HP Reportedly Going with ARM Servers
October 26, 2011
Hewlett-Packard is planning to sell ARM-based servers and is working with Calxeda (née Smooth-Stone), the three-year-old Texas start-up partially owned by ARM, on the boxes, according to Bloomberg, which got it from "two people familiar with the matter." The Dow Jones is saying the same thing…
Obviously the unconfirmed but likely move represents a challenge to Intel, which depends on HP for almost 20% of its revenue. HP shifts about 30% of all servers, more than anybody else in the world, and all of them run on x86 or Itanium processors, which burn hot, a fact the energy-efficient, small-footprint ARM is seeking to exploit as clouds and their huge underlying server farms proliferate.
Calxeda is scheduled to make a product announcement November 1 that Dow Jones says will be a prototype along with a proof-of-concept program and more details about partnerships. Calxeda is understood to be chasing other major server and storage makers too but sources told us HP is the main attraction at the announcement. Calxeda reportedly figures its widgetry will also be good an analytics.
ARM’s serious thrust into servers wasn’t expected just yet. It still can’t do 64-bit and even when it can it should still be an uphill fight.
Calxeda is supposed to have a four-core 32-bit SOC based on ARM’s Cortex 9 that produces a node with a thermal envelop of under five watts and runs on Linux. Thousands of nodes should be linkable. Intel won’t have an Atom chip running under 10 watts until next year.
The Calxeda deal was reportedly one of the last ones put together by ousted HP chief strategy and technology officer Shane Robison, who was made a fall guy last week for the highly unpopular Autonomy $10 billion+ acquisition and the suggestion that HP’s would spin off its PC division – a decision that’s expected to be reversed.
HP is said to want to run Windows 8 on the Calxeda machines when it comes out next year. HP and Dell are also depending on Windows 8-on-ARM to save their bacon as far as tablets go.