Intel Corp., a San Jose, Calif.-based chip company, today announced a range of low-power chips aimed at driving down the power requirements inside data centers. Among them were two new Xeon 3400 chips; a version that consumes only 45 watts will be released this year while the company is going to start selling a 30-watt version in 2010.

“This is a brand-new segment for us,” said Sean Maloney, executive vice president at Intel, which also announced a new Microserver reference design that would allow hardware makers to cram as many as six low-power Xeons into a single 1u rack — which translates into about 228 servers per cabinet. The servers are targeted at providers of web services, Intel said.

Maloney pointed out that in a few years, power is going account for nearly 25 percent of a data center’s costs — a situation Intel, with these new chips, is looking to address. Intel has already started shipping these chips to its OEM partners, such as Silicon Graphics. (More details on Intel’s web site.)