
Good idea
I'd like to see some of this low-power microserver technology make it into home file servers, too -- less than 5 watts while sleeping with wake-on-LAN capability.
Intel is introducing a reference design for what it calls "a new category" of microservers, along with low-wattage Xeon processors to power them. The term "microserver" has been bandied about for some time now, with various and sundry vendors dipping their toes into the market for small, low-power, densely packed systems. Now …
The author writes, "To that end, Intel is introducing a reference design for what it hopes will be a burgeoning microserver market segment. The reference design will fit 16 hot-swappable microserver modules into a 5U rack.... the keynote stage Andy Bechtolsheim, an industry vet who was the engineering brains behind the founding of Sun Microsystems..."
Back in 2003, Sun released a "microserver" with 16 blades in a 3U high form factor that only used 1000 watts maximum for a fully loaded chassis - and supported RedHat, SuSE, and Solaris!
http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/validateUser.do?target=Systems/SunFireB1600/SunFireB1600
Was Sun just too visionary at the time or was the media just too biased to give it a fair shake?