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NY times blog

The era of such a deeply philosophical data center question is upon us. A pair of stealthy start-ups have placed smartphone chips at the center of their plans to create a new breed of low-power servers. They’re hoping that this radical take on data center hardware will attract the likes of Google, Facebook and Microsoft, which all battle energy costs on a huge scale.

SeaMicro, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has put together a server based on Intel’s Atom chip, which currently slots into things like netbooks and other mobile computing devices. Intel expects Atom to drive its cell phone strategy in the coming years as well.

Exact details on the SeaMicro product have been tough to come by, since the company remains inside the cone of silence, but people familiar with SeaMicro’s hardware say it will pack about 80 Atom chips in a very small chassis. The company also has some proprietary hardware and software twists, these people said.

As we explore the possibilities with virtualization, thin clients and application streaming, how cool would it be if we could access our applications, our data from any device? Interestingly as we move down this route, what happens to the pc, the notebook and the mobile phone? If I could get my system health/status report on an Intranet without having to contact the operations team, could we see a move from reactive to proactive IT – could the IT teams be deploying and managing the infrastructure rather than fault finding and reporting/managing issues?

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