Intel Drops Low Power 'Centerton' Atom Bomb on Micro Server Market
Intel isn't coming out and saying that Centerton is in response to AMD's SeaMicro acquisition, but according to VentureBeat, it's not all that hard to connect the dots. The way Intel figures it, micro servers could account for 10 percent of all servers within the next three years, and the chip maker isn't about to let AMD steal the show.
Centerton is a system-on-chip (SoC) Atom derivative with a power envelope of just 6 watts. That's not quite on the level of Medfield, Intel's Atom part for smartphone and tablet applications, but it's still extremely power efficient, especially compared to Intel's current server chips, which consume anywhere from 15 watts to 45 watts. Centerton, which is slated to ship in the second half of this year, will have two 32nm processing cores, use error correction code (ECC) memory, support 64-bit code, and feature Intel Virtualization Technology.