Editor's Letter: Processors Get Interesting Again

By pushing energy-saving designs and dual-core technologies across all their platforms, chip vendors could give the market solid reasons to sit up and take notice. In our cover story, CRN Senior Editor Edward F. Moltzen talks to various industry players about all the potential impacts of global cooling across mobile, desktop and server platforms.

That isn&t the only thing bringing comfort to the custom-systems channel in this otherwise up-and-down, start-and-stop year. In other stories, we look at how solution providers are wrapping managed services around servers, tackling the growing health-care vertical and getting ready for the arrival of virtualization acceleration technology, a development that some believe may pack more punch for system builders than currently meets the eye.

New processors may no longer generate the same excitement as when the PC industry was young, but multicore processing, server virtualization and energy-reducing designs will certainly generate some heat in the coming year. Look for CRN&s expanded hardware coverage in Custom Systems Magazine to stay up on these trends.