Single Chip Solution for Server Management

A single chip solution for remote server access was announced by Peppercon this week. The chip is expected to show up in servers from SuperMicro and other vendors by February.

By integrating the Peppercon KIRA100 chip in the server, Peppercon says remote server management becomes less expensive than PCI add-in cards and other solutions costing $500 or more. The company estimates the KIRA100 adds about $70 to the cost of a server.

Servers outfitted with the KIRA100 chip can be managed at the BIOS level from anywhere over the Internet, helping to accelerate repair and cut down maintenance costs. The chip supports several of the key manageability access standards including IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface), SSH , WS Management (Web Services Based Management Protocol) and SMASH-CLP (Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware-Command Line Protocol).

"This enables remote installation of a new operating system or the ability to boot remotely from any device using IP Technology," said Michael Patellis, director of OEM Sales at Peppercon.

The company's stated mission is to: "Make remote server management a commodity feature."

The KIRA 100 is based on a 32-bit, high-performance, lower-power 920T ARM Architecture V4 RISC microprocessor. It is equipped with a media co-processor to accelerate video processing, and a comprehensive set of system and peripheral functions that Peppercon said are useful in a variety of remote management applications.

Last year Zwickau, Germany-based Peppercon became a wholly owned subsidiary of Raritan, based in Somerset, N.J. Raretin is a leading global provider of enterprise, analog and digital KVM switches, serial console control, remote access, and centralized server management solutions. "Raritan has over 50,000 data center customers so they know what they need for remote access and system management and that helped in the design," said Patellis.

Peppercon has been working with AMD on development and promotion of the Open Platform Management Architecture, an open standard for server management subsystems. Intel also works with Peppercon on board management hardware.

Patellis said Peppercon is in negotiations with other server makers in addition to SuperMicro who he expects to also adopt the KIRA100 for servers early next year.