Even before the black clouds of recession began hanging over all our heads, cost effective IT productivity has been in vogue. Doing more with less is the name of the game in the data center. Dell’s Energy Smart platforms aim to do just that by optimizing both IT productivity (or IT performance) and energy consumption (or OpEx). Dell engineers work at this with the same fervor you would expect from a Toyota Prius engineer. We’ve made significant improvements in the system-level efficiency including the development of high-efficiency power supplies, enhanced airflow and fine tuned the dynamic resource management within the server.

At the data center level, it is clear that addressing the energy efficiency of the IT equipment is a critical first step, but it’s not the whole solution. Our focus continues to be an inside-out approach to achieving a sustainable balance between performance and consumption. Combining Energy Smart technologies with the practice of purging unused or underutilized equipment, increasing server utilization through deploying virtualization and adopting intelligent policies and practices will ultimately go a long way in achieving the right balance. The “Greenest” data center is not the one that most efficiently delivers power to the IT equipment, but, instead, the one that manages to make the best use of the IT equipment it has commissioned.

Dell’s collaboration with AMD works so well because we share a focus on striking the right balance between performance and energy consumption. During the last couple of years, our combined efforts have pushed the envelope in responding to ever increasing demands for greater performance while actually lowering the power consumed. For example, the Dell PowerEdge Energy Smart 2970 with the Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ HE processor delivers great performance per watt. Conspicuous energy consumption is definitely out of fashion. AMD and Dell have got you covered.

Daniel Bounds is Senior Manager of Power and Cooling Solutions for Dell. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.