While IBM held a 44% share of the blade server market, once dominant HP has 25%.

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More than a decade later, HP was granted one of the first patents for blade server architectures.

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There are also 1.8-inch products available in 200 GB and 400 GB storage capacities used in more space constrained blade server and micro-servers.

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By the company's count, a single combined thin client and blade server uses 44 watts of energy compared with an energy-chewing desktop PC's 80 watts.

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This so-called blade server, controlled by a Transmeta microprocessor, was designed merely to be a foot soldier in an army of servers that, when lashed together, could demolish the performance of much more sophisticated systems for much less cost.

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Secondly, Cisco Extended Memory technology allows each blade server in a cluster to support more than twice as much memory as a conventional two-socket server, which makes it easier to construct grids that process terabytes of data in memory.

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When a server breaks, Google junks it, just like an old razor blade, and slips in a replacement.

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