Intel pushes low power quad-core Xeons

Intel has unveiled two energy efficient 50-watt quad-core Xeon processors. The L5320 and L5310 chips run at clock speeds of 1.82GHz and 1.6GHz respectively. 

The chipmaker currently sells only 80-watt and 120-watt server chips, running at clock speeds ranging from 1.60GHz to 2.66GHz.

The power consumption data refers to the cores only and does not include power consumption by the front side bus packaged with the processing cores.

Low power processors allow companies to stack more servers in their data centres without increasing claims on power supply and cooling facilities. Intel touts the new chips for applications in densely populated data centres as well as blade servers.

The chip's lower power consumption can also lead to energy cost savings of up to US$6,000 over the lifetime of the system, Intel claimed.

The estimate assumes that the chip replaces an older architecture and that users deploy virtualisation technology to increase server utilisation.

Intel had promised to release the low voltage quad-core chips in the first quarter of this year.

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