At a financial industry conference in New York last year, a major international bank reported opening a large data center with hundreds of blades only to find it had to operate at less than half its capacity because it couldn't find enough cooling or enough electrical power. At SIA in June industry experts said that a sharp spike in temperatures if cooling failed led to a high percentage of processor failure.

Ken Brill, who was early to spot the growing problem, formed The Uptime Institute to look for solutions. How should racks be designed, how do you develop dual sources of both power and cooling, and how do you bring facilities managers into the process early? Brill's program asks if the cost of high-density computer infrastructure has truncated the economic benefits of Moore's Law?

The Institute has attracted major global corporations, including leading financial services firms such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, State Farm, and Morgan Stanley.

A conference on the subject, High-Density Computing - Trends, Challenges, Benefits, Costs, & Solutions, will be held April 23 to 25 in Orlando, FL.

www.uptimeinstitute.com