Intel’s been cooking on the Green IT front recently. First, its researchers have been able to increase microprocessor throughput by 41 percent without increasing power consumption. Neat, but not shockingly unexpected from a chipmaker nor will the innovation appear commercially soon. What’s more interesting is the release of Intel’s Energy Checker Software Development Kit that allows ISVs to analyze the energy efficiency of their applications. Better yet, they can now benchmark the amount of energy it takes to complete useful work. Let’s hope it spells the end of comparatively low-priority or trivial apps that inexcusably exhaust a server’s CPU and drive up energy costs.