Dell has developed a new prototype servers powered by Arm Holding’s low power processors which the company will make available for limited number of customers.
The new ARM-based servers are being developed under its "Copper" range powered by chips based on the ARM architecture which is common in smartphones and tablets.
The chips are expected to reduce power consumption and cost compared to other processors.
As part of the development, the company will be providing the servers to some select customers instead of making available to its customer base which will allow customers to test the systems to assess their benefits.
Dell is staging clusters of the Dell "Copper" ARM server within the Dell Solution Centers and with Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) so developers may book time on the platforms.
The company is also working to enable software development for ARM-based server application with other industry partners such as Canonical and Cloudera which will help customers to test the new applications.
Cloudera co-founder and CTO Amr Awadallah said, "This technology will allow our customers to pack more processing heft into a smaller data center footprint and do so with a significantly lower energy consumption profile."
Dell said the prototype version features 48 separate processors inside a 6" box which will fit into a data centre rack while it uses 32-bit processor chips developed by Marvell Technology Group.
