Multi core systems

The thinner the die the less power is required to move electrons around it, so the more efficient the processor should be and the less excess heat is likely to be generated. When Intel moved from 130nm to 90nm dies, for example, the power requirements for some of its chips actually rose. Likewise it had further problems when it moved to the 65nm silicon from which its Xeon server chips are now made.

In particular you should look for low TDP (Thermal Design Power) ratings which, although not quite a performance per watt measure, will at least tell you whether a processor has been designed with power efficiency in mind.

Multi-core ought to be good news when it comes to efficiency. It enables, for example, one 2-way quad-core server (effectively 8 processor cores) to replace four 2-way servers fitted with old-fashioned single-core chips. This means just one power supply and one motherboard generating heat instead of four. There’s also just one system disk spinning away, one set of cooling fans and so on — leading to quite clear and measurable gains in terms of reduced power and cooling requirements. But equally, the introduction of multi-core processors means more processing power in less space. This is where your blade chassis comes. Although rack-optimized servers are still being deployed, for maximum processor density and the ultimate in potential efficiency, blade servers are the way forward.

Two major players in Blade chassis segments are IBM and HP

HP C-Class Chassis:

About the only difference between the c3000 and HP’s high-end BladeSystem c7000 is that the c3000 has a smaller chassis that holds fewer blades and so costs less. The c7000 takes a maximum of 16 blades, while the c3000 is limited to eight; however, the blades that go inside both enclosures are exactly the same.

Entry level c3000 comes with 2 PSU’s and 4 fans, which are sufficient for running ONLY 2 blades and enclosure link module, used to connect several c3000 systems.

c7000 enclosure

10U size with 8- full height blades or 16 half-height blades

Interconnect bays

8 bays; up to 4 redundant I/O fabrics

2 onboard administrator

465/685 are all Dual core –i.e. AMD

460/680 are either dual/quad core i.e. Intel

IBM Blade center:

IBM’s blade server product line is based around the 14-slot BladeCenter chassis, which it launched in 2002. Last year, IBM launched an upgrade, known as BladeCenter H, which added support for high-speed connectivity such as InfiniBand, along with larger power supplies and cooling systems. It also makes a ruggedised version, the BladeCenter T, which it sells largely to telcos and military establishments, in both standard and high-bandwidth versions.