The Role of x86 Processors in the Virtualized, Energy-Constrained Datacenter

The x86 market has gained momentum in Europe in recent years, and thanks to the rapid adoption of 64-bit processing and the always-improving multicore systems, x86 has come to represent the majority of server activity, in unit terms as well as from a business perspective. Standardization, a more price-aggressive approach, and the greater flexibility of this type of system have driven this success, and x86 servers are now omnipresent and able to handle a variety of demanding tasks, from network to HPC and from ERP to databases. At the same time, the proliferation of x86 servers has caused one of the major challenges.