Chip makers, including Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), are ushering in a new era in processor design by adding hardware-enabled features to their wares. The goal is to either replace functions that have traditionally been done via software or, more often, significantly improve the operation of the software.

As an added bonus, those hardware-assisted processor functions improve overall system performance without increasing the heat generated, the vendors claim, allowing corporations to keep a lid on utility costs and reduce the need for exotic cooling strategies.

"This is something that has been coming for a long time," says Rick Sturm, president at Enterprise Management Associates. "It's the natural course of evolution, and an affordable and rational thing to do to put some of this functionality down on the chip level."

As computer platforms and overall system management increase in complexity, IT professionals are demanding that systems have 100 percent availability, subsecond response times and instant problem resolution, Sturm says. Those goals are no longer strictly the purview of any one area -- silicon, software or human intervention -- but are now being addressed by taking advantage of advances on all fronts.

"IT is strangling" from the costs of operations, Sturm says. "We're spending so much money on management that it is preventing us from innovating and addressing the needs of business."