HP wants to reinvent the data center with a new generation of low-energy, highly efficient servers. The effort is collectively being dubbed, ‘Project Moonshot’ and involves low power processors from ARM as well as new approaches for architecting and sharing data center server resources.
“We’re unveiling what we believe is the future of extreme low level energy, server technology,” Glenn Keels, director of marketing in HP’s hyperscale business unit told InternetNews.com. “This is much more than just a server — it’s the result of a multi-year effort involving technology, customer enablement and uniting partners.”
Project Moonshot is getting started with the new HP Redstone Server Development Platform, initially powered by ARM Cortex processors from Calxeda. Keels noted that future iterations of Redstone will include Intel Atom as well.
With Redstone, HP can provide up to 2,800 servers in one rack, which dramatically reduces the amount of power and cabling required versus a traditional data center server deployment.
“It’s a very flexible platform specifically designed for testing, development and benchmarking,” Keels said. “So customers can begin to understand the suitability of placing large scale application on this new class of servers.”
While CPU architecture is an important component of lowering power, the CPU alone is only one component of the overall approach.
“We’re moving from tens of servers per rack, basically sharing nothing, to thousands of servers per rack sharing everything,” Keel said.