雅思阅读练习题：数码节食

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　　Digital Diet

　　A

　　Telecommuting, Internet shopping and online meetings may save energy as compared with in-person alternatives, but as the digital age moves on, its green reputation is turning a lot browner. E-mailing, number crunching and Web searches in the U S. consumed as much as 61 billion kilowatt-hours last year, or 1.5 percent of the nation's electricity—half of which comes from coal. In 2005 the computers of the world ate up 123 billion kilowatt- hours of energy, a number that will double by 2010 if present trends continue, according to Jonathan Koomey, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory. As a result, the power bill to run a computer over its lifetime will surpass the cost of buying the machine in the first place giving Internet and computer companies a business reason to cut energy costs, as well as an environmental one.

　　B

　　One of the biggest energy sinks comes not from the computers themselves but from the air-conditioning needed to keep them from overheating. For every kilowatt-hour of energy used for computing m a data center, another kilowatt-hour is required to cool the furnacelike racks of servers.

　　C

　　For Internet giant Google, this reality has driven efforts such as the installation of a solar array that can provide 30 percent of the peak power needs of its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters as well as increasing purchases of renewable energy. But to deliver Web pages within seconds, the firm must maintain hundreds of thousands of computer servers in cavernous buildings. "It's a good thing to worry about server energy efficiency," remarks Google's green energy czar Bill Weihl. "We are actively working to maximize the efficiency of our data centers, which account for most of the energy Google consumes worldwide " Google will funnel some of its profits into a new effort, dubbed R£<€ (for renewable energy cheaper than coal, as Google translates it) to make sources such as solar-thermal, high-altitude wind and geothermal cheaper than coal " within years, not decades," according to Weihl.

　　D

　　In the meantime, the industry as a whole has employed a few tricks to save watts. Efforts include cutting down on the number of transformations the electricity itself must undergo before achieving the correct operating voltage; rearranging the stacks of servers and the mechanics of their cooling; and using software to create multiple "virtual" computers, rather than having to deploy several real ones. Such visualization has allowed computer maker Hewlett-Packard to consolidate 86 data centers spread throughout the world to just three, with three backups, says Pat Tiernan, the firm's vice president of social and environmental responsibility.

　　E

　　The industry is also tackling the energy issue at the computer-chip level. With every doubling of processing power in recent years has come a doubling in power consumption. But to save energy, chipmakers such as Intel and AMD have shifted to so-called multicore technology, which packs multiple processors into one circuit rather than separating them. "When we moved to multicore—away from a linear focus on megahertz and gigahertz—and throttled down microprocessors, the energy savings were pretty substantial," says A Hyson Klein, Intel's marketing manager for its Ecotech Initiative. Chipmakers continue to shrink circuits on the nanoscale as well, which "means a chip needs less electricity" to deliver the same performance, she adds.

　　F

　　With such chips, more personal computers will meet various efficiency standards, such as Energy Star compliance (which mandates that a desktop consume no more than 65 watts). The federal government, led by agencies such as NASA and the Department of Defense may soon require all their purchases to meet the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool standard. And Google, Intel and others have formed the Climate Savers Computing, Initiative, an effort to cut power consumption from all computers by 50 percent by 2010.

　　G

　　Sleep modes and other power management tools built into most operating systems tan offer savings today. Yet about 90 percent of computers do not have such settings enabled, according to Klein. Properly activated, they would prevent a computer from leading to the emission of thousands of kilograms of carbon dioxide from power plants every year. But if powering down or unplugging the computer (the only way it uses zero power) is not an option, then perhaps the most environmentally friendly use of all those wasted computing cycles is in helping to model climate change. The University of Oxford's C11matePrcdictioo.net offers an opportunity to at least predict the consequences of all that coal burning.

　　H

　　C02Stats is a free tool that can be embedded into any Web site to calculate the carbon dioxide emissions associated with using it. That estimate is based on an assumption of 300 watts of power consumed by the personal computer, network and server involved— or 16.5 milligrams of C02 emitted every second of use. "The typical carbon footprint is roughly equivalent to 1.5 people breathing," says physicist Alexander Wissner-Gross of Harvard University, who co-created the Web tool.

　　Question 1-6

　　Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-E) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-E in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

　　NB you may use any letter more than once

　　A Jonathan Koomey

　　B Ally son Klein

　　C Pat Tiernan

　　D Bill Weihl

　　E Alexander Wissner-Gross

　　1 Figuring ways to optimize the utilization of energy in certain significant departments in the company

　　2 A revolutionary improvement in a tiny but quite imperative component of the computers

　　3 Targeting at developing alternative sources within the near future

　　4 An astounding estimate on the energy to be consumed by computers in a short period based on an unchangeable trend

　　5 A powerful technique developed for integration of resources

　　6 A failure for the vast majority of computers to activate the use of some internal tools already available in them

　　Question 7-10

　　Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

　　In boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet, write

　　TRUE if the statement is true

　　FALSE if the statement is false

　　NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

　　7 To chill the sever does not take up considerable amount of energy needed for the computer.

　　8 It seems that the number of the servers has a severe impact on the speed of the internet connection

　　9 Several companies from other fields have a joint effort with the internet industry to work on the ways to save energy.

　　10 Actions taken at a governmental level are to be expected to help with savings in the energy in the near future.

　　Question 11-13

　　Summury

　　Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using No More than Three words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

　　The…11…has also been reached 10 save up energy in every possible way and the philosophy behind it lies in the fact that there is a positive correlation between the ability to process and the need for energy. In this context, some firms have switched to…12…which means several processors are integrated into one single circuit to make significant energy savings. What is more, they go on to…13…on an even more delicate level for the chips to save more energy while staying at the constant level in terms of the performance.

　　参考译文：

　　数码节食

　　A

　　远程办公，网上购物和在线会议和传统的面对面的方式相比可以节省能源，但随着数字化时代的推进，其具有环保节能的优势受到了影响。去年美国因为发送电子邮件，进行数字运算和网页搜索这些方面的消耗高达610亿千瓦时，也就是占了全国总耗电量的1.5%，而全国的电力供应一般来自煤炭。2005年全世界的计算机消耗了1230亿千瓦时的能量，如果照目前的趋势继续发展下去，根据Lawrence Berkeley国家实验室的科学家Jonathan Koomey估计，这个数字在2010年的时候将翻一番。因此，为了运行一台电脑所作出的开支将超过购买这台电脑的成本——这使得互联网和电脑公司有理由开展削减能源成本的业务，以保护环境。

　　B

　　最大的能源消耗并非来自电脑本身，而是来自防止电脑过热的空调。对于一个数据中心计算器每小时一千瓦时的能源，同时还需要一千瓦时来冷却向火炉一样滚烫的架式服务器。

　　C

　　对于互联网巨头谷歌，上述问题促使其致力于安装太阳能阵列，用来提供其在加州总部Mountain View公司峰值功率需求的30%，同时增加可再生能源的采购。但是为了使用户能够在几秒钟内打开网页，谷歌必须维护在巨大洞穴状建筑物内成上千万台的电脑服务器。谷歌的绿色能源负责人Bill Weihl说“考虑服务器的能源效率是一件好事，我们正在积极努力使我们的数据中心的效率最大化，因其占谷歌全球消耗能量很大一部分。”谷歌将通过新的方式盈利，被成为RE(谷歌公司认为“因为可再生能源比煤更便宜”)，使用其他能源加大太阳能光热，高空风能和地热能都比使用煤炭便宜。Weihl说“这个想法在几年之内就可以实现，而不需要等待几十年。”

　　D

　　与此同时，整个互联网行业都在采用一些方法来节约电能，这方面的努力包括削减实现店里转换前必须先实现正确的操作电压：重组成堆的服务器和其冷却机制，以及使用软件来创建多个“虚拟”的计算器，而不必部署多个实际的计算机。惠普公司社会与环境部的副主管Pat Tiernan说道，这种虚拟化技术是的电脑生产公司惠普将遍布世界各地的86个数据中心整合成三个，同时只需要三个备份。

　　E

　　互联网行业同时也努力从电脑芯片方面解决能源消耗问题。近年来，随着电脑处理能力每增加一倍，电力消耗同时增加一辈。但为了节省能源，芯片制造商如英特尔和AMD都转换到所谓的多核技术，也就是将多个处理器打包成一个电路，而不是把他们分开。英特尔公司的经济技术合作倡议的营销精灵Allyson Klein说“当我们从线性兆赫和千兆赫兹转移到多核，然后通过节流微处理以此节约下的能量是相当客观的。”芯片制造商继续缩减在纳米尺度上的电路，Allyson Klein补充道“这意味着在保证相同性能的同时一个芯片所需要的电能变少了”

　　F

　　通过使用这种芯片，更多的个人电脑将满足各种提高效率的标准，如能源之星标准(要求桌面所消耗的电能不超过65瓦)。联邦政府可能很快就会要求以美国国家航空航天局和国防部为首的机构在进行电脑采购时，要满足电子产品环境评估工具标准。谷歌，英特尔和其他公司已经发起了“电脑产业拯救气候行动”，以努力实现到2010年时将所有计算机造成的店里消耗消减50%。

　　G

　　今天大多数操作系统都有植入睡眠模式和电源管理工具来节约能源。然而根据Klein统计，约90%的计算机不启用这些设置。如果这些设置都能正确地激活，他们能防止电厂每年因为要供应电脑而排放的上千公斤的二氧化碳。但是如果在一些情况下不能关机或拔下插座(只有这样，才会是零功耗)时，那么也许是最环保的利用这些被浪费的计算机消耗的方式就是通过计算机建立气候变化模型。和牛津大学的ClimatePrediction.net就提供一个机会至少用来预测这些煤炭燃烧导致的结构。

　　H

　　CO2Stats是一个免费的工具，可以嵌入到任何网站来计算使用计算机导致的二氧化碳的排放量。这一估计是基于这样一个假设：个人电脑，网络和服务器每一秒消耗的300瓦的店里需要16.5毫克CO2排放来产生。哈佛大学的物理学家，同时也是CO2Stats这个网页工具的发明人之一的Alexander Wissner Gross说“典型的碳排放量是大约相当于1.5人呼吸出的含碳量。”

雅思考前能力水平测试（0元领课）