IBM leads Green Sigma Coalition

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 24 June 2009 04:38

Business IT - Technology

Francis Murray Jr, president and CEO of the New York State Energy and Development Authority, said "We applaud IBM's approach of sharing expertise and technology through industry collaboration with IBM's Green Sigma Coalition and other public/private partnerships.

"The coalition's goal of providing customers with a unified view of their energy, water, waste and greenhouse gas emissions to enable overall efficiency and reduce environmental impact represents a significant advancement in the market."

In related news, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) and IBM have announced plans to use excess heat from a planned supercomputer to warm Institute buildings.

IBM officials said the Aquasar water-cooled supercomputer will consist of two IBM BladeCenter servers with 22 Cell blades and 6 Intel blades, delivering peak performance of about 10 Teraflops.

Waste heat from Aquasar will be used directly to heat buildings, an arrangement invented by scientists at IBM's laboratory in Zurich. The chip-level cooling system was jointly developed by ETH and IBM.

Putting waste heat to good use should reduce ETH's overall energy consumption by up to 40 percent.

The plans call for Aquasar to begin operation in 2010.