In fact, the power wall has been a factor quite often limiting the performance
of high-end machines. Intel hit it hard with the Pentium 4 (especially
Prescott) and had to change their entire design strategy forthwith, and
graphics card manufacturers also now design to power consumption targets
(set
by the slot and auxiliary power input specifications) instead of raw
hardware
limits.
The fact is, the actual processing hardware will consume only about
half the
total power in a typical datacentre. The rest is spent on the cooling
systems
required to remove the resulting heat. Hardware tends to be packed
about as
tightly as possible under heat dissipation considerations - and
servers tend to
be painfully loud due to the high airflow requirements. High
performance-
per-watt is now a very important metric for all types of servers. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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