The new "Sierra Forest" processor, according to Intel, will more than quadruple power efficiency

 The new "Sierra Forest" processor, according to Intel, will more than quadruple power efficiency

For the first time, Intel stated that their "Sierra Forest" processor will have 240% greater performance per watt than its current generation of data centre CPU.

As part of a larger industry effort to reduce electricity usage, Intel announced on Monday that a new data centre processor due out next year will be able to handle more than double the amount of computer work that can be done for each watt of power required.

For the first time, Intel stated that its "Sierra Forest" processor will have 240% greater performance per watt than its current generations of data centre chip during an electronics technology conference hosted at Stanford University in Silicon Valley.

Huge quantities of electricity are used by the data centres that run the internet and online services, and technology companies are coming under growing pressure to maintain or lower their energy consumption. This has forced chip makers to concentrate on finding ways to fit more computer work into a single chip.

Ex-Intel executives created the business Ampere Computing, which was the first to market with a microprocessor designed specifically for handling cloud computing operations effectively.

Similar goods from Intel and competitor Advanced Micro Devices have also been announced; AMD's product will be on sale in June.

The "Sierra Forest" CPU from Intel, which has lost market dominance in data centres to AMD and Ampere, was announced on Monday as being on schedule for release in 2019.

For the first time, the business is dividing its data centre processors into two categories: a "Granite Rapids" chip that will prioritise performance but use more power, and a "Sierra Forest" chip that uses less power.

According to Ronak Singhal, a senior fellow at Intel, clients of the business may combine older software onto fewer servers inside a data centre.

 By consolidating data that is presently spread over five, ten, or fifteen servers into a single, new chip, Singhal said he could save energy.  There are fewer systems required the higher the density.