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IDG News Service - SPEC, the standards body for performance benchmarks, has developed a tool-kit to help more accurately measure the energy efficiency of servers. The Server Efficiency Rating Tool, released in beta on Thursday, will be used for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star for Servers program, which is supposed to help companies identify the most efficient servers when making purchase decisions. It's become an important topic as companies struggle with rising energy costs in their data centers. But it's been difficult to measure the efficiency of new equipment, with vendors making all kinds of competing claims. The first Energy Star for Servers program, introduced two years ago, aimed to address that, but some see it as a good first effort that didn't go far enough. It looks at the efficiency of server power supplies and power consumption at idle,Moncler jassen, but it doesn't measure efficiency running actual workloads. That's a more difficult challenge that SPEC is trying to address. It identified various server functions, such as XML mapping, encryption and fast Fourier transformation (FFT), and SERT measures the power consumption and performance of servers while performing those functions at different load levels. The SERT results will be used with version 2.0 of the Energy Star for Servers program, which is due to go into effect in early 2013, said Klaus-Dieter Lange,Ugg Deutschland, chair of the SPECpower committee, which is developing SERT. Server vendors will use the toolkit to measure the efficiency of their servers, then submit the results to the EPA for certification. The EPA is still deciding how the results will be presented. It might provide an aggregate rating based on all the different workload types, or it might list each result individually,Moncler jacken zürich, so a customer buying a server for a security application, for example, could choose one that performs encryption efficiently. It could also do both. It remains to be seen how accurately the ratings will reflect the efficiency of a server running real-world applications. And server makers will have to buy into the idea,uggs nederland EUC szj BOK, though most are represented on the committee developing the test kit. It's been tricky getting them to agree on how efficiency should be measured. The goal is to ensure a level playing field and not favor any one vendor. "Getting everybody on the same page is of course very challenging," said Lange. "My goal is not to make everybody happy, but to make everybody equally unhappy. No one should have an advantage." SERT is being developed with input from the EPA,Uggs classic, but SPEC is also talking to international bodies about its use, Lange said. "If widely adopted, [SERT] should reduce testing burdens on the server industry and enable more meaningful and consistent comparisons among products sold in different regions of the world," said Robert Meyers, the EPA's data center product lead, in a statement. 1 2 Next page Computerworld - Mozilla yesterday patched 11 vulnerabilities in the desktop edition of Firefox as it upgraded the browser to version 7.The company has batted a thousand so far in its rapid release schedule: Firefox 7 marks the third consecutive upgrade that Mozilla has met its every-six-week deadline for a new version of the browser. Mozilla switched to the faster release tempo last March, when some wondered whether the open-source company -- which has historically struggled to ship on time -- would be able to make its milestones.The biggest improvement to Firefox 7 is a reduction in memory use. Mozilla has previously claimed that the upgrade slashes memory consumption by as much as 50%."Firefox [7] manages memory more efficiently to deliver a nimble Web browsing experience," Mozilla said Tuesday when it launched the new edition. "Users will notice Firefox is faster at opening new tabs, clicking on menu items and buttons on websites."Most users will see a 20%-to-30% reduction in memory usage compared to Firefox 4,MBT sko, Mozilla said, but in some situations that can climb to 50%. In an accompanying blog post on the Firefox 7 memory changes, Mozilla said that Windows users will see the most benefit.The company also claimed that the memory diet has boosted the browser's performance, especially in scenarios where users have opened numerous tabs and leave Firefox running for long stretches. Firefox has long been knocked as hogging memory, criticism that prompted Mozilla to kick off the "MemShrink" project, which was designed to drive down Firefox's memory use and close "memory leaks" -- bugs that prevent memory from being released to the system when tabs are closed.Other changes that debuted in Firefox 7 included a new hardware acceleration framework to speed up HTML5 rendering, and an opt-in tool called Telemetry that lets users send performance data to Mozilla.Firefox 7 also patched 11 security vulnerabilities, 10 of which were rated "critical," the company's most serious threat rating; the sole exception was labeled "moderate."Because Mozilla now bundles virtually security patches almost exclusively with each version upgrade,Moncler jacken FFU xdn TRG, users stuck on Firefox 6 or earlier must update to quash the bugs.Two of the critical vulnerabilities patched Tuesday were in Firefox's implementation of WebGL,UGG boots outlet, a 3-D rendering standard that both Firefox and Google's Chrome comply with. One of the pair was reported to Mozilla by a researcher with Context Information Security, a company that has cited serious security issues with WebGL.The other was credited to a member of Google's security team.Firefox has received several patches specific to WebGL since Context recommended users and administrators disable the standard in Mozilla's browser and in Chrome.Mozilla also released Firefox 3.6.23 yesterday, a security update that patched four vulnerabilities. That aging edition -- Mozilla first shipped Firefox 3.6 in January 2010 -- is still maintained, in part because enterprise users have resisted adopting the rapid release cadence.As part of a proposal called Extended Support Release, Mozilla plans to halt Firefox 3.6 security updates three months after it kicks off a less-frequent shipping schedule for corporations.Firefox 7 can be downloaded manually from Mozilla's site, while people running Firefox 4, 5 or 6 will be offered the upgrade through the browser's own update mechanism.The next version of Firefox is currently scheduled for release on Nov. 8.Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft,Moncler jassen KNB qjo RNZ, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.See more articles by Gregg Keizer. Browser wars Mozilla makes progress on Firefox silent updatesMozilla ships Firefox 8, adds Twitter search and patches 8 bugsMicrosoft: Switch to IE9, get free stuffMicrosoft's IE posts biggest share drop in three yearsGoogle pays record $26K in Chrome bug bountiesChrome bug no security threat, argues GoogleMozilla bashes Microsoft's browser security testMicrosoft pans Chrome, Firefox securityMozilla relies on search deals for 98% of revenuesUpdate: Mozilla to prompt Firefox 3.6 users to ride rapid-release train More: Browser Topic Center Read more about Browsers in Computerworld's Browsers Topic Center. |
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