Patent ID: 8032767

Claim:
A system for managing a power-efficient data center that includes a plurality of part items, each part item comprised of one or more computers, comprising: a trend determination module estimating a processing demand that will be placed on the power-efficient data center, to provide an estimated processing demand; a management module controlling the plurality of part items, comprising: a performance determination module assessing respective performances of the plurality of part items in the power-efficient data center to provide a plurality of respective performance results, wherein a performance result of a part item corresponds to a computation-to-power efficiency of the part item, wherein computation-to-power efficiency refers to a ratio of computation performed per energy used to perform the computation; a selection module using the performance results and the estimated processing demand to assign respective operating states to the plurality of part items, the states selected from amongst at least an active state associated with a first state of part item availability, a standby state associated with a second state of part item availability, and an inactive state associated with a third state of part item availability, wherein the part items, in an order of priority from highest performance results to lowest performance results, are first assigned to the active state, then the standby state, and then the inactive state, whereby computation by part items with high computation-to-power efficiency is maximized; and an application module operating the plurality of part items in the states assigned by the selection module to meet the processing demand that is estimated by the trend determination module.