Dell joins AMD, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, the founding members of The Green Grid, announced last month. Rackable Systems and Egenera have also joined the consortium, which seeks to provide a discussion forum and best-practices resource for IT managers trying to control power consumption in their data centers.

Power consumption has become one of the most pressing issues for IT managers. Not only do the processors in servers consume a lot of power, but more and more electricity is required to run the cooling infrastructure needed to keep rooms of servers up and running.

Michael Dell, the PC maker's founder and chairman, plans to give more details on the company's decision to join The Green Grid on Thursday during his keynote at WCIT, Ruiz said. Dell is an exclusive customer of AMD's fierce rival, Intel, despite years of flirtation between the two companies. But AMD's most recent server chips consume less power than Intel's, which AMD's partners have tried to use as a selling point against Dell.

The WCIT meets every two years to discuss the world's technology problems and opportunities. Delegates from more than 80 countries plan to vote later on Wednesday on specific recommendations for solving problems related to digital access, health care, and privacy and security.