A paper co-authored by researchers from Facebook and multicore chip specialist Tilera reports that servers comprising large numbers of low-power processor cores deliver clear performance and power advantages in certain circumstances. Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat focuses on the processors being “four times more energy efficient,” whilst Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge reports that they “boost memecached efficiency” over alternatives with fewer cores. Stacey Higginbotham sees the work as validation of the claims being made by companies such as Tilera, with their alternative chip designs. She also points to the need for more generic benchmarks with which to compare the performance of different architectures, especially as the hardware configuration for a single massive database may need to be radically different from that used in supporting other usage requirements.