Austin, Texas based startup Calxeda has developed a server processor that is designed for low power server systems. Based on ARM (News 
- Alert) core, Calxeda’s EnergyCore server-on-a-chip is a new breed of servers. Designed to consume 1.5 Watts, the new SoC processor consumes less than one tenth the power of today’s most energy efficient server processors, claims Calxeda. And it is being aimed at workloads such as web serving, big data applications, scalable analytics such as Apache Hadoop, media streaming and mid-tier infrastructure such as caching and in-memory scalable databases.
Now, Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert) Co. has laid out a plan to use this server technology to power its new low-energy server development platform.
In a statement, Barry Evans, CEO and co-founder of Calxeda, said, “We believe a new era of energy-efficient servers is now dawning for scale-out workloads, and today we are introducing the foundational architecture that will enable this breakthrough. While we are proud to launch our Calxeda EnergyCore processors, we are even more thrilled with the many partners who are joining us on this journey.”
In an industry first, claims Calxeda, the EnergyCore processor SoC includes a supercomputing-class 80-Gigabit fabric switch and an integrated management engine with power optimization software, all on a single piece of silicon. The EnergyCore SoC also includes a full complement of server I/O features and a large 4MB ECC L2 cache, enabling system vendors to offer a complete server node that consumes only 5 watts, including 4 GB of ECC memory and a large capacity solid-state drive.
“The HP-designed system contains 288 Calxeda servers in a single 7 inch (4 Rack Unit) chassis,” added Evans. “A single rack of HP’s Calxeda servers delivers the throughput of some 700 traditional servers and dramatically simplifies the infrastructure needed to hook them all together and manage the cluster.”
“For Web 2.0 companies to continually deliver new and innovative services, they must radically reduce the space, energy consumption and cost of their data center infrastructure,” said Glenn Keels, director of product marketing in the Hyperscale Business Unit at HP. “HP is incorporating Calxeda’s EnergyCore SoCs into the HP Redstone Server Development Platform for testing, developing and benchmarking hyperscale applications. Coupled with our HP Discovery Lab and the HP Pathfinder program of industry leaders, we can shape the future of Extreme Low Energy Computing,” noted Keels.
"The fundamental constraint in the world of massively parallel approaches to data management and analytics is power,” said Mark Shuttleworth, sponsor of the Ubuntu (News - Alert) operation system, and founder of Canonical, a key Calxeda partner. “Today marks the beginning of a new way of thinking about what is possible in data and analytics. What is happening here at Calxeda and HP is the beginning of that revolution in the data center," asserted Shuttleworth.
Ashok Bindra is a veteran writer and editor with more than 25 years of editorial experience covering RF/wireless technologies, semiconductors and power electronics. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves
