Talk about powerful processors and the names Opteron and Xeon jump to mind. These are the processors of choice of Datacenters around the world, with specifications that sound like they belong in a sci-fi movie. All that processing power comes at a cost though. Energy. The future may not belong to the most Powerful, but the most Energy-Efficient!
I’ve seen a lot of overloaded servers, but very rarely have I seen servers that are overloaded because their processors weren’t powerful enough. The processing powers of the processors these days are huge, and very rarely are they fully utilized! Even then, these processors consume a large amount of power. A decade ago, that wouldn’t have caused much of an up-roar, when all people wanted was more more more. Now that we are in the age of more-for-less, its only logical that this apply to processors too. David Chernicoff, the Guru of everything Datacenter, believes that the future is for processors like the ARM(by ARM) and the Atom(by Intel).
ARMs are extremely energy efficient, with the Atom working its way up to the same level. These processors are already widely used in various mobile devices, for which they were initially designed. According to Chernicoff, Datacenters will soon be stuffing large numbers of these highly efficient processors into a single box to deliver significant computing power to the Datacenter. Two examples of this already happening are startups seaMICRO and Smooth-Stone. So maybe you should think twice before ordering that top-of-the-line processor.
About the Author:
Hamish works as a Senior Software Engineer in Bobcares. He joined Bobcares in July 2004, and is an expert in Control panels and Operating systems used in the Web Hosting industry. He is highly passionate about Linux and is a great evangelist of open-source. When he is not on his xbox, he is an avid movie lover and critic.
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