From EETimes: A Hewlett-Packard sales rep complained at a recent internal meeting that a customer wanted to buy a load of HP gear, "but he can't get any more power from the city."
That problem exemplifies the rationale behind the ARM-based servers such as HP's Moonshot, Martin Fink, the company's chief technology officer, said in a keynote at the ARM Tech Con here.
HP currently has the first 64-bit ARM servers based on the XGene SoC from Applied Micro running in its labs; they are planned for shipment in 2014. It also has 32-bit systems based on SoCs from Calxeda and Texas Instruments in the labs, he said. Cartridges using the TI chips also include DSPs, extending the application space for HP servers.
This is something Fink encourages. "I want us to do stuff we have never done before," he told an audience of several hundred attendees. "We want you to shock us -- create the cartridge of cartridges that no one has thought of."
Intel's Atom-based Centerton won the first sockets in the Moonshot systems HP shipped. It plans to ship 64-bit ARM SoCs next year, and it is already shipping some 32-bit ARM SoCs. HP also is planning an "expanded set of open-source tools" for Moonshot.
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