A book I just remembered as a good read is Small is Beautiful.  It seems appropriate given these economic times and the focus on sustainability and green.

In the first chapter, "The Problem of Production", Schumacher argues that the modern economy is unsustainable. Natural resources (like fossil fuels), are treated as expendable income, when in fact they should be treated as capital, since they are not renewable, and thus subject to eventual depletion. He further argues that nature's resistance to pollution is limited as well. He concludes that government effort must be concentrated on sustainable development, because relatively minor improvements, for example, technology transfer to Third Worldcountries, will not solve the underlying problem of an unsustainable economy.

Schumacher's philosophy is one of "enoughness," appreciating both human needs, limitations and appropriate use of technology. It grew out of his study of village-based economics, which he later termed "Buddhist economics," which is the subject of the book's fourth chapter.

He faults conventional economic thinking for failing to consider the most appropriate scale for an activity, blasts notions that "growth is good," and that "bigger is better," and questions the appropriateness of using mass production in developing countries, promoting instead "production by the masses." Schumacher was one of the first economists to question the appropriateness of using GNP to measure human well being, emphasizing that "the aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well being with the minimum amount of consumption."

Continunig the theme GigaOm just posted on Netbooks and Smartphones on the power of small devices.

Smartphones and Netbooks: Closer Than Kissing Cousins

Stacey Higginbotham | Monday, February 23, 2009 | 3:13 PM PT | 2 comments

You know how you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover? Well, when it comes to smartphones and netbooks, a semiconductor research firm is predicting that in fact the cover — or rather, the device casing — may soon be one of the only ways to tell the two apart. Portelligent has analyzed the silicon guts of some of the latest generation of netbooks and smartphones, and concluded that they’re becoming more alike — something that should come as no surprise to our readers.

EETimes reports that the cost and amount of silicon inside both types of portable devices are getting closer, and that the only remaining distinctions between the two can be found in the form factor and power consumption (I would add voice to that). But as firms like Nvidia and Texas Instruments get their powerful, yet power-sipping ARM-based application processors into mobile Internet devices and netbooks, the power consumption difference could disappear. Especially if OEMs choose those processors over Intel’s Atom.

Rackable has their Microslice server in the server space.

Let's Get Physical

We recently announced MicroSlice^TM, an architecture we envisage to have a very long life, and our first MicroSlice-enabled products, the CloudRack^TM TR1000 tray and the C1002 server.

The strategy behind MicroSlice is very simple.  There is a large class of enterprise workloads that do not require expensive virtualization software and expensive data center server features.  Rackable found a path to provide the benefits of virtualization and data center features without all the cost. We were able to remove so much cost while maintaining the critical features that the result is a sub-$500 server price for many base configurations.

Rackable designed MicroSlice with the following workloads in mind: web mid-tiers, SaaS applications, Cloud Computing, lightweight applications, internet servers, and file/print applications.  MicroSlice supports Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Red Hat, SUSE, CentOS, and Apache.

We made many crucial design choices.  First, MicroSlice uses MiniATX and MiniITX motherboards with critical enterprise features, such as remote management and ECC memory support (aka make it small, but perfectly formed).  This lowers cost and increases density (260 servers per cabinet, over 1,000 usable cores).  Second, it leverages proven energy efficiency and high performance CPU technology that will be reliable in demanding data center environments (AMD Athlon and Phenom).  Third, we stay true to our mission of integrating industry standard memory DRAM and enterprise class SAS and SATA drives (and desktop drives if you choose).  Finally, MicroSlice is operational within traditional cabinets (C1002 half depth, 1U, up to 2 drives) and our new CloudRack (TR1000 full depth, 1U, up to 8 drives), thus providing investment protection for customers who have invested in our cabinet-level solutions.  Please see the TR1000 and the C1002 below:

Small is Beautiful in more scenarios.

I found this post on Intel’s Software Blogs.

Atom processors in your ultra mobile... server?!

By Jeff Moriarty (Intel) (26 posts) on September 11, 2008 at 10:14 am

Not sure how I missed this at the time, but The Register reports UK hosting company Bytemark is using Atom processors in their servers.

Huh?  Servers?

I was initially pretty amused by this, but given that a search of "green data center" on The Google returns 22 million hits I guess I shouldn't have been.  Power consumption and cooling is a huge problem for data centers, and with the growth of grid computing Atom might be an interesting alternative.  It also might be a great opportunity for developers to design data center applications specifically for low power chips like Atom.

There are already some good thoughts on this topic on both sides on the Register site.  What do you think?  Could Atom enter the data center, or is it just not practical?

Where Intel is missing the opportunity is at home for geek’s who want to run servers. The opportunity for the Intel Atom is not in the data center, but in areas where performance per watt is not the issue, but total power consumed for an always on server.

Newegg has a couple of barebones systems that you can use to build Intel Atom Servers.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101076

Shuttle X27 Intel 945GC 1 x 240Pin Intel GMA 950 Black & Silver Barebone - Retail

Small and quiet

Reviewed By: MattK on 9/26/2008

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: I bought this mini system for use as a network USB hub. Since the system will be on all the time and in a main room of the house, this good looking, low power, quiet computer fits the bill. Onboard gigabit ethernet is also a huge plus.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032

MSI Wind PC Intel 945GC 1 x 200Pin Intel GMA 950 Black Barebone - Retail

(limit 1 per customer) 

Windows Home Server

Pros: Low power consumption, easy construction, ultra-quiet, ultra-small. I installed MS Windows Home Server on it with zero problems. No need for SATA controller drivers. I'm guessing the MSI board is running SATA in IDE emulation mode. I was able to use the driver CD that came with the Wind to get all the necessary devices running in Windows Home Server.
Cons: Only one hard drive bay available.
Other Thoughts: I built a Microsoft Windows Home Server usnig this barebones PC and I'm happy with it. Note that I'm ONLY using the WHS for backups. If you are going to store data on it, it'd be best to add a second hard drive (for WHS redundancy) or to keep ongoing backups of the WHS Shared Folders. Unfortunately, there's no ROOM for a second hard drive (unless you want to pull the DVD drive and make system recovery a bit messier), so the MSI Wind is NOT a a good box for a full-service home server.

I am getting a lot of hits looking for an Intel Atom Server. Here are a couple of alternatives using ARM or Power PC chip. I found this company in Toby Velte's Green IT book.

Here is some information on Excito's Bubba Server.

Bubba® – The Mini Server

Comfort and control!

All you want from a full-size PC you get from our mini-sized Bubba server, designed to fit your home better than an always running PC. With Bubbaserver you get a product in a small form factor but still fully featured:

• Torrent downloader: Turn off your computer and relax! Let Bubbadownload your large files instead of leaving your PC on all the time. Bubba also handles HTTP and FTP downloads.
• File server: Allows you to access all your files from work or school at all times. Time to live life smarter and forget about USB memories and other portable media.
• Easyfind service: Access your BUBBA with <choose a name>.bubbaserver.com, from anywhere in the world. (BUBBA|TWO only)
• Streaming media server: Put your MP3 collection in the 'music' folder on Bubba, and all your music will be instantly available to all ITunes compatible (DAAP), or UPnP compatible players. Squeezebox support coming soon.
• Router: Use Bubba as a router and firewall for maximum security (BUBBA|TWO only).
• Web, e-mail and FTP server: Fully featured server functionality allows you to turn off your PC.

All this and more for less than 13 watts.