Just as abruptly as Oracle had stopped work on a massive data center last year in Salt Lake City, Utah without any explanation, the enterprise software product maker has now resumed work on the project, an Oracle spokeswoman said. When it's finished, the data center will take up some 240,000 square feet and "very likely" cost around $285 million.

Considering Oracle recently scooped up Sun Microsystems and its data centers, resuming construction on the Salt Lake City project indicates the company is pretty serious about expanding its on-demand software business. Oracle only operates a few SaaS (software as a service) business applications, which brought in $779 million in on-demand revenue during the company's fiscal 2009.

Even before construction on the new data center resumed, it was clear where Oracle's focus was headed. The company has been talking up is Fusion Applications, an next-generation suite that is supposed to take the best bits and pieces out of Oracle's other product lines and mesh them together into a single package.

IBM on Thursday said that its Power7-based 750 Express and Power 755 models qualify as the first four-processor systems in the industry to receive an Energy Star logo.

"IBM has been a strong partner to the ENERGY STAR program," said Andrew Fanara, U.S. EPA Energy Star program manager. "U.S. EPA appreciates IBM's ongoing contributions to both the development of Energy Star IT equipment standards and their commitment to work with U.S. EPA to improve energy efficiency across the data center ecosystem to deliver environmental benefits both to the data center and through the innovative application of IT capabilities."

In order to qualify, a computer system has to meet specific power supply and energy efficiency ratings, as well as provide users with data on power use, thermal output, and processor utilization.

According to IBM, its Power 750 Express and Power 755 systems are three to four times more energy efficient than the Power6 systems they replace.

AMD is looking to take the server and datacenter markets by storm and has announced the availability of the "world's first 8- and 12-core x86 processor for the high-volume 2P and value 4P server market." According to AMD, it's Opteron 6000 Series platform offers up to a 119 percent improved performance (floating point) while still maintaining low price and power.

"As AMD has done before, we are again redefining the server market based on current customer requirements," said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manger, Server and Embedded Divisions, AMD. "The AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform signals a new era of server value, significantly disrupts today's server economics, and provides the performance-per-watt, value, and consistency customers demand for their real-world datacenter workloads."

In addition to improved floating point performance, AMD says its new 6000 Series increases integer performance by up to 88 percent, while the enhanced integrated memory controller supports four channels of DDR3 memory for up to a 2.5x improvement in overall memory bandwidth.

AMD is also touting "significant new power management features," and compared to Intel's offerings, the No. 2 chip maker says "it feels like the power efficiency is clearly in our court."

Kingston Technology this week unveiled new low-voltage registered dual inline memory modules (RDIMMs) validated for use in Intel's upcoming Westmere-EP processor-based server platforms. Each of the three kits sip just 1.35V and, according to Kingston, will help lower the cost of ownership in datacenters.

"Intel worked closely with Kingston in developing and certifying their low-voltage DDR3L memory for our upcoming Westmere-EP triple-channel server platform," said Geof Findlay, Memory Ecosystem Manger, Intel. "Kingston's low-voltage server memory combined with Intel's 32nm processor utilzing the Westmere architecture will help datacenters increase performance while reducing overall energy costs."

The kits will be available in the following configurations:

• 2GB 2Rx8 PC3L-10600 RDIMM (CL9 @ 1.35V), KVR1333D3LD8R9S/2G
• 2GB 1Rx4 PC3L-10600 RDIMM (CL2 @ 1.35V), KVR1333D3LS4R9S/2G
• 1GB 1Rx8 PC3L-10600 RDIMM (CL9 @ 1.35V), KVR1333D3LS8R9S/1G

No word yet on price or availability.