Intel launched a data-center chip using low-power technology found in smartphones , stepping up competition in the nascent microserver market and winning a nod from Facebook.
The Atom chip rolled out on tuesday uses much less electricty than Intel's previous processors for servers and comes as Intel's rivals also eye the low-power server niche.
Energy-sipping chips similar to those used in smartphones and tablets lack the horsepower of traditional server processor made by intel. But data centers that combine many low-power chips instead of just a few heavy-duty processors may provide more computing power for less money, and use less electricity.
Microservers have yet to gain serious traction with traditional corporate customers like banks and manufactures , and the potential size of the market remains unclear.
But Internet giants like Facebook, Amazon.com and Google have been experimenting with ways to use low-power chips to make their data centre more efficient.
At an intel event launching the Atom chips, a facebook infrastructure executive said the social network has found that low-power chips excel at processoing the 4.5 billion updates, likes post and comments its 1 billion active users add to the site every day.
Intel dominates the PC and severs markets, but was slow to design chips for mobile market, where chips using technology from ARM holdings have become ubiquitous.
In October, ARM unvelied new chip designs aimed at microservers. ARM belives servers using low power chips based on its design could account of data centers by 2020.
Diane Bryant, in charge of intel's data center business, declined to say how large Intel belives the microservers market could become . She said the Atom chips have been chosen over 20 upcoming products focused on microservers, storage and communications.
