Ideally the software would be flexible enough to utilize all resources on a machine. A better resource balance would let you reduce the total number of machines and save money. Rather than having 1000 servers at 80% RAM and 6% CPU, you could have many fewer at 80% RAM and 80% CPU.
A cache gives you CPU in exchange for memory. Compression gives you memory in exchange for CPU. I imagine that almost all internet services can be improved by using more compression if they have so much idle CPU. That's what http://code.google.com/p/snappy/ is for essentially.
But the root problem is that our software isn't flexible enough. Capitalism is basically working in this case. Right now we don't have the programming technology to adjust software to fit a machine well -- it's cheaper just to throw more servers at it. Re-optimizing and testing software is very, very expensive. But computing is taking up a growing portion of the world's power, and software is getting better and more flexible.
Eventually the economics will adjust so that we're incentivized to get much higher utilization.
A cache gives you CPU in exchange for memory. Compression gives you memory in exchange for CPU. I imagine that almost all internet services can be improved by using more compression if they have so much idle CPU. That's what http://code.google.com/p/snappy/ is for essentially.
But the root problem is that our software isn't flexible enough. Capitalism is basically working in this case. Right now we don't have the programming technology to adjust software to fit a machine well -- it's cheaper just to throw more servers at it. Re-optimizing and testing software is very, very expensive. But computing is taking up a growing portion of the world's power, and software is getting better and more flexible.
Eventually the economics will adjust so that we're incentivized to get much higher utilization.