Altera reckons that the semiconductor industry is a prime mover in reducing power consumption.
"US energy consumption by servers and data centre could nearly double in the next five year, or it could be halved through energy-smart technologies," said John Daane, president of Altera, adding "power consumption can be reduced in the most effective way by the use of intelligence."
Naturally he sees programmable logic as the most effective way to deliver that intelligence, but in a broader sense the semiconductor industry can make a big contribution.
Designing ICs to use less energy is one way; building fabs that us less energy is another way; designing ICs that reduce system level power consumption is a third way; and a fourth way is providing the enabling technology which allows people to save energy.
One way of doing that is to use an FPGA as a co-processor to speed up processing times in high-performance computing. In intensive maths calculations, like Black-Scholes options pricing or Monte Carlo simulations, using an FPGA co-processor can deliver power savings of 90 per cent, according to Daane.
In 3-D medical imaging the use of an FPGA co-processor can deliver 80-85 per cent power savings, he claimed.
A huge area for power saving is motor control because, said Daane: "66 per cent of the world's industrial electricity runs motors, but only five per cent use variable speed drivers. FPGAs can be used in most motor controllers because they are programmable. Many microntrollers are not flexible enough to cope with the range of motors."
Working in conjunction with consortium members, Altera has produced two boards for industrial motion and drive control called FalconEye and MotionFire. Daane reckons that motor control ICs improve energy efficiency by up to 88 per cent in industrial applications - saving the equivalent energy output of ten power stations.
Smart metering is a way in which people can be made aware of the amount of energy they are using from any particular appliance. Altera has formed a relationship with home automation specialist Echelon to implement such a system over powerlines.
"Part of the problem is ignorance, people don't know where the power is being used", said Daane, "smart metering delivers the energy-aware home. It's telling you, via the power lines, what each appliance is using in terms of power."
Communications companies have identified power-saving as a key concern. "Most telecoms companies find power consumption is their biggest spend after people and equipment", said Daane, "and if they don't get control of this, their costs will go up."
Asked if a more energy efficient base technology for FPGA could be found other than SRAM-based cells, Daane replied: "The reason SRAM dominates the industry, accounting for 99 per cent of the revenues, is that it's the lowest cost. Basic SRAM cells are the most efficient and the lowest cost."
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