News & Analysis Calxeda Ends ARM Server Bid - EE Times

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News & Analysis
12/19/2013 08:15 PM EST
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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Calxeda, a maker of ARM-based server SoCs, said it will close its doors. The startup was one of the first of as many as a dozen companies gearing up low-power, integrated processors using the ARM core.
Calxeda could not hold on until the emerging market becomes large enough to sustain it. But the loss does not impact the overall trend toward low-power servers, mainly driven by large datacenter operators such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
"The concept of a fabric of ARM-based servers challenging the industry giants was not on anyone's radar screen when we started this journey," the company said in a press release. "Carrying the load of industry pioneer has exceeded our ability to continue to operate as we had envisioned." The company will continue to support customers of its 32-bit ECX-2000 while it goes through a "restructuring process."
Part of the company's problem was the market for 32-bit ARM server SoCs did not pan out as it had hoped. "Calxeda had the right idea, but they started too soon," said Linley Gwennap, principal of the market watcher Linley Group, told us. "Once ARM announced a 64-bit architecture but didn't have a 64-bit core ready, it cut the knees out from Calxeda. Demand for 32-bit server chips, which was modest to start with, dried up, but Calxeda couldn't deliver a 64-bit processor until late 2014 -- as a startup, the funding simply wasn't going to last that long."
Calxeda first publicly talked about its 32-bit product in early 2011. Later that year, Hewlett-Packard said it was testing a prototype system using the product in its labs.
In late 2012, the startup, like many others, said it would deliver a 64-bit SoC in late 2014. As recently as October, HP was showing ARM-based server cards from Applied Micro, Calxeda, and Texas Instruments that it said it would ship in 2014. To date, HP has used Intel Atom-based chips only in its Moonshot low-power servers.
Calxeda sold some SoCs to a few relatively small computer makers that shipped systems, including Boston Computers and Penguin Computing. Marvell got one of the first major design wins for a 32-bit ARM SoC used as a storage controller at the Chinese web giant Baidu. Facebook said in August that it plans to use an Intel Atom SoC as a storage controller.
A server manager at Dell said in October that he did not see a large market for such controllers, and that the market for 64-bit ARM servers might not start in earnest until late 2014 or early 2015. That market is now well served by established companies that have announced product plans, including AMD, Applied Micro, Cavium, Marvell, Nvidia, and Samsung.
In January, Qualcomm advertised for engineers with ARM and server expertise. But this fall, a Qualcomm executive said it is monitoring the space but has no active plans for products.
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— Rick Merritt, Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, EE Times

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Re: Emerging market?
KB3001 12/21/2013 8:09:32 AM

You are challenging a perceived assertion with an assertion

logic tells us that for LAMP servers, at least, custom SoC solutions based on ARM processors should perform better than Intel's on PPW. But even if we do not accept that, what about Performance Per Dollar? For the good of the end customer we need multiple providers. Intel's profit margins in the server market are ungodly and only competition can address that.
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Calxeda Reconfigures
Bruzzer 12/21/2013 1:09:30 AM

In response with some independent of Intel network assessment.Tarra Tarra on fabrics, they're ahead of time on data center and enterprise adoption of something new by 2 to 3 years. Two to three years is the lithography advantage of exponential switch ports in silicon. Moore's axiom at work.
Intel has in the works but only fabicators can afford switch port integration ahead of silicon economics.
Consider cost : price of 10GbE switch ports within SOC total die area verse a dedicated top rack switch controller. Then please justify the cost price of integration into processor server SOC.
Fabric integration at 32 bit ARM code density, for LAMP Stack and cool storage, makes a Strong ARM. In this application a very fast network switch.
Solving large problems at good performance for watt ARM 32 can do now. And 64 bit if not held back by Intel Network. The target application is after hours batch processing. Or anything that has to do with ARM control plane and coprocessor application processing plane in real time.
DMcCunney, benchmarks in a microprocessor renaissance should not measure Intel performance through a system revolution. Data Centers and IT like their favorite benchmarks. ARM displacement of the Intel standard has nothing to do with Intel sales paradigm and everything to do with the evolutionary ARM sales paradigm.
That is all about end customer requirements.
And the hype wagon, including myself, did press for ARM server before whole product, because ARM server supports a microprocessor renaissance and the development jobs that evolve around it.
If your placed outside the Intel development circle, by Intel sales, ARM server is a good place to invest your development time and effort.
The opportunity in Arm Server is software first and foremost system hardware integration.
Think Novell Network VAR but now for Data Center.
The ARM software systems opportunity is optimizing raw ports of Intel Linux operating systems for ARM customer specific application's, capturing that IP for reuse and resale. That's where the ARM channel money is.
Calxeda has invested $105 million in their development and is implementing on road map toward 64 bit. Will ARM Capital support Calxeda?
Rick, ARM is in denial, for all the Intel network insurgent and kiss up to Intel too sell something reasons.
Marvell recognized a year ago that 2014 was not a year for ARM Server.
Marvell was also first to recognize the production economic necessity of a standard reference platform in 2011.
A time for reconfiguration and try, try again.
Mike Bruzzone
Camp Marketing

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What about the Fabric?
TarraTarra! 12/20/2013 8:32:17 PM

Probably the most intriguing thing about Calxeda shutting down is what happened to the Fabric. To elaborate, Calxeda had two things that were innovative - one was the use of existing power efficient 32b cores from the mobile space and applying them to server workloads, but the second was the ability to connect a large set of such processors using their "scale-out" fabric interconnect. I always thought that was the more important part of their story and the distinguishing feature.I can only speculate here:
- Maybe the big OEMs did not adopt Calxeda's fabric pretty much negating their advantage. I am not sure if the moon-shot from HP used their fabric. I suspect it did not.
- Did their fabric not provide the scalability or performance needed for large clusters
- Maybe proprietary fabrics are not welcome in the data-center and existing solutions are sufficient ( I dont see how though)
Sorry to see them go and they were definitely ahead of their time with some innovative ideas. Well fought Calxeda! Well fought!

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Re: Emerging market?
TarraTarra! 12/20/2013 8:21:00 PM

For sure, HPC benchmarks will show that even though ARM is much better at the overall PPW metric, when it comes to solving large problems / large data operations, Intel still beats ARM-based processors in PPW metricPPW is not the be-all and end-all. What matter is lowest power at good performance. Calxeda was able to demonstrate PPW benefit for static web-tier work-loads but what they probably found was that it was not a large enough market to justify a business case around.
But that is not to say that custom ARM 64b cores from AppliedMicro, Broadcom etc will come out with significantly better performing cores.

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Re: Emerging market?
DMcCunney 12/20/2013 7:53:13 PM

For sure, HPC benchmarks will show that even though ARM is much better at the overall PPW metric, when it comes to solving large problems / large data operations, Intel still beats ARM-based processors in PPW metric.I think you're correct, and the server market won't be monolithic. Whether Intel architecture or ARM architecture will get the nod will depends upon the expected role of the server. If what I want is a compute server, doing serious number crunching where I need results sooner rather than later, Intel may get the nod. Likewise, if I'm doing something like hosting a large Oracle database where I have a terabyte of tables in RAM and I want the fastest possible performance on queries and updates, Intel may get the nod.
If I'm someone like Google or Facebook, building out data centers with thousands of servers where the key is distributed processing, no one server will carry a really heavy load, and time to complete any particular function is less critical, I may opt for power savings over raw performance. As my load grows, I just add more servers, but more servers require more power, with increased costs for the power to run the servers, and the power run the cooling systems to keep the servers within an acceptable temperature range.
It will ultimately come down to money, and which approach offers the most bang for the buck, but what bang is will vary by customer and use case.
I expect a lot of amusement when 64 bit ARM CPUs start becoming available in quantity, with all manner of benchmarks purporting to show the superiority of one architecture over another. The key questions will be "What do the benchmarks measure?" and "How relevant are particular numbers to the intended application?"

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Re: Emerging market?
docdivakar 12/20/2013 7:20:09 PM

DMcCunney: good analysis! I am of the opinion that the hype wagon went way before the horse in case of low power servers replacing Intel-based ones in the compute nodes. I remember seeing a demo of a 1RU server with 32 of the ARM processors last year where I challenged them to run Linpack BLAS C-version and compare with Intel-bases servers using Green500 power / watt (PPW) metric. Unfortunately I could not convince them to show the comparison! For sure, HPC benchmarks will show that even though ARM is much better at the overall PPW metric, when it comes to solving large problems / large data operations, Intel still beats ARM-based processors in PPW metric.MP Divakar

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Re: Emerging market?
DMcCunney 12/20/2013 1:43:33 PM

I imagine that "emerging market" also includes geographically emerging market such as China.You may assume that "emerging market" is "anywhere in the world where servers will be deployed in quantity."
China is a huge market, period, so it makes perfect sense that Calxeda execs should pay a visit to Beijing. It would be a place to meet possible customers that might buy their solutions, and more important, to build essential relationships with the Chinese government to insure they were allowed to sell their products in China.

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Re: Storage controllers, etc
DMcCunney 12/20/2013 1:23:32 PM

@Goafrit. Indeed my "close the doors" language could be misleading.The comnpoany just said "restructuring" which implies there could be a sale of its assets or some other outcome TBD.
An asset sale is one possibility. An acquisition is another. There's enough interest in 64 bit ARM servers that I can see another vendor buying Calxeda. If I'm a player in the server space, and I want to offer 64 bit ARM based solutions, what do I do? Do I build the capability from scratch, or do I look at acquiring someone who has already done it?

While Calxeda's existing products are 32 bit, you can assume a fair amount of engineering on the HW and SW sides that went into them will be applicable to 64 bit products as well, I can see an outside interest in both Calxeda's IP, and its staff.

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Re: Storage controllers, etc
rick merritt 12/20/2013 12:24:21 PM

@DMcCunney: Good analysis!It would be interesting to hear the story of how ARM came to grips with the 64-bit decision and how Calexeda (behind the curve) and Applied Micro (on the curve) heard about the plan.
If anyone can share some details of that story, please do in comments here or to me directly!

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Re: Storage controllers, etc
rick merritt 12/20/2013 12:20:37 PM

@Goafrit. Indeed my "close the doors" language could be misleading.The comnpoany just said "restructuring" which implies there could be a sale of its assets or some other outcome TBD.

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