GreenCampus

November 13, 2009

Computers may use less electricity than they used to, but with more and more of them in campus labs, and with many students carrying their own laptops, the move to save energy is being addressed in the Department of Computer Science.

“The idea here is called a thin client approach,” said David Bocking, computer facilities manager. “With smaller, scaled down computers with no hard drive, the server is more heavily shared to optimize the server resources and greatly reduce the power requirements.”

Bocking said not only will the thin client approach save energy, it will also cut down on costs and be much easier to manage.

Although still in the experimental stage, the thin client approach will use one server for about 25 computers, drastically reducing the number of computers with moving hard drives. Each computer will be a smaller, scaled down model which talks to the server.

Currently, computer labs use standard desktop Macs or PCs, so they are standalone, fully functional computers. With about 200 machines running daily in the Department of Computer Science, the energy savings would be substantial.

If you know an initiative to make the U of S a greener campus, please email us at ocn@usask.ca.