There there, it's just a phase you're going through. Everyone has a datacentre phase, you get into three phase power and various gas based fire suppression systems, and all that. I imagine green grocers build shopping malls in their heads at some stage in their career also.

Soon you'll either have to move to a cottage in the countryside or do the other thing.

Or, like many in the business world, pay yourself $20m dollars per year, let the thing go pear shaped and go live on an island in the bahamas.

Why dick about with hardware?

We host lots of Mac Minis. 35-40W for a complete Core2Duo server, Gig Ethernet, small form factor so they stack quite well. We also do the AppleTV, at 16-20W it's half the performance/W of the Mac Mini, but as a dedicated server you're unlikely to get anything with a lower current draw.

http://www.mythic-beasts.com/resources/macmini/

Is there any other comment around here? Some evidence suggests Linux is more power hungry:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=880&num=2

> AppleTV, at 16-20W

> you're unlikely to get anything with a lower current draw

My 1 GHz VIA C7-M webserver, with solid-state hard drive, takes about the same. The key is finding an efficient power supply: even ones that claim high efficiency turn out to be rather poor if you're this far below their design power.

If that's not low enough for you, these people: http://www.embedian.com/ run their web site from one of their own 400 MHz ARM-based servers. (The site's a bit slow; not sure if that's due to the server or the damp string linking Britain and Taiwan.)

I have the impression that many people have massively over-spec co-located servers for their web sites (but of course I have no data to back up that claim). Unfortunately, the service providers make more profit from hosting over-spec systems, and the cost difference is sufficiently small that your typical medium-sized business will play it safe and choose the bigger box. Software bloat (*cough* PHP *cough*) is also largely to blame.

Anyway, as for Ashlee's proposition: yes, good plan. Personally I'd run my massively-parallel web application on boxes full of VIA chips. I think the biggest challenge is persuading people to pay a profitable price for it: if you're offering a "high performance" solution, with the right marketing you can trigger some sort of visceral reaction in the customer that will make them pay a premium. Selling low-power kit is much less "sexy", and you'll really need to sell it based on the bottom-line numbers in your spreadsheet. That gives you less space for profit.