Intel's new chips bring more performance, but microserver adoption may ultimately depend on what the end application is, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

In some cases, price may matter less for companies that need scalability, McCarron said. Different microserver designs are just reaching the market, and there is intense competition between Intel and AMD for those building mega data centers, in which thousands of servers are deployed to process fast-moving cloud applications, McCarron said.

Intel also said it was on track to release its low-power Atom chip for microservers in the second half of this year. The 64-bit chip will draw six watts of power and have all key server features, including virtualization and ECC memory. The chip will be made using a 32-nanometer process, so it will not include 3D transistors.