IBM next month will start powering its blade servers with Intel Corp."s low-voltage version of its "Nocona" processor, a move designed to reduce the energy consumption and heat generated by the dense-form-factor systems. Using the processor in IBM"s BladeCenter HS20 systems will reduce the power consumption per processor by about 50 watts and by up to 1.5 kilowatts per chassis, said Scott Tease, worldwide director of product management for BladeCenter.
That reduction will mean less heat being generated, which will lessen the burden on air conditioning systems in the data centers, Tease said. "Whenever we don"t use power, we don"t generate heat," he said. The low-voltage Xeon processor—which, like all chips with the Nocona core, can run both 32- and 64-bit applications—consumes about 55 watts, a little more than half of the 103 watts consumed by the regular Xeon.