Intel® Intelligent Power Technology Improving energy efficiency

Available in servers built with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series, Intel® Intelligent Power Technology conserves power while delivering advanced power-management capabilities at the rack, group, and data center level. Providing the highest system-level performance per watt,¹ Intel Intelligent Power Technology helps business gain capacity to grow, increase IT performance, and save energy costs.

Dynamically scaling power consumption

Integrated power gates in Intel Intelligent Power Technology allow individual idling cores to reduce to near-zero power independence from other operating cores, reducing idle power consumption by up to 50 percent versus previous generation two-socket server processors.¹ Integrated power gates can also be used to autonomously manage processor power, or can be controlled manually.

Automated low-power states automatically put processor and memory into the lowest available power states to meet requirements for the current workload, while not impacting performance. The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series delivers the following over first generation Intel® quad-core processors:

5 times improvement in power management capabilities.²
5 times as many operating states.²
5 times reduction in idle power.²
5 times faster transitions to and from low-power states.²

Improving energy efficiency with instrumentation

The Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager utilizes instrumentation available on Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series and other system components to report and cap system power. This system level technology provides a foundation for rack, data center, and facility level management capabilities to improve overall data center energy efficiency and resource flexibility.

Learn more about Intel® Intelligent Power Technology

View the Intelligent Power Node Manager animation
Automated Energy Efficiency for the Intelligent Business whitepaper
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Intel's approach to data center efficiency

¹ Intel internal measurements of 221W at idle with Supermicro* 2xE5450 (3.0GHz 80W) processors, 8x2GB 667MHz FBDIMMs, 1x700W PSU, 1x320GB SATA hard drive vs. 111W at idle with Supermicro software development platform with 2xE5540 (2.53GHz Nehalem 80W) processors, 6x2GB DDR3-1066 RDIMMs, 1x800W PSU, 1x150GB 10k SATA hard drive. Both systems were running Windows* 2008 with USB suspend select enabled and maximum power savings mode for PCIe link state power management. Measurements as of Feb 2009.

² Intel® Xeon® processor 5300 series data based on Intel Xeon processor X5365 SKU (B-3 stepping), Intel Xeon processor 5400 series based on Intel Xeon processor X5470 (E-0 stepping), and Intel Xeon processor 5500 based on Intel Xeon processor W5580 (D-0 stepping). Number of operating states includes all frequency operating points, including Intel® Turbo Boost Technology and base frequency. Idle power based on C6 idle power for Intel Xeon processor 5500, and C1E for Intel Xeon processor 5300 and 5400 SKUs. C6 also requires OS support and may vary by SKU. Faster transitions based on Package C1E exit transition latency.