Intel outs 15W Pentium 350 chip for servers

CHIPMAKER Intel has introduced a low-power Pentium 350 processor aimed at low-end servers.

Intel had previously talked about its intention to move into the low-end server market by producing 'server versions' of the Atom processor, supporting technologies such as ECC memory. Now Intel has taken the baffling step of going into this market with a Pentium branded processor, the dual-core 1.2GHz Pentium 350.

Although Intel's Pentium brand is extremely well known, the firm has relegated it to cut down processors effectively taking the place of the Celeron. Nevertheless, the Pentium 350 supports Hyperthreading and most importantly has a thermal design power (TDP) of just 15W.

What makes Intel's Pentium 350 a server oriented chip is the lack of an on-chip GPU and support for ECC memory with the memory controller supporting two channels. There's no support for Intel's Vpro virtualisation technology, presumably meaning that the Pentium 350 was designed for very specific traditional workloads.

Intel's Xeon range of processors dominates the commodity server market but the company needs to produce low power chips to compete with ARM-based servers in the future. It had been expected that Chipzilla would serve this market with an Atom processor but for now the 15W Pentium chip will have to fit the bill until 22nm Atom chips start rolling off Intel's production lines next year. µ