AMD Rallies Industry Leaders to Reduce Datacenter Power and Cooling Levels to the Mutual Benefit of Business, Environment

A group of technology industry leaders today announced theirintent to form The Green Grid to help reduce growing power and coolingdemands in enterprise datacenters. AMD (NYSE: AMD), HP, SunMicrosystems and IBM represent the founding sponsors of The GreenGrid, an open, global organization whose goals are supported by theEnvironmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Alliance to Save Energy.Members of The Green Grid seek to decrease the datacenter and other ITfacility energy usage patterns by defining and propagating bestpractices in datacenter operation, as well as construction and design.The Green Grid is intended to serve as an interactive resource for ITprofessionals; a forum for sharing proven practices in datacenterenergy management as well as working with other organizations toidentify new industry-standards and metrics related to energy.

As an independent, non-profit association, The Green Grid is opento any and all IT industry professionals with an interest inaddressing global energy consumption issues, particularly datacentermanagers and IT operations executives. Founding membership is alsoopen to companies such as ISVs, IHVs, systems integrators and VARs,analyst firms, utility companies and anyone else concerned aboutenergy efficiency issues in the enterprise.

Members are welcome to participate by registering online atwww.TheGreenGrid.org, an independently hosted site where they willshare best practices, discuss challenges, and define solutions to theincreasing energy demands from IT. The role of the sponsors will be tohelp enable and fund the member-driven organization. More informationwill be available in the coming weeks with details on The Green Gridfounding members as well as the organization's charter.

The Green Grid Founding Sponsors

The founding sponsors of The Green Grid represent a core group ofinnovative datacenter solution providers who have been focused on theissue of power consumption for several years. The Green Gridrepresents a unique opportunity for the sponsor companies to be a partof a collaborative environment where they can work with ITprofessionals to gain insights on power consumption that go beyondtheir respective products.

"Datacenter power consumption is a growing global concern on botha business and environmental level. The Green Grid was founded inorder to bring the brightest minds in the industry together to helpdefine innovative energy solutions that will improveperformance-per-watt across the industry, today and tomorrow," saidMarty Seyer, senior vice president, commercial and performancecomputing, AMD. "The Green Grid represents not only a call to actionfor other IT leaders but also a natural next step for a technologyindustry that is coming of age with respect to solving the world'smore pressing problems and challenges. Based on the level of earlyinterest, endorsements and participation levels, it is clear thisorganization is coming along at the right time to help solve energyissues in the datacenter and across all IT environments."

"Sun has long understood the need for broad industry coordinationon energy efficient technology and sees The Green Grid as acomplimentary effort to its work aligning the industry around astandard metric for energy consumption," said Ed Hunter, director, EcoResponsibility Initiative, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "As the demands onIT increase, it is the industry's responsibility to help customersmake smarter choices around all issues in the datacenter, includingenergy consumption."

"For more than 10 years, HP has been addressing the power andcooling needs of customers," said Paul Perez, vice president, Storage,Networking and Infrastructure, Industry Standard Servers, HP. "Today,HP has extensive research, modeling tools, products and services thatallow customers to provision and cool their datacenters. HP is pleasedto work with industry leaders through The Green Grid to create energyefficiency improvements at the component and system level."

"IBM is pleased to announce our intent to become a foundingsponsor of The Green Grid," said Doug Balog, vice president andbusiness line executive, IBM BladeCenter. "IBM has been a leader ininnovation around power and cooling technologies and committed toimplementing energy efficiency programs for more than 30 years. Welook forward to working together with other like-minded companies topromote further innovation around power management in the datacenter."

Environmental Support

The Green Grid is devoted to working closely with both the EPA andthe Alliance. Both organizations are in full support of The Green Gridand will play a key role in the development of the organization'scharter as well as collaborating to identify innovative solutions thatcut energy costs as well as benefit the environment.

"The EPA is deeply concerned about the effects of increasingdatacenter power consumption and associated rise in greenhouse gasemissions from datacenter operations," said Andrew Fanara, U.S.Environmental Protection Agency, ENERGY STAR(R) program. "We believeenergy efficiency-focused technology innovation is key to addressingthe significant impact that this growing energy use will have both ontoday's businesses and our environment. For that reason EPA is pleasedto support the goals and mission of The Green Grid initiative. We lookforward to communicating this initiative to our ENERGY STAR partnersand encouraging them to participate in the development of what we areconfident will quickly become an important resource for both vendorsand industry end-users. We applaud AMD and founding sponsors HP, IBMand Sun Microsystems for helping to raise industry awareness of theneed for solutions that will address these rapidly emerging criticalissues."

"Business is a key economic sector that can benefit from employingenergy efficiency technologies not only to save energy but also tosave money, protect the environment and enhance our national energysecurity," said Alliance President Kateri Callahan. "We are pleased tojoin EPA in endorsing The Green Grid and helping to bring theenergy-efficiency message to U.S. datacenters, which represent agrowing component of the business sector."

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider ofinnovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications andconsumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated todelivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs thatempower users worldwide. For more information visit www.amd.com.

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