MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT The Portland Linux/Unix Group will meet 7 PM Thursday Aug 5, 2010 at Portland State University in the Fariborz Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science Building Room FAB 86-01 (This is in the basement.) The building is on SW 4th across from SW College Street. See location H-10 on map at http://pdxLinux.org/campus_map.jpg
******************************************************************* Server Sky - Data Centers in Orbit Power for computation on a Moore's Law schedule Keith Lofstrom, http://server-sky.com The EPA estimates US data centers (not including desktops) consumed 1.5% of total US electrical consumption in 2006. They predict a doubling to 3% of base load by 2011. Our work as programmers and technologists continues this runaway exponential growth, and we will be stopped by environmental and resource limits soon. Server sky is a proposal to use newly emerging solid state technologies to build large arrays of 3 gram paper-thin solar-powered computation satellites in 6400km Earth orbits. A single server-sat replaces 15 watts of ground-based electrical generation, cooling, and power conversion, as well as the computation and communication hardware itself. Orbital server farms may start out as expensive as current approaches, but design improvement and cheaper launch will decrease costs exponentially over time, much as transistor cost has plummeted over the last four decades. This is open technology, responsive to public input, and the project needs volunteer software and engineering help to stay that way. Eventually, Server Sky will create thousands of open technology jobs in the Portland area, and permit unbounded computation growth in space, while reducing energy demand and environmental damage on Earth. Earth can return to what it is good at green and growing things while we fill space with gray and computing things. ******************************************************************* Agenda: 7:00 - 7:30 Business We will discuss the status of our ongoing projects including PLUG's monthly Advanced Topics meetings, PLUG's monthly hands on clinics, PLUG for Education, etc. 7:30 - 8:30 Presentation See above 9:00 - ... Beer The Lucky Lab Northwest Beerhall 1945 NW Quimby Portland, Oregon David Mandel Chief Activist Portland Linux/Unix Group 560 SE Alexander Corvallis, Oregon 97333 (541) 730-5285 mobile dmandel at pdxLinux.org P.S. The Mid Willamette Valley Linux Users Group meets every month. See http://www.lug.corvallis.or.us/ for details. P.S. The Eugene Linux Users Group meets several times a month. See http://www.euglug.org for details. ====================================================================== David Mandel http://www.DavidMandel.com Portland Linux/Unix Group http://pdxLinux.org LinuxFund http://LinuxFund.org ====================================================================== _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
