IBM has introduced the eX5, a family of PC servers with a new memory architecture designed for virtualisation. The system promises to make big inroads into datacentre application licensing costs.

IBM said the eX5 servers were the result of a three-year engineering effort to improve the economics of operating enterprise-sized, x86-based systems.

The eX5 decouples memory from its processor using a technology dubbed Max 5, which IBM said eliminated the need to buy another server to support workloads that are increasingly memory-intensive. The company said the systems offer six times the memory scalability commonly available today, helping to flatten the ever-rising cost of operating industry-standard datacentres.

According to IBM, Max 5 allows IT departments to run 82% more "virtual servers" for the same licence costs, and reduce middleware and application expenses dramatically. The company said that businesses running a Microsoft database could cut their licensing costs by 50% by using eX5.

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