Future data centres will be more efficient, but the exponential growth in data generated by people, businesses, devices and automated systems will result in more electricity being consumed by information systems, says network infrastructure company Emerson Network Power Systems chief technology officer Professor Ian Bitterlin.

Processors are more powerful and use less electricity than previous-generation processors, while information technology (IT) equipment and data centres use elec- tricity more efficiently. However, these improvements are not enough to match the growth in IT systems in all the facets of business, social and government applications, he emphasises.

“Data traffic through the Amsterdam Internet exchange is 460 TB a month and the traffic has grown at a yearly rate of 80% since 2001. Despite the growth in IT capacity, equipment has lagged far behind the growth in data volumes.

“Data cannot be moved without elec- tricity. In 2009, the world produced about 50 GB of data each second. In 2020, the expected data generated will be 500 GB each microsecond – a ten-millionfold increase,” explains Bitterlin.

The increasing efficiency of successive generations of processors and computing equipment is prompting companies to recycle their hardware every nine months to two years to take advantage of the reduced electricity use and increased processing power of the new equipment.

“This means that, for most IT hardware older than three years, the money saved using old equipment is spent on electricity consumed to process the equivalent amount of data.”

However, the cycle will stall in about five years because the photoetching technique used to create microcircuits on silicon will run into the physical barrier of the walls between the circuits being only four atoms wide. Thinner silicon walls will result in the loss of electrons.

“Yet, even this physical barrier may be overcome through using graphene to make chips. Graphene, which is a carbon allotrope, can be produced in one-atom- thick ribbons that have strong nuclear bonds, meaning that electrons cannot pass through the walls. There is only about five years left in silicon chips, but then the development cycle will start again for another 30 years,” says Bitterlin.

Further, only 30% of people in the world have Internet. Most governments have a digital agenda and the European Union, for example, aims to provide 20 Mb/s universal Internet access regardless of cost, so that even the poorest can afford Internet access, he adds.

“A four-minute YouTube video is about 17 MB in size. The average electricity consumption to move a 1 MB file across the Internet is about 0.0002 kWh. The video of ‘Gangnam Style’ by Korean rapper Psy was downloaded over 1.7-billion times, which means that the single video used about 310 GWh of power or produced about 250 000 t of carbon dioxide (CO₂).”

There is an energy limitation to technology. Data growth always outstrips the development in technology and the difference between the growth of data and technology development will be the increased energy consumed.

“Data centres generate about 2% of world CO₂, similar to what the airline industry generates. They are the factories of the digital age. Electricity goes into data centres and the resultant heat is removed. Only the use to which we subject the data centres can be considered environment friendly. Most data centres use 42% of full-load energy when idle and, on average, only about 10% capacity is in use.”

Limiting the use of digital media is difficult because of the ubiquitous and historic use of digital media in business and personal communication. There is also the possibility of using digital communication for universal education and tele- medicine.

“To meet power demand, data centres and networks must become more risk adaptive. The most efficient data centres carry full loads. Large virtualised and heavily loaded data centres can be used to distribute more noncritical information, such as for general public use, and in a cloud format.”

“Data centres must balance availability against energy efficiency. We can build reliability into the software layer,” Bitterlin concludes.

Bitterlin was a keynote speaker at power company Master Power Technologies’ Data Centre and Secure Power roadshow in July.