Calxeda made a lot of news with multiple news articles.
But, I don't know if I am as excited as the press is. Why? I have been talking to ARM for over a 3 years on the opportunities for ARM servers in data centers and have been waiting for over a year for Calxeda to make a chip announcement.
So, looking at the specifications. One of the questions i have is why does the Calxeda processor run at 1.1 - 1.4 GHz and not at 2GHz?
EnergyCore™ ECX-1000: Technical Specifications
Processor Cores
- Up to four ARM® Cortex™-A9 cores @ 1.1 to 1.4 GHz
Here is the spec for the A9 processor.
Speed Optimized: The speed-optimized hard macro implementation provides system designers with an industry standard ARM processor incorporating aggressive low-power techniques to further extend ARM’s performance leadership into high-margin consumer and enterprise devices within the power envelope necessary for compact, high-density and thermally constrained environments. This hard macro implementation operates in excess of 2GHz when selected from typical silicon and represents an ideal solution for high-margin performance-oriented applications.
In the HP press announcement there as quote to emphasize performance needs. So, why not a 2 GHz clock rate?
“The volume of data processed in financial markets has increased exponentially, and traditional scale-up or scale-out architectures are struggling to keep up with demand without vastly increasing cost and power usage,” said Niall Dalton, director of High-Frequency Trading at Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that is currently evaluating the technology. “HP is taking a holistic approach to solving this problem and working to bring unprecedented energy and cost savings for tomorrow’s large-scale, data-intensive applications.”
Another question I have is what is the architecture to manage the Energy Cards. This could be the opportunity for HP.