Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s announcement that its new PowerNow technology will be available on its Opteron line of processors could mean a lot to some enterprise customers.
The technology, which actually became available in May, despite AMD's announcement this week, is designed to let the processor run more slowly when demand is light, and then to return to full speed when needed. The technology is the same as the company's "Cool and Quiet" technology intended for laptop applications.
For AMD customers this technology could be crucial. "We have a lot of our customers in the server world who are really facing a lot of power infrastructure issues," said Margaret Lewis, AMD's commercial software strategist. According to Lewis, customers are finding that they can't provide more power to their data centers than they already have, and they can't provide more cooling, either. She said that the best they can do is make judicious use of the power they have.
"Hotter processors take more power, and they require more power to cool," Lewis said. She added that in many cases, data center constraints mean they can't have more power, and even those enterprises that can add more would rather not do it. By slowing the processor down when it's not working hard, the power requirement is reduced, and the resulting heat generation is reduced.
Microprocessor AdvancesWhile the PowerNow technology has been built into Opteron processors produced since May, machines with these processors need a BIOS update from AMD to make it work...."
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