In the early morning of April 9, Beijing time, HP said on Monday that it will start selling a new generation of low-power moonshot server system, providing customers with a variety of chip options to handle different computing workload, thus changing the way it designs its hardware.
HP said that compared with existing servers, the new servers it first talked about in November 2011 could reduce energy consumption by 89%, space occupation by 80% and cost by more than three-quarters. HP said that this change is necessary to adapt to the explosive growth of new mobile devices, while keeping the basic design of servers unchanged, new servers must significantly reduce energy consumption. Meg Whitman, HP CEO, contrasts: "we live in an era of great change. '
Whitman said HP plans to adapt to the wave of technological change and maintain its position as a leading server manufacturer in the world. HP is also the world's largest PC manufacturer. For more than a year, HP has been working with a number of customers to test moonshot technology in an attempt to increase sales. HP is implementing a multi-year recovery strategy. At present, the company's revenue and profit are in a downward trend, and it has expelled two former CEOs before Whitman took over the CEO.
Since taking office, Whitman has been trying to enhance HP's core businesses, such as PC, printer and server, while investing in R & D, hoping to lead the company back on the right track.
Moonshot technology is very different from the technology used by HP and other server manufacturers in the past. The latter relies on microprocessor chips with larger size and higher energy consumption, which have been adopted by the whole industry in the past decades. In contrast, moonshot relies heavily on chips designed for mobile devices. Compared with PC, mobile devices have begun to provide competitive computing speed, but its energy consumption is low, and the occupied space is also small.
The moonshot system will initially use Intel Atom chips, which are used in tablets, smartphones and netbooks, HP said. HP also said amd was a moonshot supplier. Subsequently, other server systems will be based on chips using ARM technology, provided by chip manufacturers such as applied micro circuits and calxeda; in addition, Texas Instruments is expected to provide a chip called keystone, which integrates ARM processor and digital signal processing technology. HP also said that graphics chips and other forms of programmable chips are also available.
David donatell, head of HP's server, storage and network technology business, said HP is producing moonshot servers, which users can choose from different specifications of hardware and software to handle complex tasks such as managing video games and streaming videos, as well as DNA sequencing.
HP calls it a 'software defined' server designed to encourage faster innovation. 'customers will be able to innovate three times faster than before. 'said donaldley.