HP Tees Up AMD Servers In Show Of Green Spirit

Hewlett-Packard flew its green flag in a big way Tuesday, introducing several new environmentally friendly initiatives across its product and services groups, including the rollout of its first ProLiant G6 servers based on Advanced Micro Devices' new six-core Opteron processors.

"This is all of our businesses coming together," said Bonnie Nixon, director of environmental sustainability and global citizenship at Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP, introducing a number of new green products and programs from the company's hardware, software and services groups at a press conference in San Francisco.

The additions to HP's Eco Solutions Program include everything from a downloadable widget that trains PC users to shut off their computers when not in use to an improved Carbon Footprint Calculator for printing administrators to renewed pledges for Energy Star and EPEAT compliance across several product stacks and accelerated goals for reusing recycled hardware materials.

But for data center operators and their channel suppliers, the big news from HP is likely to be Tuesday's introduction of 11 servers in the company's young ProLiant G6 lineup of server products, seven of which are based on AMD's new six-core processors, code-named Istanbul. HP initiated its G6 series with 11 servers on March 30, in concert with Intel's release of its Xeon 5500 series of server chips, code-named Gainestown, which are based on the chip maker's next-generation Nehalem microarchitecture.

As with the initial lineup of Intel-based ProLiant G6 servers, HP is promising startling return-on-investment time frames for customers refreshing older servers with the new Opteron-based models, all of which feature the elaborate sensor arrays and power management tools built by HP for the original G6 offering.

"These new energy-efficient servers use 50 percent less energy than an industry-standard server from 2005. That means that they pay for themselves on energy savings alone," said Doug Oathout, an HP vice president in charge of green initiatives in the company's Enterprise Storage and Servers (ESS) group. Oathout claimed replacing a four-year-old server with a new AMD-based ProLiant G6 would yield ROI in six months, while switching out two-year old systems for the latest models would deliver payback in about a year.

Next: New ProLiant G6 Specs