Sun Microsystems has met with the Environmental Protection Agency, Lawrence Berkeley Labs and chipmaker AMD to define a standard metric to measure the energy efficiency of servers.

The server maker likened the proposed metric to the miles per gallon standard in the US for new cars which is determined by an independent agency. It allows consumers to perform a fuel efficiency comparison for different makes and models.

The metric is expected to be formalised this summer.

Sun has been touting the power consumption of its servers and workstations, claiming that the electricity bill is becoming an ever greater item on IT budgets.

The company unveiled its new SunRay 2 thin clients last week, which it claims consume only five per cent of the power of a regular desktop system.

Sun has also been touting the low energy consumption of its Ultrasparc T1 processor unveiled last November.

The chip, formerly known as Niagra, uses about 70w of electricity, according to company data, compared with 150w-200w for most other server microprocessors.