing so. The changes are driven, more than anything else, by Moore’s law. Many people think the pace of change is slowing, or even that because we already have the Internet and Google, there is not much left to do. I hope these papers will convince you that this view is entirely wrong.
For the last 50 years, new applications of computers have followed a pattern, as one manual activity after another has become automated. In the 1940s, it became possible to automate the calculation of ballistic trajectories and in the 1950s of payrolls and nuclear weapon simulations. By the 1970s, it was possible to create reasonably faithful representations of paper documents on computer screens. In the 1990s, we had the equivalent of a telephone system for data, in the form of the Internet. In the next two decades we will have embodied computers, machines that can interact with the physical world.
Hardware and Software
The factor that determines whether or not an activity can be automated is whether the hardware is up to it. According to Moore’s law, the cost performance of computers improves by a factor of 2 every 18 months, or a factor of 100 every 10 years; this applies to processing, storage, and communication. Moore’s law is not a law of physics, but it has held roughly true for several decades and seems likely to continue to hold true for at least another decade. Indeed, today some things are developing much faster than that. Storage capacity, for example, is doubling every 9 months, not every 18 months. Wide-area communication bandwidth is also improving faster than Moore’s law. Sometimes, with speech recognition and web search engines, for example, the cheaper cycles or bytes can be applied directly. Often, however, by spending more hardware resources, we can minimize programming effort; this is true for applications that use web browsers or database systems.
Hardware is the raw material of computing, but software gives it form. Our ability to write software is limited by complexity. People have been complaining about the “software crisis” at least since the early 1960s, and many people predicted in the 1960s and 1970s that software development would grind to a halt because of our inability to handle the increasing complexity of software. Needless to say, this has not happened. The software “crisis” will always be with us, however (so it isn’t really a crisis). There are three reasons for this:
As computing hardware becomes more powerful (at the rate of Moore’s law), new applications quickly become feasible, and they require new software. In other branches of engineering the pace of change is much slower.
Although it is difficult to handle complexity in software, it is much easier to handle it there than elsewhere in a system. Therefore, it is good engineering to move as much complexity as possible into software, and engineers are busily doing so.
External forces, such as physical laws, impose few limits on the application of computers. Usually the only limit is our inability to write programs. Because we have no theory of software complexity, the only way to find this limit is by trial and error, so we are bound to overreach fairly often.
A lot of software today is built from truly gigantic components: the operating system (Windows or Linux), the database (Oracle or DB2), and the browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer). These programs have 5 million to 40 million lines of code. By combining them with a little bit of new code, we can build complex applications very quickly. These new applications may use a hundred or a thousand times the hardware resources custom-built programs would use, but they can be available in three months instead of five years. Because we have plenty of hardware resources, this is a good way to use them. It is programmers and time to market that are in short supply, and customers care much more about flexibility and total cost of ownership than about the costs of raw hardware.
Another way to look at this is that today’s PC is about 10,000 times bigger and faster than the 1973 Xerox Alto, which it otherwise closely resembles (Thacker, 1988). A PC certainly doesn’t do 10,000 times as much, or do it 10,000 times faster. Where did these cycles go? Most of them went into delivering lots of features quickly, which means that first-class design had to be sacrificed. Software developers traded reductions in hardware resources for shorter time to market. A lot of cycles also went into integration (for example, universal character sets and typography, drag and drop functions, spreadsheets embedded in text documents) and compatibility with lots of different hardware and lots of old systems. Only a factor of 10 went into faster responses.
Applications
There have been three broad waves of applications for computers, about 25 years apart. Currently, the communication wave is in full flood, and the first signs of embodiment (relatively unrestrained interactions with the physical world) are starting to appear. Of course the earlier waves do not disappear, simulation continues to be an important class of applications.
Usually a computer application begins as a fairly close simulation of a manual function. After 10 or 20 years, people begin to explore how the computer can do the job in a radically different way. In business, this is called “business process reengineering.” The computer no longer does the same things as a bookkeeper; instead, it makes it possible to close a company’s books two days after a quarter ends. Boeing builds airplanes in a very different way because computers can model every mechanical detail.
The earliest computers in the 1950s were used for simulation. Simulations of nuclear weapons, astrophysics, protein folding, payrolls, project scheduling, games, and virtual realities all fall comfortably into this category.
The communication wave became apparent outside of research laboratories around 1980, and we are now in the middle of it. Today, we have e-mail, search engines, and the ability to buy airline tickets, books, movie tickets, and almost anything else online. TerraServer, gives us access to publicly available satellite telemetry of the world. The Library of Congress’ catalog is online, and you can buy any one of a million and a half books on Amazon.com. Conduct a search on Google today, and in half a second you can research a database of about 3 billion pages that is updated every two weeks – and will soon be updated in real time.
The next great wave, which is just beginning, is embodiment. Of course, computers have been used in process-control systems for a long time, but that is comparatively uninteresting (albeit of considerable economic importance). We are now seeing the first computer systems that can function effectively in the real world – computerized cars, robots, smart dust. They are still in their infancy, but the most interesting developments in computing in the next 30 years will be in this domain.
A Boston company called iRobot has just introduced what seems to be the first plausible domestic robot, a vacuum cleaner that crawls around a room in a vaguely spiral pattern, bouncing off of things (see it at www.roombavac.com). The price is 9. In fact, with only 14k bytes of ROM and 256 bytes (not kilobytes) of RAM, it’s barely a computer.
What’s Next?
In a recent paper, Jim Gray (2003) countered the widely held perception that most of the important developments in computing have already happened and that the future holds little more than refinements and cost reductions. Gray predicted that the next 50 years would be much more exciting than the last 50, both intellectually and in practical applications. Here are some of the challenges he raises.
Win the impersonation game. The classic Turing test asks whether a person sitting at a keyboard and display can distinguish between a conversation with a computer and a conversation with another person. To win, roughly speaking, a computer must able to read, write, think, and understand as well as a person. The computer will need some facility with natural language and a good deal of common sense. Anyone who has tried using natural language to interact with a computer knows that we still have a long way to go; and we don’t even know how far.
Hear, speak, and see as well as a person. Meeting this challenge will be much more difficult. Today’s best text-to-speech systems, given enough data, can do a pretty good job of simulating a person’s voice, although they still have trouble with intonation. In a quiet room, you can dictate to a computer a little faster than a person can type, at least if, like me, the person types fairly fast but makes a lot of errors. If there is any background noise, however, the computer does much worse than a person. To see as well as a person is even more difficult. People first learned to parse two-dimensional images on the retina and construct a model of a three-dimensional world so they could detect tigers in the jungle and swing from tree to tree. Today’s best systems do a fair job of recognizing buildings on a city street, but not in real time.
Answer questions about a text corpus as well as a human expert. Then add sounds and images. A computer can’t yet read and absorb Google’s 3 billion web pages and then answer questions about them in a sensible way. It can find documents where words occur or documents with a lot of other documents pointing to them, but it can’t understand content.
Be somewhere else as observer (tele-past), participant (tele-present).Videoconferencing Read the rest of this entry »
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Quantum Computing – yesterday, today, and tomorrow
Abstract
This paper digs into the fundamental issues of the slow but progressive breakthrough in embracing quantum computing and how its benefit and risk affects humanity. Drawing analysis from its probable practicality, while also exploring today’s available technology.
The aim of this idea is to observe the effectiveness of quantum computing and how it could impact on mankind tracing its history and looking into what awaits mankind in the future.
Approaching this ideal from two major perspectives that form the basis for this paper, which are where we are and where we are going consequent upon which this research of impeccable sources were predicated
The result invariably shows realistically the importance of quantum computing to all mankind when eventually fabricated in the future.
1. Introduction
Quantum computing may be coming closer to everyday use because of the discovery of a single electron’s spin in an ordinary transistor. The success, by researcher Hong Wen Jiangand colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, could lead to major advances in communications, cryptography and supercomputing. Jiang’s research reveals that an ordinary transistor, the kind used in a
Desktop PC or cell phone can be adapted for practical quantum computing. Quantum computing exploits the properties of subatomic particles and the laws of quantum mechanics. Today’s computers have bits in either a 1 or a 0 state. Qubits, however, can be in both states at the same time.
CISC is a CPU design that enables the processor to handle more complex instructions from the software at the expense of speed. All Intel processors for PCs are CISC processors. Complex instruction set computing is one of the two main types of processor design in use today. It is slowly losing popularity to RISC designs; currently all the fastest processors in the world are RISC. The most popular current CISC processor is the x86, but there are also still some 68xx, 65xx, and Z80s in use. CISC processor is designed to execute a relatively large number of different instructions, each taking a different amount of time to execute (depending on the complexity of the instruction). Contrast with RISC.
Complex Instruction-Set Computer has CPU designed with a thorough set of assembly calls, systems and smaller binaries but generally slower execution of each individual instruction.
2. CISC/RISC Speed and limitations
One important assumption in circuit design is that all circuit elements are ‘lumped’. This means that signal transmission time from one element to the other is insignificant. Meaning that the time it takes for the signal produced at one point on the circuit to transmit to the rest of the circuit is tiny compared to the times involved in circuit operation.
Electrical signals travel at the speed of light, suppose a processor works at 1GHz. that is one billion clock cycles per second, also meaning that one clock cycle goes one billionth of a second, or a nanosecond. Light travels about 30cm in a nanosecond. As a result, the size of circuitry involved at such clock speeds will be much less than 30cm, therefore, the most circuit size is 3cm. bearing in mind that the actual CPU core size is less than 1cm on a side, which is still okay, but this is just for 1 GHz.
Cases where the clock speed is increased to 100GHz, a cycle will be 0.01 nanoseconds, and signals will only transmit 3mm in this time. So, the CPU core will definitely need to be about 0.3mm in size. It will be very difficult to cram a CPU core into such a small space, which is still okay, but somewhere between 1 GHz and 100GHz, there will be a physical barrier. As smaller and smaller transistors are manufactured soon there may be physical limit as the numbers of electrons per transistors will become one and this will bring to a close to the rule of electron.
3. The benefits and capabilities of quantum computing in theory are:
Factor large integers in a time that is exponentially faster than any known classical algorithm.
Run simulations of quantum mechanics.
Break encrypted secret messages in seconds that classical computers cannot crack in a million years.
Create unbreakable encryption systems to shield national security systems, financial transactions, secure Internet transactions and other systems based on present day encryption schemes.
Advance cryptography to where messages can be sent and retrieved without encryption and without eavesdropping.
Explore large and unsorted databases that had previously been virtually impenetrable using classical computers.
Improve pharmaceutical research because a quantum computer can sift through many chemical substances and interactions in seconds.
Create fraud-proof digital signatures.
Predict weather patterns and identify causes of global warming.
Improve the precision of atomic clocks and precisely pinpoint the location of the 7,000-plus satellites floating above Earth each day.
Optimize spacecraft design.
Enhance space network communication scheduling.
Develop highly efficient algorithms for several related application domains such as scheduling, planning, pattern recognition and data compression.
4. Risks
And the risks are
Cripple national security, defences, the Internet, email systems and other systems based on encryption schemes.
Decode secret messages sent out by government employees in seconds versus the millions of years it would take a classical computer.
Break many of the cryptographic systems (e.g., RSA, DSS, LUC, Diffie-Helman) used to protect secure Web pages, encrypted mail and many other types of data.
Access bank accounts, credit card transactions, stock trades and classified information.
Break cryptographic systems such as public key ciphers or other systems used to protect secure Web pages and email on the Internet.
5. History of Quantum Computing
The idea of quantum computing was first explored in the 1970′s and early 1980′s by physicists and computer scientists like Charles GH. Bennett of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Paul A. Benioff of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, David Deutsch of the University of Oxford, and the late Richard P. Feynman of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). This idea emerged as scientists were debating the fundamental limits of computation. They realized that if technology continued to go by Moore’s Law, the continually shrinking size of circuitry packed onto silicon chips will get to a point where individual elements would be no larger than a few atoms. Then there was disagreement over the atomic scale the physical laws that rule the behaviour and properties of the circuit are inherently quantum mechanical in nature, not classical. Then came the question of whether a new type of computer could be invented based on the principles of quantum physics.
Feynman was the first to provide an answer by producing an abstract model in 1982 that demonstrated how a quantum system could be used for computations. Besides he explained how such a machine could act as a simulator for quantum physics. Meaning that, a physicist may have the ability to conduct experiments in quantum physics in a quantum mechanical computer.
In 1985, Deutsch discovered that Feynman’s claim could lead to a general purpose quantum computer and published a crucial theoretical paper illustrating that any physical process, in principle, could be moulded perfectly by a quantum computer. So, a quantum computer would have capabilities far beyond those of any traditional classical computer. Immediately after Deutsch publication, the search began.
Unfortunately, all that could be found were a few rather contrived mathematical problems, until Shor circulated in 1994 a preprint of a paper in which he set out a method for using quantum computers to crack an important problem in number theory, namely factorization. He showed how an ensemble of mathematical operations, designed specifically for a quantum computer, could be organized to enable a such a machine to factor huge numbers extremely rapidly, much faster than is possible on conventional computers. With this breakthrough, quantum computing transformed from a mere academic curiosity directly into a national and world interest.
6. Conclusion & Future Outlook
Right now, quantum computers and quantum information technology is still in its pioneering stage, and obstacles are being overcome that will provide the knowledge needed to drive quantum computers up in becoming the fastest computational machines in existence. This has not been without problems, but it’s nearing a stage now where researchers may have been equipped with tools required to assemble a computer robust enough to adequately withstand the effects of de-coherence. With Quantum hardware, we are still full of hope though, except that progress so far suggest that it will only be a matter time before the physical and practical breakthrough comes around to test Shor’s and other quantum algorithms. This breakthrough will permanently stamp out today’s modern computer. Although Quantum computation has origin is in highly specialized fields of theoretical physics; however its future undoubtedly is in the profound effect it will bring to permanently shape and improve mankind.
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References:
1. D. Deutsch, Proc. Roy. Soc. London, Ser. A 400, 97 (1985).
2. R. P. Feynman, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 467 (1982).
3. J. Preskill, “Battling Decoherence: The Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computer,” Physics Read the rest of this entry »
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Green Computing With Refurbished Laptops
We no longer live in the ‘throw away’ age of discarding products simply because they have developed a small fault or we are after the latest and greatest new model. Protecting our Earth is now a big priority for most people and businesses, therefore we are adapting our lifestyles to do everything we can to help preserve our planet for future generations. Instead of throwing a laptop in the bin simply because one of the components has failed or it is no longer considered to be up-to-date, more and more people are turning to recycling or ‘refurbishing’ as an environmentally sound option.
Recycling can be done in a number of ways, selling the laptop for spares, donating it to charities that supply third world countries or by selling it to a refurbishing company such as Eflex Computers Companies such as this will offer you money for old laptops, whether they function or not, and then refurbish them and put them back into the marketplace. The refurbishing process is carried out by professionals and incorporates the following stages.
The laptop is fully wiped of all personal data, programs, software etc and taken to a ‘blank’ state. This not only protects the previous owner from having any information stolen but also ensures the system is totally clean of any viruses or issues that could prevent it functioning properly. The hardware then undergoes rigorous testing to ensure that all of the components are functioning correctly and that they still have a good life left in them. If any of the components aren’t functioning correctly or are identified as only having a short life span left they are replaced with new parts. Fresh versions of all the software including operating system, required drivers, anti-virus programs etc are then re-installed on the laptop effectively returning it to the same state as when it was first sent out of the factory. Read the rest of this entry »
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Cloud Computing Education Taken to the Next Level
Cloud Computing Education Taken to the Next Level
There is no surprise that cloud computing education is a necessary tool for many companies and even schools. With this type of computation system that should not be confused with others such as grid computing, utility computing or autonomic computing. Even if you are not completely familiar with cloud computing, you most definitely use it on a regular basis such in computer applications like Skype. The interesting part about cloud computing is that entire systems can be set up on a renting basis. The infrastructure of your project and the access tools and applications used can be rented rather than the more commonly owned tools to get these businesses and projects running.
The Economics of Cloud Computing
With a down spiraling economy, with already cut IT budgets, cloud computing education may be the answer to many problems, especially IT financial problems. Many critics wonder if this type of computation system will really work in the long run, if it is a quick fix for a poor economy or if it will just fizzle out like other computation promises. Regardless of the suspected hype that this new system has generated, it is true that cloud computation is another form of what most people are accustomed to such as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, email systems like Hotmail, email filtering companies and even security monitoring. These are all forms of clouds computation. Read the rest of this entry »
