Calxeda Announces 2nd Generation Cloud Server
Calxeda had made a big announcement today concerning the release of their 2nd generation cloud server at the ARM TechCon trade show. Other than being referred to as codename “Midway,” this project has remained shrouded in mystery. Calxeda’s intent was to produce a cloud whose workload can be scaled out in the corporate enterprise environment.
“Midway” is better known as the EnergyCore ECX-2000. It is built on a quad-core 32-bit ARM A15 chip. This integrates an 80 GB “Fleet Fabric Switch” alongside a 10 GB Ethernet controller and a dual core ARM A7 processor to handle power and for fleet management. Calxeda aims to rewrite the book on the way that cloud systems communicate with each other. For example, most communications within the cloud are “North-South” whereas Calxeda hopes to coin the “East-West” methodology of moving and handling data. This is the reason Calxeda decided to use smaller cores with advanced fabrics.
The new EnergyCore ECX-2000 aims to be more superior to any other cloud server for enterprise environments. Caldexa has achieved this by lowering power consumption and increasing performance. In fact, on average, the EngeryCore ECX-2000 saves 5-11 watts of energy per server. Benchmarks show that the ECX-2000 is twice as fast and has tripled the memory capacity as inferior models. Advances in this model have also quadrupled the memory’s accessibility which provides more reliability and faster data accessibility within the cloud.
The ECX-2000 will go head to head against Intel’s Atom C2530. While the ECX-2000 has a built in management engine, the Intel Atom does not which would require a separate rig in order to build out. However, the Intel Atom C2530 supports 64-bit processing and is compatible with older software. While 3rd parties have not yet benchmarked each of these outfits, rack-level benchmarks will be available soon and they will tell the whole story. Calxeda plans on shipping the beta version of this product by the 4th quarter of 2013.
