HP Launches Their Low-Power Moonshot Servers

For the better part of two years now HP has been working on "Project Moonshot" as what the company hopes will be revolutionary as a new ultra energy-efficient server architecture. Moonshot began with Calxeda-based ARM SoCs, but in the end HP settled for Intel Atom processors. Released today were HP's Moonshot system based on the Intel Atom S1200.

Hewlett-Packard claims that their Moonshot System uses 89% less energy, 80% less space, 77% less cost, and 97% less complexity than traditional servers. HP calls Moonshot "the world's first software defined server."

The HP ProLiant Moonshot Server available as of today is contained within a 4.3U server enclosure and built around the Atom S1200 chips. Up to 1,800 servers per 47U rack are supported.

The Intel Atom S1200 processor family has been available since last December with what Intel claims to be the first 6-Watt server. This SoC is comprised of a 64-bit dual-core processor with Hyper Threading and a 6 Watt TDP. This Atom SoC also supports ECC memory and Intel VT.

Those interested in more information on the HP Moonshot System can visit this HP.com page. Among the distributions said to be certifying for Moonshot are the obvious Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu Linux choices.