Not all hardware is dead--skinny servers heating the market
Published: 07 Mar 2001 15:17 GMT
The skinny-server movement took another step forward, last Wednesday, when start-up, Fibercycle unveiled its plan for marketing ultrasmall, energy-efficient servers.
Small is in, as far as servers go. California-based Fibercycle says its WebBunker servers, which will ship next month, will be capable of cramming 12 processors into a box measuring 3.5 inches high. A standard data centre rack will be able to hold servers containing 504 processors. Current computing density tops out at 84 processors.
The push toward smaller servers is driven by design changes that reduce the heat produced by a roomful of computers, or at least make it easier to vent excess heat. If left unchecked, heat can knock out or even melt servers.
"The greatest barrier to super-density is thermocooling," Jim Gargan, director of product marketing for Intel-based servers at IBM, said in a recent interview. "This is the start of a trend in the industry where servers begin to look more like stereo components."
A hot server is also one that consumes a lot of energy, and with 13 percent of all energy in the US going toward running computer equipment, conservation is in order, according to the company.
"Today's general purpose servers have become a bottleneck in delivering bandwidth-intensive applications over the Internet," Fibercycle chief executive, Spero Koulouras, said in a statement.
WebBunker will incorporate Crusoe processors from Transmeta, which were originally designed for notebook PCs and Internet appliances. Crusoe chips generally consume less power and consequently produce less heat than the average Intel processor.
Like other companies in the field, Fibercycle is adopting the "blade" server design that originated in the telecommunications industry. With a blade design, the server is a circuit board that plugs inside a larger rack. The rack also eliminates redundant cables.
By contrast, traditional servers in the PC industry come encased in their own plastic boxes and are then slid into racks.
The company also will introduce a feature called CAMP late this year that will analyse Web requests and then direct them to particular processors.
The market right now is largely populated by start-ups like Fibercycle and RLX Technologies. Many large PC companies, however, will enter the market soon. Both IBM and Compaq Computer have said they will release ultradense servers.
Intel is working on chips and chipsets that will blend power-saving techniques developed in the notebook processor world with server technologies such as ECC (error-correcting code) for minimising data corruption.
"We're very concerned about the compute density. We have mobile technology that we can bring to bear" to reduce heat, said Paul Otellini, general manager of Intel's Architecture Group.
The WebBunker system comes out next month. A six-processor server will start at $10,900.
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