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Computer Industry Responds to EPA’s Program for Improved Energy Efficiency

October 26, 2006 by Jeff Shepard

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new Energy Star specifications for computers and related equipment. The newly issued Version 4.0 Tier 1 specification is scheduled to go into effect on July 20, 2007 (replacing the Version 3.0 Tier 2 specification that has been in effect since July 2000) and is claimed by the government to have the potential to save U.S. households and businesses nearly $2 billion in energy costs over the next five years. Under the new specifications, only the most energy-efficient computer related equipment will earn the Energy Star label, which is intended to represent the top of their class. The Energy Star qualifying computer equipment is claimed to be approximately 65% more efficient than conventional models.

Intel Corp. and other companies quickly announced that they will provide desktop and laptop products in support of the new Energy Star specifications. Intel plans to deliver microprocessors and other system components that will help enable unbranded PC and laptop suppliers to deliver Energy Star qualified systems. Specifically, Intel announced that it will work jointly with the EPA to provide the company's design expertise to assist smaller system vendors to help enable their targeted offerings to meet the specifications. A white paper that will detail a "recipe" system that vendors can follow to ensure that their computers qualify is also planned.

Rob Crooke, Vice President and Business Computing Group General Manager for Intel, stated, "Intel continues to work closely with the EPA and other worldwide organizations to develop and deliver energy-efficient technologies. The new Intel Core™ 2 Duo processors will provide the high-performance and energy-efficiency people want. The new Energy Star specification provides a meaningful step forward in identifying more energy-efficient PC's."

Dell Inc. announced its commitment to a strategy to design the most energy-efficient products in the IT industry. Michael Dell stated, "We estimate that if the energy-smart settings we've engineered into our newest OptiPlex desktop had been available on each desktop we've shipped over the past year, those customers could have saved enough electricity to power about 1.5 million U.S. homes for one year."

The company also announced two PowerEdge™ servers featuring AMD Opteron processors. The PowerEdge 6950 is claimed to consume up to 20% less power than previous generation quad-socket PowerEdge servers. The PowerEdge1435 is a dual-socket, rack-dense server optimized for high-performance compute clusters that can deliver performance-per-watt improvements of up to a claimed 138%.