HP Announces ARM-based Servers

Hewlett Packard skeleton to make P.C. servers using low-energy processors formed on ARM Holdings' designs.

HP mentioned the apparatus would be cheaper to run than stream alternatives.

UK-based ARM's fragment design was originally created for use in smartphones and other mobile devices.

The British definite mentioned the treat was "a initial step" towards stepping up its participation in a zone dominated by Intel's X86-based processors.

The chips will be made by Texas-headquartered Calxeda.

It mentioned its Energycore server-on-a-chip would use as small as 1.5 watts. It claimed that is reduction than a tenth the power of today's many energy-efficient server processors.

Since the chips give off reduction heat, HP is able to put more of them in a singular enclosure. As a result, it said, a few companies would find their apparatus took up to 94% reduction space.

But HP stresses the chips should not be noticed as an alternative, rsther than than a replacement, for Intel's more absolute products.

"There is always a traffic off, you have reduction electrical pull but you have reduction estimate power," David Calmers, HP UK's arch technology executive for servers, storage and networking, told the BBC.

He mentioned the ARM-based chips would be fitting for delivering immobile web pages, but not tasks that entangled complicated number crunching.

HP moreover skeleton to offer Intel's energy-efficient Atom processors as an alternative.

To help customers confirm what most appropriate suits their needs, the US definite moreover skeleton to open "discovery labs", so they can tie in their chips to their workload.

The initial lab will open in Houston, Texas, and others are programmed in Middle East and Europe.

Mr Chalmers mentioned he expects that by 2015, the low powered technology would account for about 10% of all servers' workload.

"Energy final are a flourishing regard opposite the patron base. It's being felt many keenly at the hyperscale finish - companies similar to LinkedIn or Facebook with hundreds of millions of users," he said.

"But moreover applications in more normal scale institutions."

ARM's designs are many ordinarily found in smartphones, such as Samsung's Milky Way S2, together with televisions and inscription computers.

If Calxeda's use of its technology proves popular, it could turn other remunerative chartering income stream. A new inform by investigate definite Gartner referred to HP was the world's largest server vendor, claiming about 30% of the market.

"We praise HP's enhancement in this space and the investment being made to hasten the growth of a new category of compelling, energy-efficient servers," mentioned Lance Howarth, ARM's executive clamp boss of marketing.

"[We] think that ARM low-power technology and extended associate ecosystem will give the preferred substructure for HP to expostulate a new call of enhancement in the server market."

However, attention watchers are more guarded, observant a few customers might find the chips problematic.

"It's enlivening that HP is violation divided from the Intel monopoly. But that is what the program is written to run on," mentioned Chris Green, leading technology researcher at Davies Murphy Group.

"It's all really well them rolling out an ARM-based chip, but the fact is that the technology isn't indispensably going to be 100% matching with all the program indispensable to run on it."