Relief has arrived for IT and facilities managers who need to pack more computing capacity into existing data centers, while simultaneously reducing total costs. For some time, Intel has been working to deliver new levels of energy-efficiency through silicon, processor, platform and software innovation. The results of these efforts are now clearly evident in the new generation of servers based on the Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5100 series (code-name Woodcrest). These servers boost performance by up to 3 times and energy-efficiency by more than 3 times compared to previous generation, single-core Intel Xeon processor-based servers. They are delivering the best performance, price/performance and energy-efficiency in their class, and can help IT organizations dramatically increase compute density, while reducing power and cooling requirements.

These processors also include silicon-level support for virtualization, another critical technology for optimizing data center power and cooling efficiency. By enabling multiple applications and operating systems (OSs) to be consolidated per server, virtualization can help IT organizations consolidate their server infrastructure, so there are fewer systems to power and cool-and more room for expanding compute capacity within existing facilities.