Seeking to enable side-by-side comparison between power guzzling servers

Sun Microsystems has met with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lawrence Berkeley Labs and chipmaker AMD to define a standard metric to measure the energy efficiency of servers.

The server maker likened the proposed metric to the miles per gallon standard in the US for new cars that is determined by an independent agency. It allows consumers to do a side by side fuel efficiency comparison for different makes and models.

The metric is expected to be formalised by this summer.

Sun for the past years has been touting the power consumption for its servers and workstations, as the company claims that the electricity bill is becoming an ever greater item on IT budgets.

The company last week unveiled its new SunRay 2 thin clients, which it claims consume only 5 per cent of the power that a regular desktop system uses.

The server maker also has been touting the low energy consumption for its Ultrasparc T1 processor that was unveiled last November. The chip which was formerly known as Niagra uses about 70 watts of electricity, according to company data, relative to 150-200 watts for most other server microprocessors.