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Press Release: IBM Launches "High-Powered" Initiative For "Low-Power" Products And Services
Posted By Kathy Smith

Date: October 02, 2001

EPA Recognizes IBM Mainframe as Industry's First Energy-Efficient Server

Armonk, N.Y., October 1, 2001- IBM has launched a company-wide initiative to improve the energy efficiency of information technology for enterprises and consumers, establishing a worldwide low-power computing research effort to be coordinated out of its research lab in Austin, Texas.

The company also has established a low-power consulting practice and is accelerating the development of ultra-low power components and power-efficient servers, storage systems, personal computers and ThinkPad notebook computers, among others.

"Very quickly, energy and heat will go from being irritants to major product development limitations," said Mark Dean, Ph.D., IBM Fellow and vice president of systems research. "The demand for increasingly powerful systems is driving up the amount of heat within many new products. If we don't address the power issue, products will become so hot that you'll be able to cook with them rather than compute with them."

Dean has been named to coordinate the low-power initiative on a worldwide basis for IBM. He is serving as the focal point for ongoing efforts at the Austin center and other IBM research facilities as well as with IBM product groups and customers to speed high-performance, power-efficient products to market.

The new low-power consulting practice will help customers significantly lower IT energy usage. Headed by John E. Goode, IBM GlobalServices director and managing principal, the new service helps customers evaluate the power requirements of their technology infrastructures and assess cost-effective alternatives. Already, consultants from IBM Global Services' low-power practice are leveraging IBM's portfolio of leading-edge, energy-efficient technology in consolidating complex data center environments for customers.

In recent months, IBM also has announced a number of breakthroughs in high-performance, low-power chips and disk drives for enterprise and personal computing. Other significant new developments include:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized the IBM eServer z900 mainframe for its contributions to energy savings with an EPA "Certificate of Recognition." It is the first server to receive such an EPA award. According to the EPA, "IBM not only applied its semiconductor technologies such as copper wiring and silicon-on-insulator (SOI), but reinvented the mainframe to handle the unpredictable demands of e-business, allowing thousands of 'virtual servers' to operate within one box. Companies that in the past required hundreds of individual UNIX-based servers now can potentially save significant energy and dollars by using one eServer z900 to accomplish the same task." San Francisco-based Gap Inc., a leading international specialty clothing and personal care products retailer, recently purchased an eServer z900 for its energy efficiency qualities.

IBM has developed new chip design techniques to yield further power reductions. IBM believes these new techniques can lead to devices that operate on 1/10th the power of current devices. Further details will be announced at the Microprocessor Forum conference October 17 in San Jose, Calif.

"IBM is first to address energy consumption across the entire computing spectrum - from mainframes to handhelds," said Dean. "The next phase of innovation in computers and devices is to simultaneously improve performance and reduce power consumption."

The Austin Research Lab will focus on increasing the power efficiency of computer chips, servers, software and other computing systems and devices. In addition, the Austin Research Lab will serve as the catalyst and coordinator for the company-wide effort in low-power computing, which will include efforts in all of IBM's product divisions, Global Services and across its worldwide research labs.

Dean is one of IBM's top technical minds and is a member of the National Academy of Engineers and the Inventor's Hall of Fame. He holds three of the patents for the technology on which all of today's personal computers are based. More recently, he helped develop a 1,000-megahertz microprocessor. Dean earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee and his Ph.D. at Stanford University before moving to Austin as a systems architect working on IBM's PowerPC microprocessor. In 1998, he became director of the Austin Research Lab. He has been vice resident of systems research since April 2000.

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Contact

Violet Perez
IBM Media Relations, Storage Technology Division
Tel: 408-256-7607; T/L 276-7607
Fax: 408-256-4009
vperez@us.ibm.com

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