HostingCon 2013 is right around the corner, so I’d like to give everyone a preview of the work that our partner InterWorx has done to get their control panel and clustering technology running on our gear. Ever since the spike in interest from World Hosting Days back in March, we’ve been working hard to enable hosting providers to create Calxeda-based offerings. A key part of that is the hosting control panel, and we’re pleased to be working with InterWorx on creating the first control panel compatible with ARM servers. With just a little bit of elbow grease, we’ve gotten the InterWorx control panel and clustering technology to run on one of our 24-node systems. We’ll be showing a live demo at HostingCon next week, so drop by the Calxeda booth (#905) to talk to us and the InterWorx team.HostingCon 2013: See InterWorx Control Panel running on EnergyCore at the Calxeda booth
June 13, 2013 By 1 Comment
HostingCon 2013 is right around the corner, so I’d like to give everyone a preview of the work that our partner InterWorx has done to get their control panel and clustering technology running on our gear. Ever since the spike in interest from World Hosting Days back in March, we’ve been working hard to enable hosting providers to create Calxeda-based offerings. A key part of that is the hosting control panel, and we’re pleased to be working with InterWorx on creating the first control panel compatible with ARM servers. With just a little bit of elbow grease, we’ve gotten the InterWorx control panel and clustering technology to run on one of our 24-node systems. We’ll be showing a live demo at HostingCon next week, so drop by the Calxeda booth (#905) to talk to us and the InterWorx team.Inktank and Calxeda Partner to Transform Ceph Storage Solutions
June 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Today, Calxeda announced a partnership with Inktank in which we will together optimize and promote Ceph-based solutions in the market. It’s obvious why Ceph has been gaining lots of traction lately: it has been selected by Ubuntu as an official package within their distribution, and also for its compatibility with OpenStack cloud deployments. What may not be as obvious, however, is why and how Calxeda enables “microserver” designs that are a perfect fit for distributed applications like Ceph.
As you might have seen from last week’s announcement at Computex in Taipei, two of the three debuted systems are targeting the storage server markets, with a few additional designs that can’t yet be disclosed. More and more system vendors and customers are starting to realize the synergy in new “scale-out hardware” built for this new emerging trend of distributed storage software. But why?
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Calxeda Announces New Partners and Platforms at Computex 2013
June 5, 2013 By 1 Comment
Here at Computex this week in Taipei, east meets west to talk some serious techno-bubble, and eat some awesome shabu-shabu. The Calxeda suite has been jam packed with 10-20 visitors at a time, reservations only, to see the latest in Calxeda technology. Calxeda was demonstrating a new SATA-cable-free storage board-set, (aka “TerraNova”) and was thrilled to have three new companies showing off their shiny new objects: Aaeon, Foxconn, and Gigabyte are offering new storage and web servers based on the Calxeda EnergyCore SOC for their cloud computing customers targeting fast-growing Asian markets.
Foxconn’s 4U Storage Server with 60 drives
Aaeon’s new Indus Cloud Storage Server
Gigabyte’s new Web Server
I was going to write a blog, but ….
May 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Sometimes when you issue a press release, you need to blog about it to make sure everyone understands the significance of the moment and the news. In this case, Calxeda announced that Fedora had chosen and installed Calxeda-based Boston Viridis clusters (96 nodes) to equip the Fedora community with production ARM servers. This is their shiny new build environment… So, I was going to blog about it, but then read Charlie Demerjian’s article in SemiAccurate. ’nuff said. You nailed it, Charlie. Thanks!
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/05/15/redhat-put-calxeda-based-arm-servers-in-to-production/
HP Moonshot: It’s a lot closer than it looks!
April 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Ok, most everyone knows that a “Moonshot” is something grand; something audacious and bold; and typically something very, very far away (252,088 miles away to be precise). But in this case, part of that distance has already been covered by the team that HP and Calxeda assembled over 18 months ago as part of HP’s Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem initiative. In case you missed it, HP and its partners announced Moonshot servers on Monday, April 8, in New York City. While ARM vied with Intel for attention, many were trying to get a bead on the ARM aspects, since HP had already announced last year that “Gemini” would initially be Intel Atom based.. Here’s a snapshot:
- As HP has often reiterated, Moonshot is designed to be processor agnostic. They previewed prototype hardware from Calxeda, Applied Micro, and TI in addition to Intel Atom, which will ship first.
- Calxeda has fully functional quad-node Moonshot Server cartridges working at 1.4 Ghz in the labs (See photos !)
- Calxeda will be able to support HP’s launch schedule to ensure their customers have access to production-quality Calxeda-based Moonshot servers later this year, with up to 180 quad-core EnergyCores in the 4U Moonshot server chassis at 1.4 Ghz. That is 4 times more dense than the Atom server they showed at today’s event.
- As the Anandtech review concludes, Calxeda can deliver 80% better performance per watt that the best-in-class Xeon processor, even in a relatively CPU-intensive web application. Expect the HP system to enable similar value when it is ready for the test.
- Unlike Calxeda EnergyCore, Intel’s new Centerton chipset has not been generally available for testing. We all look forward to seeing how well it will do against ARM parts when it begins shipping.
- It is interesting to note that Intel felt compelled to announce Centerton’s replacement (Avoton) on the same day that HP announced support for Centerton,
Calxeda powered the very first Moonshot Development Platform, Redstone, announced in November, 2011, and is proud to be one of the founding members of the Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem. In 2012, we began deploying Redstone systems in HP’s Discovery Lab, at ISV partners, and in HP’s customer datacenters. Our joint testing and validation work in these projects accelerated the ARM server ecosystem and enhanced customer’s understanding and comfort with ARM-based servers.
We proved that you can really build a dense server cluster with ARM processors. Yes, it is real LINUX, indistinguishable from any other server, except the exceptional performance per watt. Working together, we have met with scores of datacenter users and independent software vendors, working to understand which applications make sense on the first generation of ARM servers in Moonshot.
We’ve learned a great deal on this journey together. And now, we hover just above the surface, preparing to touch down with an ARM-based HP Moonshot system in just a few short months; the Calxeda cartridge is running in our labs and will be ready for production later this year.
Ready for touchdown? So are we! We’d like to thank HP for being a great partner, and for their courage to try something really new; something that deserves the name “Moonshot”. And thanks to everyone who has been testing Redstone systems for jumping on board early. But make no mistake; this trip is not over; it has just begun.
Perspectives From Linaro Connect
March 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment
– From Larry Wikelius, Co-Founder and VP Ecosystems, Calxeda:
The most recent Linaro Connect (Linaro Connect Asia 2013 – LCA), held in Hong Kong the first week of March, really put a spotlight on the incredible momentum around ARM based technology and products moving into the Data Center. Yes – you read that correctly – the DATA CENTER!
When Linaro was originally launched almost three years ago the focus was exclusively on the mobile and client market – where ARM has and continues to be dominant. However, as Calxeda has demonstrated, the opportunity for the ARM architecture goes well beyond devices that you carry in your pocket. Calxeda was a key driver in the formation of the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG), which was publicly launched at the previous LinaroConnect event in Copenhagen in early November, 2012. LEG has been an exciting development for Linaro and now has 13 member companies that include server vendors such as Calxeda, Linux distribution companies Red Hat and Canonical, OEM representation from HP and even Hyperscale Data Center end user Facebook. There were many sessions throughout the week that focused on Server specific topics such as UEFI, ACPI, Virtualization, Hyperscale Testing with LAVA and Distributed Storage. Calxeda was very active throughout the week with the team participating directly in a number of roadmap definition sessions, presenting on Server RAS and providing guidance in key areas such as application optimization and compiler focus for Servers.
Anandtech Reviews the Calxeda ECX-1000: “Calxeda’s ECX-1000 server node is revolutionary technology”
March 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment
I’d like to point everyone over to a great review of the Calxeda-powered Boston Viridis box by Anandtech that just went live, here. First of all, big thanks to Johan De Gelas over at Anandtech and Wannes De Smet at SizingServers for doing a top notch job pulling together an in-depth review of our gear as well as the team at Boston Limited for taking care of the hardware. Since we launched the ECX-1000 we’ve been beating the streets to get real results and metrics out into customers’ hands and show that the technology delivers as promised. With quotes like “Calxeda really did it”, “nothing short of remarkable” and “revolutionary technology”, we’re all excited to see these results posted on a site like Anandtech.
For easy access to Calxeda technology, check out “Arm as a Service” from Boston Ltd. and Breeze
March 6, 2013 By 2 Comments
From Boston Ltd. Website:
Boston releases world’s first commercially available ARM as a ‘Service’
05 March 2013 Source: In House
Hannover, Germany (March 5, 2013). Boston Limited, a leading manufacturer of high performance, low-powered server, virtualisation, storage and cloud solutions, is proud to unveil its ARM-as-a-Service (AaaS), powered by Breeze and ARM®, at CeBIT 2013. For more information and a live hardware demonstration please visit Boston at Hall 2, #A39, Hannover Exhibition Grounds.
IHS iSuppli Microserver Forecast: Mobile, cloud computing spur tripling of micro server shipments this year
February 8, 2013 By 4 Comments
Mobile, cloud computing spur tripling of micro server shipments this year
Posted on iSuppli on 08 Feb 2013 at 7:13am:
Driven by booming demand for new data center services for mobile platforms and cloud computing, shipments of micro servers are expected to more than triple this year, according to research firm IHS iSuppli.
Shipments this year of micro servers are forecast to reach 291,000 units, up 230 percent from 88,000 units in 2012. Shipments of micro servers commenced in 2011 with just 19,000 units. However, shipments by the end of 2016 will rise to some 1.2 million units.
The penetration of micro servers compared to total server shipments amounted to a negligible 0.2 percent in 2011. But by 2016, the machines will claim a penetration rate of more than 10 percent — a stunning fifty-fold jump.
Micro servers are general-purpose computers, housing single or multiple low-power microprocessors and usually consuming less than 45 watts in a single motherboard.
The machines employ shared infrastructure such as power, cooling and cabling with other similar devices, allowing for an extremely dense configuration when micro servers are cascaded together.
“Micro servers provide a solution to the challenge of increasing data-center usage driven by mobile platforms,” said Peter Lin, senior analyst for compute platforms at IHS.
“With cloud computing and data centers in high demand in order to serve more smartphones, tablets and mobile PCs online, specific aspects of server design are becoming increasingly important, including maintenance, expandability, energy efficiency and low cost. Such factors are among the advantages delivered by micro servers compared to higher-end machines like mainframes, supercomputers and enterprise servers — all of which emphasize performance and reliability instead.”
Server salad days
Micro servers are not the only type of server that will experience rapid expansion in 2013 and the years to come. Other high-growth segments of the server market are cloud servers, blade servers and virtualization servers.
The distinction of fastest-growing server segment, however, belongs solely to micro servers.
The compound annual growth rate for micro servers from 2011 to 2016 stands at a remarkable 130 percent — higher than that of the entire server market by a factor of 26. Shipments will rise by double- and even triple-digit percentages for each year during the period.
Key players stand to benefit
Given the dazzling outlook for micro servers, makers with strong product portfolios of the machines will be well-positioned during the next five years — as will their component suppliers and contract manufacturers.
A slew of hardware providers are in line to reap benefits, including microprocessor vendors like Intel, ARM and AMD; server original equipment manufacturers such as Dell and HP; and server original development manufacturers including Taiwanese firms Quanta Computer and Wistron.
Among software providers, the list of potential beneficiaries from the micro server boom extends to Microsoft, Red Hat, Citrix and Oracle. For the group of application or service providers that offer micro servers to the public, entities like Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo are foremost.
The most aggressive bid for the micro server space comes from Intel and ARM.
Intel first unveiled the micro server concept and reference design in 2009, ostensibly to block rival ARM from entering the field.
ARM, the leader for many years in the mobile world with smartphone and tablet chips because of the low-power design of its central processing units, has been just as eager to enter the server arena — dominated by x86 chip architecture from the likes of Intel and a third chip player, AMD.
ARM faces an uphill battle, as the majority of server software is written for x86 architecture. Shifting from x86 to ARM will also be difficult for legacy products.
ARM, however, is gaining greater support from software and OS vendors, which could potentially put pressure on Intel in the coming years.
Green Computing Makes a Giant Leap Forward …thanks to the iPhone?…and ARM processors!
December 31, 2012 By 1 Comment
Written by Shawn Kaplan, General Manager – Financial Services, TELX
Shawn Kaplan
Advances in multi-core computing have allowed far greater compute densities such that nearly all datacenter racks run out of available power far sooner than physical space. Traditional High Performance Computing (HPC) X86 clusters can consume upwards of 400W per rack unit (U), this means that a typical data center rack with a 5KW – 8KW circuit can be maxed out in as little as 1/4 or 1/2 of the available space. Many of today’s forward thinking IT leaders are asking “Why can’t I have both extremely dense computing and better power efficiency?”
