Thin client computing saves millions

Irish businesses could save EUR8.6 million in electricity bills and slash CO2 emissions by 36 000 tons a year if they switched from PCs to thin client network computers, according to new research, says Silicon Republic.

Researchers from the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute in Germany conducted a study on an estimate of 750 000 business desktop PCs in operation around Ireland and compared their performance with thin client devices from IGEL Technology.

"Energy consumption when in operation was up to 50% lower than for conventional PCs," concluded Dr Hartmut Pflaum, the Fraunhofer researcher.

Don`t call it "client/server", says Info World. Today`s database-driven applications are a world apart from the green-screen terminal apps of decades past.

And yet, in this age when "the network is the computer", more and more data processing tasks are handed off to remote resources.

Server-based applications, centralised content management, service-oriented architecture, and software as a service are all part of this trend - and all put increased burden on enterprise network links.

Sun Microsystems is primed to ship the first servers running its UltraSPARC T2 processor, dubbed Niagara II, reports Channel Register.

The roll-out consists of a pair of rack-mounted systems and a blade server based on the new chip, which sports eight cores and eight threads per core.

The single-rack T5120 and double-rack T5520 have a single socket design and 64GB of memory. Both can run either a 1.2GHz or 1.4GHz processor. The 5120 holds up to four hot-swappable drives, while its more spacious cousin, the 5520, holds eight. The T6320 is basically the T5120 in a single wide blade design.