Intel Inside Baidu’s Big Iron

Posted on December 15, 2007
Filed Under China Business |

Marbridge Daily, quoting China Securities Journal:

According to a source at Baidu, the search engine giant is secretly cooperating with Intel to build a lab to develop leading domestic web servers. Reportedly, the lab has already begun operations. Testing and engineering staff for the facility will be comprised of employees from both Intel and Baidu; hardware equipment will include cutting-edge server assemblies and solutions from Intel, including some as-yet unreleased high-end processors. During the current stage, a portion of Baidu’s systems and databases will undergo testing at the joint lab.

China Radio International (CRI) has more:

China’s Internet search leader Baidu.com announced on Friday that it will join hands with U.S. chip-making giant Intel in establishing a laboratory for new technology research and development.

‘Beijing Business Today’ reported that the laboratory is focused on developing a super server cluster, which has been nicknamed “Chinese Deep Blue” by insiders at Baidu, referring to the IBM chess-playing computer that defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

Analysts say Baidu’s computing ability will rank first in the world in terms of server capacity. However, more growth is necessary due to the rapid increase in Chinese Internet users.

The chief scientist at Baidu, William Chang, said, “in light of the growth of Chinese Internet users, data flow and content, Baidu has to at least triple its server capacity each year to meet users’ demands.”

Baidu and Intel are old comrades: Intel provides Baidu’s server platforms and they signed an memo of understanding in 2006 to support development of client-side search platforms.

Google, an also-ran compared to Baidu in China, mostly uses AMD for its processors.

For companies such as Google and Baidu, energy consumption is a key consideration. The CRI article mentions that with the new Intel hardware, Baidu “…estimates its consumption of electric power can be reduced by 3.5 million kilowatt hours with the help of new servers and solutions.”

Google’s choice of AMD was seen as an endorsement of the opteron chip’s “performance per watt”.

According to an AMD-sponsored study, worldwide data center energy consumption is surging. CRN reports:

Worldwide power consumption in data centers is growing at a clip that would require an additional 10,000 megawatts of capacity by 2010 if more efficient practices aren’t put in place, a new study commissioned by Advanced Micro Devices states.

To put it in perspective, unchecked global data center growth would translate to new energy needs approaching half the output expected from China’s massive Three Gorges Dam at full capacity — all just to power new servers coming online in the next three years.

Google and Yahoo plan to be carbon neutral by the end of this year.

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