At Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit 2017, Qualcomm Datacenter Technologies has announced a collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate next generation cloud services on the world’s first 10 nanometer Qualcomm Centriq 2400 platform with up to 48 cores. Today it conducted the first public demonstration of Windows Server, developed for Microsoft’s internal use, powered by the Qualcomm Centriq 2400 processor.
This will enable variety of cloud workloads to run on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform powered by Qualcomm Centriq 2400 server solutions. Qualcomm said that the collaboration will span multiple future generations of hardware, software and systems.
The Qualcomm Centriq 2400 Open Compute Motherboard server specification is based on the latest version of Microsoft’s Project Olympus.
QDT said that it has been working with Microsoft for several years on ARM-based server enablement and has onsite engineering at Microsoft to collaboratively optimize a version of Windows Server, for Microsoft’s internal use in its data centers, on Qualcomm Centriq 2400-based systems. QDT’s OCP submission is the result of a multi-faceted, multi-level engagement between the two companies to facilitate ARM adoption into the data center.
The Qualcomm Centriq 2400 Open Compute Motherboard pairs QDT’s recently announced 10nm, 48-core server processor with the most advanced interfaces for memory, network, and peripherals enabling the OCP community to access and design ARM-based servers for the most common cloud compute workloads. It fits into a standard 1U server system, offering system vendors the flexibility to create innovative, configurable designs for compute-intensive data center workloads. It can be paired with compute accelerators, multi-host NICs, and leading-edge storage technologies such as NVMe to optimize performance for specific workloads.
QDT also announced that it has joined the Open Compute Project Foundation as a gold member. The Qualcomm Centriq 2400 motherboard contribution to OCP underscores open hardware innovation and enablement by technology partners to deliver enterprise-level OS, firmware, co-processors, interconnects, Java and other technologies to enable ARM ecosystems in the data center. QDT said that it continues to work with leading companies including Red Hat, Canonical, Mellanox, Xilinx, and AMI, to enable a rich ecosystem for market readiness and software build-out.
The Qualcomm Centriq 2400 Open Compute Motherboard will be on display at the 2017 OCP US Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., on March 8 and 9.