Reports currently circulating the web point to a massive win for underdog processor manufacturer Via, with box shifter Dell poised to announce a new server product based around the Nano platform.
As reported over on The New York Times, Dell is pegged to announce this week a new server product based around the Nano chip from Via.
Aimed at the high-density server market, the new Dell XS11-VX8 – codename Fortuna – looks to pack twelve independent servers into a single 3.5” rackmountable case. Impressively, the low-power Nano chip helps each system in the case consume just 30W – a fraction of a traditional server system.
Senior director of chip marketing at Via, Epan Wu, called the deal with Dell “a big, major win” for the company – and the first major product which looks to move the low-powered Nano chip out of the netbook sector. With impressive performance-per-watt, netbook-oriented chips such as the Nano could well find a new home in the high-density server market should Dell's latest product take off.
Although the Nano's lightweight performance statistics – with a clock speed of just 1.6GHz at best they're clearly not going to be beating Xeons at any benchmarks – might make it a poor fit for processor-intensive tasks, its low power consumption makes it ideal for web server applications – which is where Dell will be concentrating its marketing.
Whether Via can make a splash in a market almost entirely sewn up by Intel and AMD remains to be seen, but the company is certainly going to give it a try.
Do you think that packing large numbers of relatively low power systems into your rack is the way forward, or would businesses be better off buying a single high-powered system and using virtualisation technology to share the power? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
As reported over on The New York Times, Dell is pegged to announce this week a new server product based around the Nano chip from Via.
Aimed at the high-density server market, the new Dell XS11-VX8 – codename Fortuna – looks to pack twelve independent servers into a single 3.5” rackmountable case. Impressively, the low-power Nano chip helps each system in the case consume just 30W – a fraction of a traditional server system.
Senior director of chip marketing at Via, Epan Wu, called the deal with Dell “a big, major win” for the company – and the first major product which looks to move the low-powered Nano chip out of the netbook sector. With impressive performance-per-watt, netbook-oriented chips such as the Nano could well find a new home in the high-density server market should Dell's latest product take off.
Although the Nano's lightweight performance statistics – with a clock speed of just 1.6GHz at best they're clearly not going to be beating Xeons at any benchmarks – might make it a poor fit for processor-intensive tasks, its low power consumption makes it ideal for web server applications – which is where Dell will be concentrating its marketing.
Whether Via can make a splash in a market almost entirely sewn up by Intel and AMD remains to be seen, but the company is certainly going to give it a try.
Do you think that packing large numbers of relatively low power systems into your rack is the way forward, or would businesses be better off buying a single high-powered system and using virtualisation technology to share the power? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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