(1/Dec) NEC Formulates "REAL IT COOL PROJECT" to Reduce

NEC Formulates "REAL IT COOL PROJECT" to Reduce Energy Consumption of Customer’s IT Platforms

Aims to achieve total reduction of 910,000 tons in CO2 emissions from IT devices by 2012
NEC Corporation announced its "REAL IT COOL PROJECT", a series of programs and activities for the development and provision of technology, products and services that will reduce the power consumption of customer IT platforms. By promoting the newly formulated REAL IT COOL PROJECT, NEC aims to cut the power consumption of customer IT platforms by 50% year on year to achieve a cumulative reduction in CO2 emissions from IT devices of approximately 910,000 tons by the year 2012.

The REAL IT COOL PROJECT covers three focus areas: (1) Energy-Saving Platforms, such as power-efficient server storage; (2) Energy-Saving Control Software that reduces power consumption by controlling the efficiency of energy-saving functions in IT devices; and an (3) Energy-Saving Facilities Service Package that streamlines the power consumption of air-conditioning and power supply units in such facilities as datacenters and machine rooms.
To embody the energy-saving technology mapped out in the REAL IT COOL PROJECT, NEC is currently developing the new 'ECO CENTER' (development code name) server. Slated for market release by the end of March, 2008, the ECO CENTER will not only reduce the number of components contained in a device through optimum packaging design, but also achieve power savings of up to 60% on conventional servers(2) by adopting the latest energy-saving technology, including semiconductor disks and highly efficient power supplies.
The REAL COOL IT PROJECT is designed to help lighten the environmental footprint of NEC customers and society as a whole by spurring on the environmentally conscious initiatives targeted by the 'REAL IT PLATFORM' vision. Unveiled by NEC last year this vision aims to deliver more flexible, secure and user-friendly IT platforms.

The details of the REAL IT COOL PROJECT are outlined below.

1. Energy-Saving Platforms
Energy savings are achieved in server storage and other hardware by incorporating virtual infrastructure and adopting energy-saving components, such as CPU, memory and disk units.

(1) ECO CENTER
NEC’s new energy-saving server, ECO CENTER, contains 500 cores in a 2-meter high, 19-inch rack mounted system that takes up no more than 75% the space of conventional servers. The ECO CENTER also reduces the power consumption of each core by up to 60% and weighs up to 60% less. In the future NEC plans to offer an ECO CENTER model suitable for power supply environments of less than 6 kilowatts per single block, as is the case in many domestic datacenters.

(2) In-house Technology for Energy-Saving Platforms
The REAL IT COOL PROJECT will roll out a series of products enhanced with new in-house technologies acquired during the development of super computers and mainframes. These will include new generation liquid cooling technology with two times the cooling performance of existing units achieved by adopting semiconductor disks and a packaging design that combines high performance with energy-saving benefits. Also being developed are highly efficient power supplies with a power conversion rate of an amazing 92% and high-voltage direct current supplies with over 300 volts of power. While integral to the new ECO CENTER server, NEC intends to use these new technologies to enhance energy-saving arrangements in all of its IT platform products, including the NX7700i enterprise server series, SIGMABLADE blade system, Express 5800 IA server series and the iStorage series.

2. Energy-Saving Control Software

Lower power consumption will be realized by the addition of functions to operational management software. These functions will enable IT devices in datacenters and machine rooms to autonomously reduce the power consumed by regulating the efficiency of energy-saving functions in server storage. Specifically, the project aims to deliver a series of functions using the platform management software,WebSAM SigmaSystemCenter, as well as the integration management software, WebSAM MCOperations. These energy-saving functions will ? limit maximum power consumption according to the operational characteristics of the system; ? more efficiently consolidate virtual machines, such as VMware (R) Infrastructure 3(3), according to operational load, and cut power to redundant servers; and ? equalize heat and improve cooling effectiveness by identifying hotspots (heat sources)in devices and better allocating tasks.

3. Energy-Saving Facilities Service Package
A facilities design and construction service package will be offered to realize energy-saving assets. This service package (to be provided by NEC Fielding) will cover all aspects of power reduction, from initial analysis of datacenter and machine room environments, to design, construction and operation of facilities.

NEC plans to improve and expand the services offered by the package over time.

A heat simulation service, which will use computers to simulate the heat generated by machine rooms and use this information to design and propose the optimum layout for IT devices and air-conditioning units, will be joined by a energy-saving monitoring and operations service that will propose the allocation of operational loads and recommend improved layouts for air-conditioners and IT devices. A series of other services will also be rollout to enhance the package benefits.

Since the Kyoto Protocol came into effect in 2005, corporate and local government initiatives to tackle the issue of global warming have attracted considerable attention. The growing possibility that reductions in CO2 emissions will be treated as management benchmarks by corporations and government bodies from next year is one such initiative raising public interest in environmentally conscious activities. At the same time, however, the progress of technology is promoting annual increases in the level of power used by IT devices as more advanced functions are added. As such there is a growing need in the marker for energy-saving measures to be applied to IT platforms.

The newly formulated REAL IT COOL PROJECT will attempt to meet the environmental and energy-saving needs of these IT platforms. NEC aims to promote the REAL IT COOL PROJECT to cut the power used by customer IT platforms by 50% year on year to realize a cumulative reduction in CO2 emissions from IT devices of approximately 910,000 tons by 2012.

NEC will continue to enhance its products and services under the REAL IT PLATFORM vision to achieve a more flexible, secure and user friendly IT environment. (1) CO2 emissions based on the assumption that NEC will increase the number of IT devices it ships at the growth rate predicted by the IDC for year 2006 – 2012, and assuming the shipped units will operate in customer environments for 5 years.

(2) Existing servers refer to NEC rack servers incorporating dual core IA servers.

(3) VMware is a trademark or registered trademark of VMware, Inc in the United States of America and all other regions of the world.