We have been waiting for ARM holdings to release a servers class processor for a few years now because of their promise of lower power and high performance an order of magnitude above mainstream Intel and AMD server chips. Mainstream x86 chips are simply too power hungry for the kinds of workloads small to medium business do on a daily basis. From file sharing and simple apache based websites, a multi-core Xenon server draw too much power. Since ARM, present in most smartphones today, has proven they can design powerful and energy efficient multicore processors at a reasonable power level, it begs the questions. When are we going to get to use ARM in our servers?
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| Intel AtomS1200 |
The keywords to look out for is "microserver" or "Server-class SOC" in the power range under 10 watts. Calxeda has a series of products called
EnergyCore aimed at datacenter and server market. Their product has been on the market now for one year and looking like they will take on Intel in a serious way.
The
Calxeda blog details their love affair with their main competitor the Intel Atom. The ECX1000 vs S1200 shows that the ARM based chip provides 5-6 times the performance per watt of Intel's atom chips.
