White Paper - Power Management in Intel Architecture Servers

Background
A computer system requires electrical power to perform various activities, such as fetching data and application
programs, executing instructions delivered by software, displaying output results, communicating with users through
various interfaces, and interacting with other devices on the network. A study of power consumption in a data center
shows that almost 50 percent of incoming power is consumed by air-conditioning and power-delivery subsystems, even
before reaching the servers in a rack. Servers consume the remaining 50 percent, which can be further broken down into
the various elements as shown in Figure 1.
This paper begins by addressing the ~30 percent power consumed by the processors in a server, and then introduces
the concept of managing a system’s power with intelligent time-based policies. We will look at three key technologies:
Demand Based Switching (DBS), Intel® Turbo Boost Technology and Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager (NM). The
remainder of the paper is organized in different sections introducing each concept independently, their interplay in a
platform and managing a rack-level power consumption in the data center.
Processors
30%
Memory
11%
Standby
2%
Drives
6%
PCI
3%
Planar
3%
Other
44%
Fans 9%
DC/DC Losses 10%
AC/DC Losses 25%
Estimated 670W P/S
Figure 1. System averages are based on a dual-socket quad-core reference board� Actual values may vary depending on the system configuration
and manufacturer�
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White Paper: Power Management in Intel® Architecture Servers