World's Biggest Server Maker, HP, Reportedly Prepares ARM-Based Servers

From DailyTech: A report by Bloomberg is shaking up the CPU market this morning. The news agency cites two sources close to hardware giant Hewlett-Packard Comp. (HPQ) as indicating that the company was close to releasing servers powered by ARM-architecture CPUs. The move would be a blow to Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), a minority player in the market, but would be most painful to Intel Corp. (INTC) the world's largest maker of server CPUs.

SERVERS are the racked computers that power the internet, business networks, and the mobile devices services we all know and love. HP is in a statistical dead heat [source] with International Business Machines, Inc. (IBM) for the global lead in server revenue, so its moves are carefully scrutinized.

Server CPUs represent a $9B USD market. When it comes to the architecture used, it typically depends on the kind of server. Mission critical servers are a quirky lot, home to Intel Corp.'s (INTC) non-x86 Itanium architecture chips, and other seldom seen architectures. But when it comes to your vanilla standard work servers, almost all use x86 designs from Intel (Xeon CPUs) or AMD (Opteron CPUs).

If HP indeed embraces ARM, it would be the first of the server heavyweights to support the rival architecture. It reportedly is planning to use a startup named Calxeda, Inc. Calxeda launched in 2008 and is based in Austin, Texas. It is partially owned by the UK-based ARM Holdings Plc. (LON:ARM), the firm which designs the base ARM architectures and licenses them to third-party chipmakers for customization.

Some ARM architecture chips are becoming familiar names to mobile device fans. ARM designs like NVIDIA Corp.'s (NVDA) Tegra and Qualcomm, Inc.'s (QCOM) Snapdragon power virtually all smartphones and tablets.

Calxeda isn't exactly a household name, though, as it's focused on developing server CPUs and does not make mobile device chips. Calxeda hopes to apply the same advantage that ARM has in the mobie space -- power efficiency -- to server space designs. In fact, the company's profile says its flagship design draws only 5 watts of power.

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