Intel Centerton Chips Power HP 'Project Moonshot' Servers

Hewlett-Packard (HP) (NYSE: HPQ) took a step closer to achieving its Project Moonshot goal of producing ultra-low power Gemini servers with the announcement that the initial production system will feature Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTL) Atom processor, codenamed Centerton.

Unveiled last November, Project Moonshot is a multiyear program designed to help customers significantly reduce server complexity, energy use and costs. The program leverages workload-optimized, extreme low-energy “server cartridges” in an enclosure that pools resources across thousands of servers.

Unlike traditional servers that rely on dedicated components for management, networking, storage, power cords and cooling fans in a single enclosure, Gemini enclosures are capable of supporting thousands of servers per rack that share these components.

In turn, this allows organizations to pack a lot more compute power into a smaller footprint, reducing energy costs and IT complexity, according to HP. It also represents a big step forward in hyperscale computing power, suited for the expanding needs of Web serving, offline analytics and hosting.

Intel’s Centerton server cartridges offer 64-bit support, hardware virtualization (VTx), error correcting code (ECC) memory and lower power requirements, all factors HP said led it to choose Intel.

To further address customer requirements and range of workloads, Intel and HP are collaborating on additional low-energy Gemini server cartridges based on future generations of Atom micro architecture.

The Gemini server system incorporating Centerton-based compute cartridges are slated to be available for customer testing “soon,” and is expected to begin shipping in early production to customers by year end, according to HP.