According to some, Intel is trying to focus its future business on their Atom processor, vying to get it included in anything that needs a CPU. Not servers, of course: Intel will keep pushing its Xeon CPUs for servers. Except for those instances where an Atom processor actually makes sense in a server…
A number of companies, including Microsoft, are experimenting with the use of the energy-efficient Atom CPU in servers. As long as the server isn’t doing a lot of computation — say encryption, or scientific analyses — an Atom CPU may work just fine. It seems like an attractive choice for machines running Windows Home Server.
This is, in many ways, history repeating. Anyone remember the power-saving 486SL series of chips from the early 90s?
Via PC World.