Servers generate an incredible amount of heat. Microprocessors and power supplies, in particular, require heat sinks and fans to remove heat or risk costly damage. Generally, fans pull cool air in from one side of the rack and exhaust hot air out the other.
Generally, upgrading server performance means upgrading a cooling system. More processing power means more heat. But Intel’s latest Haswell family of processors actually reduces power usage while also delivering higher performance.
Haswell is Intel’s second line of 22nm scale processors, following the successful Ivy Bridge series. Server-level processors in the series provide as many as 18 cores on a single chip, along with memory controllers, timers and even a voltage regulator.
The Haswell series brings computer hardware to a new level of integration and control. Approaching the level of a system on a chip (SoC) without sacrificing high-level performance, Haswell processors have built-in circuitry to manage their own performance and increase efficiency.
The earliest processors in the series were known for extending the battery life of mobile devices due to their low power consumption compared to previous processors. While Haswell chips intended for servers do not provide as significant a reduction in power consumption as those intended for mobile devices, they do provide increased processing power while consuming less electricity and producing less heat than previous server processors.
Upgrading data center cooling systems is costly and disruptive, but usually necessary to increase performance and reliability. Haswell series’ servers provide increased capacity without necessarily producing increased heat. Additionally, data center capacity can be increased with hardware upgrades without extensive infrastructure upgrades.
UNICOM Engineering uses its expertise in platform design to help your computer hardware stay within the right temperature ranges to ensure smooth operations.