Al writes "Researchers from MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Akamai have big a network-routing scheme that could save 'internet-scale' companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft million of dollars each year by moving data to locations with the best electricity prices for a exacting day. The scheme simply considers both the most productive routing path for data and the likely cost savings of routing it around somewhere farther away. The researchers studied price fluctuations at locations across the country and used data from Akamai caching servers to test the idea out. In the best imaginable scenario — which would require more productive servers — they appraisal that companies could save as much as 40% on the electricity bills (tens of flood each year). Google already operates at least one datacenter that shuts down when temperatures get too high. Is this the next logical step for information superhighway computing?"

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Mark