Using a cluster of slow processors and flash memory, Carnegie Mellon University researchers have created an energy-efficient “fast array of wimpy nodes” — a powerful server architecture that offers performance-per-watt one hundred times better than that of traditional servers used by Internet giants like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

The EPA projects that by 2011, data centers in the United States could use up to 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, for a total annual cost of $7.4 billion.