At Intel's IDF show in Beijing, Sun Microsystems announced a Blade 8000 server based on a two-socket, quad-core Intel Xeon 5100 system due to ship later this quarter that will utilise new dynamic power technology to reduce power consumption by 15 to 20 percent with no performance degradation.

Sun also revealed details of a four-socket system that will use forthcoming Xeon 7300 "Dunnington" processors, part of the Penryn family, offering 128GB of RAM and a 1600MHz FSB. The vendor said the system should ship later in the year.

Dynamic power technology allows administrators to monitor and manage the power consumption of I/O components as well as CPU and memory resources, so that voltage supply can be decreased when they are under-utilised.

As well as reducing the electricity leakage on the chip and cache to almost zero, Intel’s forthcoming Penryn architecture, due before the end of the year, uses Deep Power Down technology that puts the supply to each processing core under the control of the chipset, which can throttle it up or down as required.

“We have not made the exact consumption figures public yet, but the only power consumed during the idle process is that needed to supply the wake-up process, so that the CPU knows when it needs to power up,” explained Intel vice-president and director of business operations for the Digital Enterprise Group, Stephen Smith.