ECX-1000 Overview
The Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-1000 Series is a family of SoC (Server-on-Chip) products that bring the power efficiency of ARM® processors to the data center. The ECX-1000 is extremely scalable due to the integrated EnergyCore Fabric Switch, while the embedded EnergyCore Management Engine simultaneously provides out-of-band control and intelligence for autonomic operation. By tightly integrating these hardware and software capabilities together with ARM processors and I/O subsystems, each ECX-1000 SoC delivers the scalability and intelligence needed for building the industry’s most power and space-efficient server clusters. The net result of the EnergyCore SoC architecture is a ten-fold reduction in power and space requirements, allowing rapidly growing data centers to quickly realize dramatic operating and capital cost savings.
Efficient. Scalable. Smart.
Efficiency starts at the core. Designed from the ground up with a focus on energy efficiency, the EnergyCore ECX-1000 consumes as little as 1.5W per processor. Equipped with an integrated on-chip fabric switch and management engine, a quad-core SoC – paired with 4GB DRAM – enables a server node that consumes only 5W at typical max utilization and ½ watt when idle.
Scalability you can grow into. An integrated EnergyCore Fabric Switch within every SoC provides up to five 10 Gigabit lanes for connecting thousands of ECX-1000 server nodes into clusters capable of handling distributed applications at extreme scale. Completely topology-agnostic, each SoC can be deployed to work in a variety of mesh, grid, or tree network structures, providing opportunities to find the right balance of network throughput and fault resiliency for any given workload.
Intelligence means it just works. Every ECX-1000 series SoC also contains an on-chip EnergyCore Management Engine (running on a separate, dedicated processor) that provides autonomic operation. The patent-pending design allows the management engine to perform real-time power optimizations by individually tuning 12 different power domains within the node, idling or turning off entire subsystems when possible, yet instantly resuming operation within a matter of clock cycles. Additionally, the EnergyCore Management Engine provides “always-on” remote management capabilities through standard interfaces that work seamlessly with existing system management tools.
