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Environmental Activities

Hitachi

The IT Power-saving Plan

[Image] Hitachi plans to reduce 330,000 tons of CO2 emissions through the year 2012 by lowering the power consumption of IT equipment.

The focus for servers and storage devices has been on performance and functions so far. From now on, low power consumption will also be a major selection point. Hitachi initiated the IT Power-saving Plan to reduce the power consumption of IT equipment. The goal of the plan is to lower CO2 emissions by a total of 330,000 tons by 2012.

  • * Figures for CO2 emissions on this page are estimated by Hitachi.

(Released in September 2008)

A power-saving plan for IT equipment

Demand for IT equipment supporting corporate data systems is constantly on the rise. This has lead to greater and greater power consumption year after year, and consequently greater CO2 emissions. The IT Power-saving Plan is the key to breaking this vicious circle.
Hitachi has clearly set out a development plan of power-saving technology and products for its primary IT equipment, such as servers, storage devices or network equipment. A key objective is to achieve major reductions in CO2 emissions through making progress on power savings at every level of components, devices and operations.

[Image] IT Power-saving Plan /For servers and storage - Full-scale reduction of power consumption!

Power savings at the level of components and devices at first

[Image] Power-saving technology -

Hitachi has set three priority areas for power savings -'component level' ,'device level' and ' operational level' .

Component level: Development is now focused on power supply modules, Large Scale Integration (LSI) and Hard Disk Drives(HDD). Highly-efficient power supply circuits and devices are being developed with the utilization of knowledge in semiconductor technology which has been built up through years of experience.

Device level: Power savings involve expanding the application area of Massive Array of Idle Disk (MAID) technology to stop the operation of Hard Disk Drives (HDD) that have not been accessed for long time, and the use of cooling technology with a good track record in supercomputers. MAID is already in use in many storage devices and is now being used in more and more products.

Operational level: Power savings made in the operation and management level of IT systems, including automatic power control and monitoring of power usage, are used with the above advances to ensure that IT equipment in use can function with the minimum amount of power.

[Image] Key Power-saving Fields/Examples of Power-saving IT Equipment

  • * Resources: Required capacity of hard disk drives, processing power and memory to operate hardware or software.
  • * Virtualization: Making the resources which form systems independent from physical constraints in order to increase them or share them out.
  • * Large Scale Integration (LSI): Semiconductor devices installed on circuit boards as concentrations of elements such as transistors, etc.

Lowering CO2 emissions by 330,000 tons by 2012 is our goal!

By developing these environmentally-conscious technologies for IT power-saving, we aim to lower CO2 emissions by 330,000 tons accumulatively by 2012.
IT Power-saving Plan is a Hitachi's original energy-saving concept that covers from the smallest of components to the overall operating level. Hitachi intends to make energy savings for each and every form of IT equipment and thus greatly reduce the level of CO2 emissions.

[Image] IT Power-saving Plan /CO2 reduction target CO2 absorbable by Ward 23 in Tokyo

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IT Power-saving Plan: Hitachi's technology development plan to reduce 330,000t CO2 emission of IT products from 2008 to 2012.

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