Date: 15/11/2011

1.5W consuming ARM-based server-on-a-Chip from Calxeda

Calxeda has unveiled its ARM-based "EnergyCore" Server-on-a-Chip, which consumes 1.5 watts, company claims that it is the industry's first server processor to achieve this milestone. HP has announced it is incorporating Calxeda technology in its first-generation of extreme low energy server development platforms.

The EnergyCore is suggested for 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.

"All the stars are in alignment: Web 2.0 data-driven businesses, cloud computing, open source portable software, power consumption at crisis levels and the emergence of server-class performance of ARM processors," said Barry Evans, CEO and co-founder of Calxeda. "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."

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 includes a full complement of server I/O features and a large 4MB ECC L2 cache, enabling system vendors, Calxeda's customers, to offer a complete server node that consumes only 5 watts, including 4GB of ECC memory and a large capacity SSD.

"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."