Project Moonshot: HP Plans Low-Power Servers

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett Packard Co unveiled plans to develop extremely low-energy servers, partnering with companies such as chip designers ARM Holdings Plc and Advanced Micro Devices Inc in a move that could threaten the dominance of Intel Corp.

Explosive growth in data centers that drive the Internet is taking up increasing amounts of electricity and tech companies are looking for ways to make servers more efficient and trim their energy bills.

HP, at an event at its research center in Palo Alto, said the effort, dubbed "Project Moonshot," aimed to find an alternative to the massive computing infrastructure needed to support the Web and billions of mobile devices.

The Silicon Valley giant is working with Austin-based start-up chipmaker Calxeda -- which uses the ARM technology in its microprocessors -- to create servers aimed at companies running large-scale remote computing operations such as Twitter and Facebook. ARM is an investor in Calxeda.

The new servers will significantly reduce both power and space requirements, Paul Santeler, vice president of HP's Hyperscale business within its server division said.

HP's first Calxeda-based pilot server platforms will be available in the first half of next year, Santeler said, but did not reveal when HP expects to sell the production version.

Energy-efficient chips made using ARM technology are widely used in tablets and smartphones and ARM executives have said they want to make them popular for personal computers and corporate servers too.

British chip designer ARM last week unveiled its first 64-bit architecture, which it said would expand its reach into enterprise applications such as servers currently dominated by Intel.

As well as chip designers, HP's program will include storage, networking and software companies.

Along with Calxeda, HP is also developing other servers using Intel's Atom processor.

Intel's chips are used in 80 percent of the world's personal computers and servers and, while they are more powerful than ARM-based chips, they also use much more electricity.

Santa Clara, California-based Intel is rushing to use its lead in high-tech manufacturing to make its processors more energy efficient.

Nvidia Corp, another semiconductor company, said in January it was developing processors for PCs, servers and supercomputers based on ARM's architecture under the title "Project Denver."

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; editing by Andre Grenon)
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[tleb]

01:17 PM on 11/02/2011

Nothing revolutionary about low power servers, IBM/3M/Emerson are working on this, so is the Dept of Energy, DARPA and Intel, Cray, Texas Instruments, NVIDIA...

[Zach2194]

11:05 AM on 11/02/2011

Flying cars please.

[Angilena Christopher]

03:20 AM on 11/02/2011

Well the Technology looks Great and its Going to be a big support in the industry but I still think it will take some time but I am looking forward to it.................http://365socialmedia.co.uk/

[userjoe1020]

02:12 AM on 11/02/2011

Problem is, you'll need about 1800 ARM processors (minimally) to do the work of a single 6 core Xeon. - There go your power savings!

[becky bradshaw]

09:09 AM on 11/02/2011

Could you please provide a reference?

[becky bradshaw]

09:18 AM on 11/02/2011

Potential sources that appear to dispute the point (1800 ARM processors ~ 6-Core Xeon).
1. http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/06/28/cpu_coremark_smackdown/
2. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/hp_redstone_calxeda_servers/

[gdatomic]

01:49 AM on 11/02/2011

Just interesting (given the title) to note a Steve Jobs' quote from the 1990's that I read recently...

Essentially, technology doesn't have to be revolutionary to be important.

To which I'd add, the most important technology offers evolutionary gains that deliver dramatically more power.

[inguatu]

06:34 AM on 11/02/2011

yes because quoting $teve Job$ on an article that has nothing to do with Apple or the him makes sense from a non-sheep perspective.

[LeftLeanWing]

12:19 AM on 11/02/2011

Digital Toilet Paper ?

[JohnTheMac]

07:17 AM on 11/02/2011

lots of places have that. (digit=finger)

[Tom Weidermeijer]

01:13 PM on 11/02/2011

NO! I heard they were going to make PCs and tablets!!!

[Harvey32]

12:11 AM on 11/02/2011

After they screwed up the Palm acquisition, the Pre3 and Touchpad rollouts, the off again-then on again commitment to consumer devices and the board's shameful hiring of a CEO without even talking to him (Leo Apotheker), then firing him, then hiring *Meg Whitman*.....

Well, let's just say that my confidence in HP is less than robust.

[userjoe1020]

02:10 AM on 11/02/2011

I don't think I'm as optomistic about them as you are. Everything HP touches turns to $#@!

[Alfredo Osorio]

08:37 PM on 11/02/2011

100% Agree

[Tom Weidermeijer]

01:12 PM on 11/02/2011

If you were to hire a president of a university, you would interview and vet all of the candidates. You would find the best person for the job.

HP... [looks around board room]... okay, Meg, you're it.

[Deidentified]

11:05 PM on 11/01/2011

HuffPo headline (on link to this page): "HP Plans Revolutionary New Product"

low power == good
low power != revolutionary

[jsarets]

12:56 PM on 11/02/2011

I agree, but then again, Transmeta's Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architecture with dynamic runtime machine code generation was a revolutionary approach to the performance per watt problem, but it failed in the marketplace in large part because it was too revolutionary for prospective customers to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses in the proper context. A 64-bit ARM architecture which can scale to large SMP or NUMA machines is not quite as revolutionary, but it makes quite a lot of sense for typical transaction services. Intel and AMD have evolved the x86 architecture toward maximizing instruction-level parallelism for single-thread performance. Big Data, however, struggles more with the sheer volume of requests than with the rate at which they can process any one of them. A relatively simple architecture scaled to a large number of hardware threads is closer to what they really need.

[fopplssiegeparty]

11:03 PM on 11/01/2011

I thought maybe they would manufacture catchers mitts.

[becky bradshaw]

09:27 PM on 11/01/2011

Isn't it completely refreshing to read a story about Hewlett-Packard that does not center on a merger, a layoff, or a new CEO.

HP, I want to believe.

[Tom Weidermeijer]

01:14 PM on 11/02/2011

Poor Bill & Dave, spinning in their graves.

[MyTake]

08:59 PM on 11/01/2011

Oh, from the headline, I thought maybe they designed a PRINTER that only used PAPER made from Hemp Fiber, a environmental friendly RENEWABLE resource.

Gee, when they reduce power consumption on their SERVER products, maybe they can sell them to Corporations that are now SWITCHING OVER to the Hydrogen Economy, such as these;

-- In 2010, Fuel Cells 2000 profiled 38 companies that collectively ordered, deployed or installed 15 MW of stationary power, 1,000 forklifts and 600 backup power units. This new 2011 report includes 24 new customers and 10 companies previously profiled that purchased additional units. Companies leading the charge with fuel cell deployment include:

– Walmart — 6.8 MW at 17 stores; 70+ forklifts

– Coca-Cola — 2.1 MW at four locations; 72 forklifts at two bottling facilities

– Sysco — 500+ forklifts at several locations, hundreds more on order

– Whole Foods — 1.2 MW at four grocery stores, 60+ forklifts --

Maybe HP can get those Communist Chinese factories to install a couple of Bloom Fuel Cell Electrical Generators to help the Environment out on both sides of the electrical consumption equation!

[JWoode]

08:49 PM on 11/01/2011

But it requires 16 special cartridges at $36.00 each.. and they last a week.

[planetjeffy]

03:33 AM on 11/03/2011

2 weeks if you shake them