It will soon be possible to establish Intel x86 server clusters without building Ethernet or Fibre Channel fabrics to link them together.

3Leaf Systems just announced that it has gained licensing rights for the QuickPath interconnect system that will allow its virtualization processors to unite CPU, memory and I/O on the motherboard, essentially allowing individual servers to communicate directly, much like mainframe CPUs.

To date, the company only had a license for the AMD HyperTransport system, so the Intel agreement opens the company's technology across the entire x86 universe.

One the major benefits that users will see is the ability to shift computer, memory and I/O resources across the datacenter as needed, a concept 3Leaf calls the "dynamic datacenter." Groups of servers that are largely idle will be able to transfer their resources to units that are hitting their maximums, greatly alleviating network bottlenecks and application latency.

AMD and Intel are expected to come out with 3Leaf-enabled CPUs within the next two years.