RESEARCH PAPER: The First Enterprise Class 64-Bit ARMV8 Server, HP Moonshot System’s HP Proliant M400 Server Cartridge

Ubiquitous cloud-enabled smart devices are a driving force behind a major shift in IT infrastructure. Service providers deploying context-rich services to these devices are building massive new datacenter capacity and looking to their vendors to optimize infrastructure for their specific workloads. But given the rapid rate of workload and application evolution, infrastructure optimization will be a continuous process for at least the next few years; optimization demands flexible hardware and software infrastructure. System designers and silicon vendors have recognized that this shift in customer demands cannot be served effectively with traditional datacenter and server architectures, and they have responded with new approaches to system design.

HP launched the HP Moonshot System hardware platform in 2013—a modular and ecosystem-driven approach targeted at specific workloads. In 2011, ARM Holdings and its partners began promoting the vision of extremely power efficient servers. Earlier this year, AppliedMicro’s X-Gene, which combines server-class performance with mobile-pedigree power efficiency, was the first 64-bit ARMv8-based server system-on-chip (SoC) to begin shipping in production.

Executive Summary
Megatrends and Market Drivers
HP Moonshot: An Accelerator For Hyperscale Workloads
Is The Market Ready for ARM-Based Servers?
ARM-Based Server History and AppliedMicro Market Leadership
64-Bit ARMV8 Server Software Ecosystem
Introducing the HP ProLiant M400 for Moonshot
ProLiant M400 Target Customers and Workloads
Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Evaluating Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the ProLiant M400
The Scenario
Traditional Servers
ARM-Based Configuration
Performance Assumptions
Cost Comparisons
The Bottom Line
Early Customer Feedback: Sandia National Labs
Call to Action
Figure 1: HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis
Figure 2: AppliedMicro X-Gene
Figure 3: HP ProLiant M400 Server Cartridge: Front and Rear Views
Figure 4: TCO Analysis: Traditional and ARM-Based Configurations
Figure 5: Total Cost of Ownership Summary

You can download the paper here.

Companies Cited

AppliedMicro
ARM
Calxeda
Canonical
HP
Intel
Linaro Enterprise Group
Marvell
Mellanox
Microsoft
Oracle
Red Hat
Texas Instruments

Patrick Moorhead

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Patrick founded the firm based on his real-world world technology experiences with the understanding of what he wasn’t getting from analysts and consultants. Ten years later, Patrick is ranked #1 among technology industry analysts in terms of “power” (ARInsights) in “press citations” (Apollo Research). Moorhead is a contributor at Forbes and frequently appears on CNBC. He is a broad-based analyst covering a wide variety of topics including the cloud, enterprise SaaS, collaboration, client computing, and semiconductors. He has 30 years of experience including 15 years of executive experience at high tech companies (NCR, AT&T, Compaq, now HP, and AMD) leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing, including three industry board appointments.