Intel Atom inside HP’s upcoming low-power Gemini servers

Centeron chips to power first production system out of Project MoonshotHP has chosen Intel’s Atom-based processors codenamed “Centerton” as brains for the second product to come out of Project Moonshot – a program to develop extreme low-energy server solutions for web-scale applications as alternatives to x86 architectures. The first system created by Project Moonshot was Redstone Server Development Platform, announced in November 2011 along with the unveiling of Project Moonshot. Based on Calxeda’s low-power EnergyCore ARM Cortex processors, it made putting 288 compute nodes in a single 4U chassis possible. On Tuesday, HP announced an Intel-based version of Redstone: Gemini. This will be an enclosure that provides shared power, cooling, networking, storage and management resources to many “server cartridges” stuffed inside. Redstone was a server development platform designed for testing and proof of concept. Gemini will be the first commercial production system to come out of Project Moonshot, HP said. The technology, according to HP, is geared toward web serving, offline analytics and hosting. HP expects Gemini and Redstone to provide similar power, cost and density benefits. Paul Santeler, VP and general manager of industry-standard servers and software for HP’s Hyperscale business unit, said Project Moonshot had introduced a breakthrough approach to realizing such benefits. “Together with Intel’s enhanced processor features and collaboration, we’re able to transform the server industry by enabling customers to exceed the limits of what was previously possible in hyperscale computing,” he said. HP said it chose to put Centeron chips inside server cartridges in the first production server system because of their data-center-class features, including 64-bit support, hardware virtualization, error correcting code memory, low power requirements, performance and a broad software ecosystem. ARM, which licenses its processor architecture to processor makers like Calxeda, is a leader in the market for mobile-device processors. Only recently has it started “encroaching” on the Intel-dominated market for server processors, enjoying some success because of its architecture’s low power requirements.