SeaMicro, a Silicon Valley server maker has unveiled a new x86 server based on chips normally used in mobile devices and small laptops, which the company says uses only 25 percent of power and space used by standard servers with comparable capabilities. The SM10000, powered by 512 Intel Atom processors with Ethernet switching, is a plug-and-play standards-based server that also allows users to deploy existing software without modifications.

One of the ways SeaMicro managed to achieve such a dramatic reduction in power draw was focusing on increasing energy efficiency of server components other than the CPU, which consume two-thirds of the total power consumed by the server, according to a company news release. SeaMicro claims that because the CPU is responsible for only one-third of the server’s power consumption, increasing its efficiency has only a modest impact on overall energy use.

The new machine uses SeaMicro’s new technology for CPU I/O virtualization, which enables the maker to eliminate 90 percent of non-CPU components from the motherboard, shrinking the motherboard “from the size of a pizza box to the size of a credit card.” The server’s interconnect fabric – with throughput of 1.28 terabits per second – connects 512 “mini-motherboards” into one system. 

Another SeaMicro invention used in the server is the Dynamic Compute Allocation Technology, which combines CPU management and load balancing. DCAT enables dynamics allocation of workloads to certain CPU’s based on power-usage metrics, ensuring that the active CPU’s work in the most energy-efficient utilization ranges. 

The system will be available in the US on July 30, at base-configuration list price of $139,000. 

SM1000 specs: 

 - 512 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processors
 - 1 terabyte of DRAM
 - 0 - 64 SATA solid state or hard disk drives
 - 8 - 64 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks; or 2 - 16 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks
 - The entire system is 10 rack units tall (17.5 inches tall)