Environmental Savings

Search’s Gluttonous Appetite

While there are many functions that are performed within a server farm, one of the most power-hungry functions is search.  Larry Page stated that “Google’s biggest constraint to growth is electricity.”  A reporter recently visited a server farm built by Ask.com on the east coast and noticed that 1/3 of the 500,000 square foot facility sat empty.  When the reporter asked why, the answer from Search Operations Manager, James Snow, was, "We ran out of power before we ran out of space."

Wired estimated that the “total of electricity consumed by major search engines in 2006 approaches 5 gigawatts…Five gigawatts is almost enough to power the Las Vegas metropolitan area – with all its hotels, casinos, restaurants, and convention centers.”

Perfect Search Environmental Savings

Because Perfect Search technology allows for a greater query throughput per server, fewer servers are needed to perform the same volume of queries. If the same volume of queries can be handled by fewer servers, then there would be a significant reduction in server farm energy costs to users of the technology. This dramatic reduction in energy costs leads to a reduction in the environmental impact of the server farm.