HP claims its new software defined server system will help companies cope better with the datacentre cost and expansion pressures caused by the growth of cloud services and mobile devices.
Each member of the firm's Moonshot server family will have a different processor, provided by the likes of Intel, AMD, Calxeda, AppliedMicro or Texas Instruments, optimising them for use with a particular application or workload.
The first HP Proliant Moonshot server will feature an Intel Atom S1200 processor, and is designed to support web-hosting workloads. It is set for release in Europe at the start of next month.
During the product's launch event, Dave Donattelli, executive vice president and general manager of Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking at HP, mooted gaming, genomics, big data and telecommunications as other potential workloads for the Moonshot setup.
"No one will want less storage or computing power in the future," he said. "[And] 1980s technology was not built to handle this, so you need to dramatically rethink in every way how servers are built."
The hardware giant claims the system takes up around an eighth of the space and requires 89 per cent less energy to run than traditional x86 servers do, and will make it easier for datacentre operators to cope with the growing demand for cloud services.
This is because the system's design means that up to 1,800 servers can be supported per rack, while the system's chassis contains the power supply and cooling fans to save on space.
Right now, we're on a path that is not sustainable, from a space, energy and cost perspective.
In a video address at the UK launch of Moonshot, Meg Whitman, chief executive of HP, said the IT industry is in the grip of four megatrends: social, mobile, cloud and big data.
These, she said, are putting enormous strain on our core infrastructure, as datacentre operators struggle to keep pace with adoption of all four of these trends.
"Right now, we're on a path that is not sustainable, from a space, energy and cost perspective," said Whitman.
To build enough datacentres to keep up with these demands would cost between $10bn and $20bn, claimed Whitman, and the power they consume would be the equivalent to that needed to power two million American homes.
"Datacentres aren't cheap...[and] they're going to need a lot of power," said Whitman. "In fact, to run these new datacentres you would need to build 10 new power plants to service them."
During a Q&A with the press after the launch, Paul Santeler, vice president and general manager of the worldwide hyperscale unit at HP, was quick to define what his firm's take on software defined servers means.
"We really mean it's the software that defines what that product looks like...[in that] it's the software [applications or workloads] that's driving what these [server] cartridges look like," he said.
He also dismissed the notion that any of HP's competitors are in a position to bring something similar to market soon.
"We created more than just the hardware platform here. We created an ecosystem, an architecture... and we've got only one silicon vendor not participating [in this]," he said.
"It's like the Apple iPod. There's a whole bunch of people who tried to copy that, but Apple got it right...and captured the whole marketplace and just kept growing.
"Anyone could copy parts of this design, but there are things in here they don't know about," he concluded.
