A Silicon Valley startup is promising to cut server energy and space requirements by 75% using gear built on Intel Atom processors.

 

SeaMicro says it has been in “stealth mode” for three years developing the SM1000, an internet-optimized x86-server. 

 

It says the low-end Atom processors are ideal for meeting the needs of internet servers, whose primary role is to handle millions of relatively small tasks, such as searching and viewing web pages.

 

The “mismatch between volume servers and the now dominant internet workload is the primary cause of the rapid increase in server power consumption,” the company said.

 

Additionally, it said the CPU, usually the focus of power reduction efforts, consumes only one third of the power in a server. To cut the power load of non-CPU components, SeaMicro “transformed the volume server into a high density, low power, single-box cluster computer, optimized for internet traffic.”

 

“SeaMicro further improved total cost of ownership and reduced the power consumed in a data center solution by integrating the functionality traditionally found in an entire data center rack – compute, storage, networking, server management and load balancing – into a single, low-power system.”

 

Dave Andersen, an assistant professor at the Carnegie Mellon computer science department, told the Wall Street Journal that the Atom-based servers “work well” on the computing jobs tested.