I've been writing on the topic of little green servers for a while and discussed the idea of Intel Atoms and ARM processors in servers years ago.
SeaMicro announced its latest servers using the Intel Xeon E3-1260L which now supports a higher compute and memory capacity per core. The press announcement had SeaMicro, Intel,and Samsung discussing the announcement.
SeaMicro Extends the Benefits of Micro Servers to All Segments of the Scale Out Data Center Market in Collaboration with Intel and Samsung Semiconductor
SAN FRANCISCO, January 31, 2012 – SeaMicro™, in cooperation with Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) and Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., today announced the widespread availability of the first fabric-based Intel® Xeon® micro server, the SeaMicro SM10000-XE™. The addition of the quad-core Intel® Xeon®-based SM10000-XE to the SM10000™ family makes SeaMicro the first and only company able to bring the massive benefits of micro servers to all segments of the scale out data center market.
But, if you have 64 Xeon's in a box is this really a micro server? To give you a different perspective let's look at the back of the latest SeaMicro server.
Up to 16 10Gbe connections, above is 8 10Gbe and 24 1Gbe. This is not good for some one who lives on the quantity and complexity of network ports.
If you have high costs for rack and stack, network support, then a SeaMicro box becomes more appealing.
"We are a trusted partner in the US intelligence community,” said Chad Wagner, president of CompSec. “We have worked with our customers to deploy both SeaMicro’s Atom™-based and Xeon®-based systems. The exceptional compute density and low power draw have made them the right choice for mission critical applications. Our intelligence community customers have also found success using SeaMicro’s Freedom Supercompute Fabric to deliver huge amounts of compute power to remote and hard-to-access locations. This greatly reduces response times, provides faster and more in-depth analysis, and helps to advance their mission.”