ARM funded by EU to build low power datacenter

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Last week ARM Holdings, the Cambridge, UK based company that designs the well-known ARM processor, announced that it is leading a project to prove out the idea that its low-power processors can power datacenter-sized computations

EU FlagARM today announced it is leading a Green Cloud Services project called EuroCloud, along with Nokia, IMEC, EPFL, and the University of Cyprus. The research project, which is funded by the European Commission FP7 Programme for an initial three years, aims to validate the value proposition of constructing data center platforms using a combination of low power processing and 3D chip packaging solutions to deliver a significant improvement in cost- and energy-efficiency compared to the approach utilized in incumbent server platforms.

…This research project will investigate the use of the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore multicore processor along with 3D DRAM structures and packaging technology to enable the building of dense, cost-effective and green data centers through “good enough” nodes of processor performance and high-bandwidth access to server memory.

The announcement comes as companies like SeaMicro and others are just beginning serious attempts to move low power processors out of the gadget space and into the server world.