Intel on Monday unveiled two new Quad-Core Xeon processors, the L5320 and the L5310, which boast a reduction in power consumption between 35 and 60 percent. Creating processors with greater efficiency is a response to the IT industry's demand for lower costs associated with powering and cooling hardware such as dense Internet datacenters and blade servers.

Intel welcomed two new additions to its family of quad-core processors Monday with the arrival of the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors L5320 and L5310. The two server  chips qdfsk157 the added benefit of energy efficiency, operating on 50 watts of power.

"We are thrilled to drive further records in lower power consumption and we won't stop here. Our engineers and architects are passionate about delivering even more power-saving innovations down the road," added Kirk Skaugen, vice president of Intel's digital enterprise group and general manager of the server platform group.

The Greening of IT
The two new chips offer reduction in power consumption between 35 percent and 60 percent over the company's existing 80- and 120-watt quad-core server chips, according to Intel. The two energy efficient chips are in response to the growing demand in the IT industry for more cost-effective solutions that reduce electricity bills and the associated cooling costs.

"Intel has really responded to the industry's call to deliver unprecedented breakthroughs for datacenter energy efficiency," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president of Intel Digital Enterprise Group and general manager of the Server Platform Group. "IT managers can get outstanding quad-core Intel Xeon server performance today and at no premium to dual-core products."

The chips, which use 12.5 watts of power for each of the four processing engines, are a significant advancement, Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld, because they "provide more performance and use less power doing it.

"In effect, they are one of the biggest examples that Intel understands that green is a major emerging requirement and that they are stepping up to meet it," Enderle explained.

A Convenient Truth
Intel says servers based on the new low-power, quad-core processors are designed for dense Internet datacenters, blade servers and industries such as financial services, where the scales and densities of servers are highly sensitive to power, real estate and cooling costs. Based on Intel's evaluations, the potential cost savings for companies replacing their aging infrastructure with the quad-core Xeon processors and deploying virtualization technology can be as great as US$6,000 each year over the lifetime of each server.

For businesses, Enderle said, the more energy efficient chips will mean the possibility of a large replacement cycle for older, less efficient hardware. "This seems very likely and could be very lucrative for Intel and its partners if it accelerates, as expected, over the next two years."

Consumers will also notice a benefit, according to Enderle. This technology, he said, can prevent or postpone the need to increase cooling and power requirements for existing datacenters, avoiding or delaying the spending of billions of dollars across the segment for site upgrades and relocations.

"In addition, it could help cut power utilization with obvious savings in power cost at a time when the cost is sharply increasing," Enderle continued. "Finally, it could also allow a firm to be eligible for power company incentives -- like being exempt from brown outs -- making the technology very attractive."