One of the biggest issues of running servers is of course the tremendous electricity consumption, which can be a lot more expensive than the server itself.
Hence, Microsoft is now experimenting with Atom-powered servers as a possible solution for a more efficient energy use. The Atom N270 - used in most netbooks - has a thermal design power (TDP) of only 2.5W. This means keep a server cool becomes less of a concern. Jim Larus, Microsoft Research Director of Software Architecture, further explains:
Of course, the Atom is a lot less powerful than a Xeon, but a bunch of these Atom processors could achieve the same processing power for a lower power consumption. In terms of performance, a single-core Atom is comparable to a Pentium 4 clock-for-clock, but the power consumption is night and day. For a quick comparison, the average Pentium 4 has a thermal design power of 84W. Since Atom is designed for netbooks, it can quickly switch between sleep and active state, unlike desktop processors.
Different variations of the Atom processor have interesting features for servers as well. For example, the Atom 230 and 330 are EM64T enabled. The dual-core Atom also benefits of Hyper-Threading Technology like all others so it has four threads, which can still offer a nice performance. The Atom Z520, Z530 and Z540 are virtualization enabled.
Another advantage to Atom-based systems is lower cost. To give you a quick idea, the average netbook costs around $400 to the end-user. Now, remove the screen, keyboard, touchpad and all other non-essential hardware in a server and the cost will decrease considerably.
However, Intel is not too enthusiatic with the Atom-core and prefer to continue selling the Xeon due to its higher cost.
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