From an article at The Register, news that Super Micro has a new breed of rack mounted server
This doesn’t mean that low-powered Atom and similar processors – like VIA Technologies’ Nano and C7 chips – are suddenly going to take over the data centers of the world. But as some vendors have argued – Microsoft being one and Rackable Systems being another – sometimes the most energy efficient thing to do is to use small servers with a modest amount of computing power and storage to match up against fairly modest workloads.
Super Micro is distributing two machines, both of which use Intel’s Atom processors, as part of its “server building block solutions.” It says that it’s delivering the most expansion and best mix of storage of any server maker that is shipping Atom-based gear. The Atom boards plug into special rack and tower chassis made specifically for small form factor motherboards.
There is increasing interest in low end processors from groups like MS Research’s Cloud Computing Futures group (which I talked about here), and even SGI demo’d a concept computer based on the Atom at last year’s SC in Austin.
