Data center administrators are encountering growing energy consumption issues—-to the point of hardware failure. The disconnect between IT and energy usage has been blamed before on being unaware of costs and not having control over construction and design.

SiCortex announced a tool that will break through what some might refer to as computer vendor "greenwashing," and additionally, give IT managers the information they need to better manage increasing server energy demands.

This online calculator will work with the recently proposed Green Computing Performance Index (GCPI) to help companies, specifically administrators, manage and reduce their data center energy demands. GCPI measures overall system performance-per-watt, based on the HPCC benchmark suite, which they have adapted to be more energy-centric.

The GCPI has taken the focus off solely performance factors and takes into consideration the importance of interprocessor communication. As computers get faster and systems grow larger, energy consumption is greatly magnified, and with that, costs. Data centers will account for an estimated 3% of total U.S. electricity demand this year-- with that figure in mind, “greening” IT departments around the country is becoming more of a necessity.

The GCPI is targeted at companies that require the intensive processing power of High-Productivity (Performance, by some) Computing (HPC) solutions for intensive applications, usually industrial or scientific. Computing benchmarks have usually had to center on issues like memory latency. However, GCPI focuses on actual work performed and ranks it (and other performance metrics) against the energy consumed.

Last month, Christopher Stone, CEO/President of SiCortex, spoke about Intel’s processors as addressing a performance issue, but doing little to address the industry’s need for improved energy-efficiency, “The industry needs to pick up the pace of embracing new approaches to computation. We must address the pressing need to rein in data center energy consumption and costs.” One of the first systems evaluated was the new Nehalem EP processor from Intel, which received a GCPI score of 9.85 (delivered performance-per-kilowatt), placing it second behind SiCortex’s own SC5832.

The new focus on evaluating carbon costs could make it more important for IT managers to trim their energy needs and look to tools like the GCPI calculator.

IT administrators now can weigh performance benchmarks against energy demand, allowing companies to see which systems are most efficient and appropriate for their specific application demands—all the while being able to keep a guiding hand on escalating energy costs. Now when a company says or implies that its systems are “green” or energy efficient, they can be measured against the GCPI Calculator, working off a truly green benchmark.