ARM processors used in mobile devices like smartphones, iPods and tablets are never associated with server market. ARM processors are known for their lower power requirements and can’t match the raw processing power offered by high-end server chips like Intel Xeon and IBM Power processors. But that’s not stopping Calxeda from designing servers based on ARM processors. They plan to use more processor cores to negate the processing power limitation of ARM chip.

Calxeda released initial details about their first ARM processor based server that is built on quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 chips. The server will have 120 ARM quad-core processors for a total of 480 cores in a 2U box. Each processor with its DRAM will consume an average 5 watts of power during operation. Calxeda aims to bring low-power attributes of ARM processor to the server market and will use multiple processor nodes in a single box to match the performance offered by Intel or AMD servers.

Calxeda didn’t provide any further information about server configuration like processor clock speed, memory or storage. But it is believed that Calxeda aims to ship the new ARM based servers in second half of this year.
[Via Computer World]