Intel invests in cloud services company

Intel Capital and several other investors have placed $40 million into Virtustream, a data centre co-location and services company that has introduced a cloud computing service, reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

The funding will help develop Virtustream's infrastructure and expand the xStream cloud platform, which lets customers manage both internal and external computing resources from the same screen.

Before its focus on cloud computing, Virtustream primarily offered services to help customers deploy and manage virtualised servers.

Google is one of the world's biggest users of electricity and has invested $40 million in two wind farms in North Dakota, US, to power its millions of servers, states Digital Journal.

The wind farms are run by NextEra Energy Resources and generate an energy output that can power 55 000 homes.

Google, known mainly as an Internet search giant, is also investing heavily in renewable energy.

Appro International and Supermicro are rolling out enhanced servers incorporating Nvidia's Tesla 20 series graphics technology, says eWeek.

These servers are the latest to bring traditional CPUs from Intel and AMD together with GPU technologies to offer businesses and high-performance computing environments greater computer density and energy efficiency.

Nvidia and AMD, through its ATI graphics business, have aggressively pushed GPUs for mainstream computing.