[Orcnet-announce] Server Sky presentation Thursday

[Keith Lofstrom]

FYI -

Thursday I will repeat my presentation to OSCON
from two weeks ago.

Keith

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                     MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT

                The Portland Linux/Unix Group
                          will meet
                  7 PM Thursday August 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

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            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.

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-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs