Microsoft and Samsung say 30nm ICs save energy in data centres

Microsoft's Munich-based technology centre has worked with Samsung Electronics to assess the impact of 30nm semiconductor technologies on power consumption in data centers.

A system based on Samsung's 30nm class DDR3 memory and Microsoft's data center platform were used in the system evaluation study.

Samsung's 30nm-class Green DDR3 was tested in eight gigabyte registered dual inline memory modules, installed on server systems running virtualized environments with the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system.

They delivered power conservation levels of up to a 15% for a 30W per system decrease, compared to systems using 50nm-class DDR3.

Microsoft and Samsung plan to expand their collaborative evaluation efforts that optimize 20nm-class and 30nm-class DDR3 memory and enterprise SSDs through system-level tests in virtual environments.

Detailed findings on the evaluation testing are available in a white paper posted on Microsoft's website: www.microsoft.com/germany/msdn/kontakt/mtc.mspx and Samsung's Green Memory website: www.samsung.com/GreenMemory.

"With the memory modules from Samsung, we do not only measure higher throughput and performance for our hyper-v cloud solutions but a lower power consumption of the involved server systems, too," said Frank Koch, infrastructure architect and Green IT lead of Microsoft Germany.

"In the near future, we plan to develop solutions based on our 20nm-class 4Gbit DDR3 and enterprise SSD to keep providing the greenest memory products with optimal performance," said Wanhoon Hong, executive v-p of memory sales and marketing for devices at Samsung Electronics.

Samsung's 30nm-class 2Gbit Green DDR3 memory modules can reach up to 1.866Gbit/s at 1.35 volts, while PC modules can run at up to 2.133Gbit/s (1.5 volts), which is 3.5 times faster than 60nm-class DDR2 and 1.6 times faster than 50nm-class DDR3.

The tests try to achieve a match between performance and power efficiency in data centre systems.