By funding research into microprocessors, the EU is committed to making mobile services and cloud computing greener.

The EuroCloud Servers project

Launched in 2010 for a period of 3 years, the EuroCloud Servers project, as its name would suggest, is about improving the energy efficiency of servers, and, more specifically, those used to run mobile cloud applications.

The project focuses on developing low-energy processors using ARM® multi-core processor technology (currently used for mobile devices), combined with 3D memory technology.

It is expected that the project will result in a new server architecture being implemented by 2015 and, in the longer term, a 90% drop in energy consumption for data centres.

The budget (€3.3 million provided by the European Union, and 40% from private funding), has been granted to a multi-partner research team (ARM, Nokia, IMEC, EPFL, University of Cyprus).  By supporting this initiative, Brussels hopes to strengthen Europe’s leadership and excellence in green computing.

Find out more:

Green data centres: some key figures

  • 1.2% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from ICT – 15% come from data centres (Sources Google).
  • + 1,844%: the increase in the volume of digital data expected between 2011 and 2021 (Source European Union).
  • 45 billion dollars: this is how much the green data centre technology market is set to be worth by 2016. It will be worth some $17 Bn by 2012, according to Spike Research.