Leaving a server on all day

[Charles Swiger]

On Jun 8, 2004, at 2:54 PM, Cordula's Web wrote:
>> AMD processors now have fairly good thermal behavior when they are
>> idle, although it obviously helps if one can enable APCI and power
>> management capabilities to either throttle down the CPU speed or even
>> go into sleep mode.
>
> What about other architectures? If you don't need x86 compat,
> perhaps CPU models in other arches have much lower consumption?

Certainly this is true of the ARM and even the Motorola 68K, as you 
mention:

> For a box that runs mainly as router, apache, postfix, cyrus, ...
> even an old MC68k would do just fine (esp. if you are limited
> by bandwidth, not CPU cycles...).

...there are a lot of people using an embedded M68K as a low-power 
applicance computing device.

> Perhaps something like Soekris boards could be useful? Has
> someone used them to build a power-saving server?

Sure.  I've got a Soekris net4801 sitting right next to me which is 
running some custom network monitoring/IDS/IPS software, and the Via 
EPIA mini-ITX form factor is another good choice for low-power 
computing.  The EPIAs seem to have slightly flaky ATA support, though.

> Anyone living in a country with exorbitant high taxes on power
> lurking here?

People here in the US got to pay for Enron and the like, sure, 
especially those in CA.

-- 
-Chuck