IBM has announced a new line of servers targeting Web 2.0 customers. Dubbed iDataPlex, the powerful machines are advertised also as cool. That's right, Big Blue has issued thermal imaging pictures which show that IBM's liquid cooled machines give up little heat, which also translates in 40 percent smaller electricity bills.

Usually, server rooms need powerful air conditioners which are not very effective at cooling the actual machines and consume a lot of power. However, the liquid cooled rack back is optional. The servers are made to order and can be shipped ready to run out of the box, IBM said.

"Enterprise Web 2.0 and the emerging Cloud Computing sectors are among the top high growth investment areas for Hummer Winblad," said Ann Winblad, co-founder and a managing director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, in IBM's press release.

The new server system appears to feature stateless operation, which means the servers can boot an OS image from the network very fast, enabling quick reallocation of servers to different tasks. Usually, stateless servers have no hard drives, which also makes sense because they are a significant source of heat.

"Collaborating with Intel, IBM took a different approach to design iDataPlex from the ground up to meet the needs of this unique market. iDataPlex is a tremendous step forward in delivering efficient, dense technology to Web 2.0 companies," said Jason Waxman, general manager of high density computing at Intel.

The server racks are wider but less shallow. This means that the fans in the back can run at a much slower speed to circulate the air through the blade computer. The 10 inch difference (15 inches deep compared with the classical 25 inches) may not seem much, but if one takes into account that fan power draw increases by the cube of its speed, one can quickly see why IBM struggled to make wide-but-less-deep racks.

iDataPlex will be available in the US and Canada starting in June this year. In other parts of the world, customers will have to wait until later this year.