Because they were designed for laptops and netbooks, Atom CPUs can be quickly put into sleep/hibernate states and then quickly woken up, said Dave Ohara, a consultant who runs the , unlike desktop and server CPUs.

According to Microsoft, today's average server sits idle 75% of the time. Putting idle Atom servers to sleep could cut their energy usage by another 90%, says Microsoft, to about 3 to 4 watts for the entire system.

Judging by the US$300 to $400 cost of Atom-based netbooks, Ohara said that racks of Atom-based server blades could be made for even less.

"Intel hates this, because they want to sell you more expensive multicore Xeon processors," Ohara said. "But sometimes small is more beautiful."

Intel did not immediately return a request for comment.