ARM server targets bare-metal Linux-based dev't

Codethink has introduced its first generation high-performance power-efficient ARM server that comes in a half-depth 1U chassis. The Baserock Slab features eight energy-efficient quad-core ARM processors with high speed network fabric and local storage, with support for both mSATA and SATA drives, described the company.

The Baserock Slabs can be racked back-to-back to provide a processor density of 64 cores per U, up to 2432 cores in a full height rack with power distribution and switchgear. While the Baserock Slab was designed for building ARM-based embedded systems, they also serve as energy efficient and highly concentrated cloud or appliance servers.

According to the company, the Baserock Slab server delivers great performance because of the Marvell ARMADA XP, said to be the world's first quad-core ARM processor designed for enterprise-class cloud computing applications, that drives higher CPU utilization and offers demand-based scaling. The eight System on Modules (SoMs), designed and manufactured by Cogent, are linked together via a Marvell SDN-ready (software defined networking) high speed Ethernet switch.

The product features on-board high speed network switch with up to 5Gb/s to each CPU, and 2x10Gb/s of shared external Ethernet for data center clustering. Each computation node has its own mini solid-state hard drive (mSATA) port for dedicated, low-latency access to resources required by the node rather than network-attached. In addition, an on-board management module provisions and manages compute modules and configures on-board network

Baserock Slab ARM-based servers will ship in the coming weeks.