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Data Center Efficiency

Data center efficiency

Data center efficiency is critical to business needs as computer requirements grow, density increases, and power and cooling demands climb. Intel is helping the industry address areas where data centers consume power including power conversion and distribution, cooling, and even lighting.

To do this, Intel is focusing on data center performance metrics and delivering instrumentation to improve energy efficiency at the processor, platform, and data center levels.

Developing better performance metrics

In collaboration with industry standards organizations such as the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) and The Green Grid, Intel is helping to develop a more reliable metric that measures energy consumption and performance for all levels of utilization-idle to peak-that a server would experience in a typical day, week or month. Developing more reliable industry-accepted metrics will give server manufacturers:

  • Better guidelines for designing energy efficient servers
  • Better ways to demonstrate energy efficiency to customers
  • Fairer product comparisons for competition on the basis of energy efficiency

Related resources

White papers

Driving efficiency at the processor level

Intel has been delivering greater performance in the same power envelope year after year. With the transistor breakthrough of hafnium-based Intel® 45nm high-k metal gate technology, Intel continues to deliver revolutionary server processor speeds while reducing the amount of electrical leakage from transistors that can hamper chip and server design, size, power consumption, noise, and costs.

Through silicon process, microarchitecture improvements, and the use of new materials, we're delivering energy-efficient server technology without compromise to performance:

  • With the Intel® Xeon® processor 7400 series, acheive up to 48 percent better performance¹ and up to 40 percent better performance in a virtualized environment² than previous generations
  • Up to 9x performance gain and 18 percent less operating power³ with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series compared to single-core Intel Xeon processors

Improving energy efficiency at the platform level

Increase performance density, lower total cost of operation, and improve availability with the Intel® Dynamic Power Technology, available on compliant Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 servers, that delivers power reporting and capping capabilities. Intel continues to make strides in energy efficiency at the platform level with improved server utilization, energy efficient platform components, and efforts throughout the server ecosystem. At the platform level, hardware-assisted Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)§ helps to provide maximum system utilization by consolidating multiple environments into a single server, workstation, or PC. With Intel® Dynamic Power Technology and Demand–Based Switching, server performance and power consumption are dynamically optimized to maximize server rack density.

Some additional efforts include:

  • Work with industry and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine the best performance for servers, including potential cost savings from the use of energy efficient products
  • Work with the Climate Savers Computing Initiative* to deliver significantly increased PC and server energy–efficiency by uniting industry, consumers, government, and conservation organizations
  • Increase performance density, lower total cost of operation, and improve availability with the Intel® Dynamic Power Technology, available on compliant Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 servers, that delivers power reporting and capping capabilities
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Promoting data center efficiency

Five ways to maximize Web tier efficiency

An overview of five strategies for maximizing Web tier efficiency through more efficient server technologies.

Lowering overall power consumption

Intel is a board member of the Green Grid, a nonprofit consortium of information technology companies and professionals seeking to lower the overall consumption of power in data centers around the globe.

Improving power efficiency

A recent Data Center Journal’s article discusses Intel’s study that achieved roughly 75 percent efficiency with facility–level 380V DC distribution by using best–in–class components compared to the 50–percent power efficiency of the typical data center.

Data center cooling solutions can now include liquid and air cooling.

Intel achieved breakthrough power and heat densities of 15 kilowatts per cabinet and more than 500 watts per square foot of server room area, at a lower cost than most data center designs.

Intel air economizer POC

Learn about Intel’s investigation of air economizers to optimize power and cooling in their data centers. The proof of concept (PoC) test used 100 percent air exchange over a 10–month period with an extreme range in temperature, humidity and air quality. The result was an estimated data center power savings of 67 percent and a potential savings of USD 2.87 million for a 10–MW data center.

Collaborating with utility companies

Intel, in collaboration with Northern California Utility Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) helped develop rebates for consolidation-driven data center deployments, becoming a model for other utilities in the US and world.

Enabling simplified management for large data centers

Data Center Management Interface, derived from IPMI 2.0, reduces the cost and complexity of server platform management in high density data centers.

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¹ Performance gain claim based on TPC–E Benchmark running Intel® Xeon® processor X7350–based platform vs. Intel® Xeon® processor X7460–based platform results September 2008; configuration details above. Reduced Platform power claim based on vConsolidate Benchmark on VMware ESX* Server results; configuration details above. Comparison between Intel® Xeon® Processor 7400 and 7300 Series based on vConsolidate Benchmark result measured on VMware ESX Server v3.5.0 by Intel Corporation in September 2008.

² Virtualization performance gain claim based on vConsolidate benchmark running Intel® Xeon® processor 7350 vs. Intel® Xeon® processor 7460 results September 2008; configuration details above.

³ Intel estimates as of Nov 2008. Performance comparison using SPECjbb2005* bops (business operations per second). Results have been estimated based on internal Intel analysis and are provided for informational purposes only. Any difference in system hardware or software design or configuration may affect actual performance. For detailed calculations, configurations and assumptions refer to the System Configuration later in this document. [up to 9x]

§ Intel® Virtualization Technology requires a computer system with an enabled Intel® processor, BIOS, virtual machine monitor (VMM) and, for some uses, certain platform software enabled for it. Functionality, performance or other benefits will vary depending on hardware and software configurations and may require a BIOS update. Software applications may not be compatible with all operating systems. Please check with your application vendor.