Computing blade

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In computing marketing-speak, the term blade designates a standardised module which one can plug in to a computer system - after the manner of a changeable blade in a kitchen appliance.

Physical server blades supplement processing power; virtual software blades add specialised processing.

Physical blade servers have the advantage of increasing the processing density that can be housed in a standard 19-inch rack designed for electrical equipment and can also reduce cabling complexity. They comprise several processing units, each with one or more CPUs that plug into a blade chassis that in turn is mounted in a 19 inch rack. The blade chassis typically also houses one or more power supplies and additional technology to connect to networks and storage devices.

Hardware vendors such as IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, and software vendors like Informix (with its DataBlades) have attempted to popularise the blade approach.

Compare the concept of a RAID device as a sort of computer storage blade.