Monday, June 7, 2010

Business Training Simulation- Go'in Green!

In our continued effort to deliver a more green training and development business training simulation, Simulation Development Group is proud to announce that we have cut our computing power requirements in half (sort of) with little to no loss in productivity. How can we create custom training simulations with half the power? Creativity and a good idea from one of our developers. Turn off the processors! What? How can this be done and still be able to use the computer? Well this is quite simple, but takes a little explanation.

First, it's important to understand that we use very powerful computers to create our business training simulations. We use Apple's Mac Pro line of computers.
Yup, we're a Mac shop. Why? Because its far less maintenance and less maintenance means lower costs to our training simulation customers. Yes, of course our business simulations can run on any platform. We just prefer to write them on the Mac.

Anyway, since we write our business simulations on a Mac Pro, there are actually 4-8 processors in each computer (yup, these are very high end computers). This generates a lot of heat and consumes a lot of electricity. Both are bad for the environment. So, why not just turn them off? Well, because it's actually not that easy. After-all, there are no processor switches on the side of the machine.

To drop the energy consumption in half and still be able to create a custom business simulation,
we had to create an application that turns off cores, but still routes data through the right memory buss(es) and caches. We did this.

This means we can continue to create our custom leadership training simulation, business games, business acumen simulations, and business training simulations without any loss in productivity. When it comes time for the training simulation to compile, we simply turn on the additional processors on the fly. Just like a light switch.

So the next time you're thinking about a leadership training simulation, business acumen simulation, corporate development simulation, business training simulation, or any business simulation, know that we are continuing to find creative and innovative ways to reduce our footprint and still delivery the best darn business training simulation available on this big beautiful blue marble we call home.

Have a green day!
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