IBM aims to build servers that provide the capabilities that today's business workloads require and detailed the why and how in a New York Times article this weekend from IDG.

It's all about using special circuits and accelerators, and proprietary co-processors that can speed up specific tasks for specific industries such as medicine and cloud configurations, according to Jai Menon, CTO of IBM's Systems and Technology Group.

Here's Menon on why IBM is taking such a unique approach to computing:

"One size really doesn't fit all," Menon said. "It isn't really the case that x86 is the right answer for everything, or Power is the right answer for everything."

IBM already offers some servers that provide specific capabilities. One is its Cloudburst appliance that melds blades and traditional CPUs with Nvidia graphics processors. Big Blue is even developing a whole new programming language to boost performance of the new systems in development.

IBM even envisions a new kind of memory that could transform servers in the future.

IBM is clearly front and center is building what customers need today and what they'll need, and expect, from leading hardware players in the future.