Warnings have been issued over the increasing use of power by data centres worldwide by computer hardware manufacturer AMD.

It was predicted by the firm that the amount of energy used up by company data servers will be some 10,000 MW higher in 2010 than its level in 2005.

But AMD urged firms to make small changes to their IT practices which could make significant savings on the amount of power used.

"Data centre energy consumption in the United States five years from now could be cut by as much as 20 per cent with relatively minor efforts by data centre managers," said AMD spokesman Bruce Shaw.

Measures which can reduce energy use of computer data servers include using power management controls, boosting infrastructure options, turning off servers which are not in use and consolidating resources into fewer systems if possible.

If such changes were brought in at a significant amount of data centres, it was suggested by AMD that the predicted growth in energy use by these systems could be halved.