The Boston Viridis is the world's first self-contained, highly-extensible, ultra-low power cluster solution that is based on processor technology from ARM® - who's CPUs power many of today's consumer mobile devices.
Using Server-on-Chip (SoC) technology, the CPU, networking and IO is fully integrated onto a single server chip that consumes only 5W of power.
Originally launched as a low power 2U multi-node platform, Boston now delivers a 4U storage option based on Calxeda EnergyCore™ ECX-2000 chips; offering increased memory capacity, improved performance, a faster clock speed and hardware features for virtualisation enabling support for KVM and Xen. Click here to explore the Viridis 2.0.
Explore the Viridis 2U or Viridis 4U options below...
The Boston Viridis is a self contained, highly extensible, 48 node ultra-low power ARM® cluster with integral high-speed interconnect and storage within a standard single 2U rack mount enclosure.
Racks of individually connected, high-power, low density servers and blades are installed in modern data centres thousands at a time. Each of these server systems requires its own networking infrastructure, high power distribution, HVAC, and maintenance engineers to take care of it when things go wrong. These inefficiencies could cost data centres billions.
The Boston Viridis uses Server-on-Chip (SoC) technology to integrate the CPU (powered by ARM®), networking and IO onto the server chip. SoC technology, which began life as an embedded systems technology but is primed to storm the data centre in the next few years allows for mass levels of integration at high density requiring little active cooling. With this technology today we can now con gure over a thousand servers in a standard 42U rack.
The Boston Viridis uses the ARM® -based Calxeda EnergyCore® to create a rack mountable 2U server cluster. The solution comprises of 192 processing cores leading the way towards energy effcient hyperscale computing.
Each 2U chassis contains a total of 12 Calxeda EnergyCards connected to a common mainboard sharing power and fabric connectivity. The Calxeda EnergyCard is a single PCB module containing 4 Calxeda EnergyCore SoCs; each with 4GB DDR-3 Registered ECC Memory, 4 x SATA connectors and management interfaces.
Ethernet switching is handled internally by 80Gb bandwidth on the EnergyCore fabric switch, thereby negating the need for additional switches that consume unnecessary power and add unwanted latency.
Astonishingly, utilising all 48 Calxeda EnergyCore SoCs, the whole package including fabric and management consumes less than 300W - this is achieved as each SoC device consumes just 0.5 to 5 watts of power (depending on load).
With specific applications, the overall combined performance of one 2U Boston Viridis appliance can outperform a whole rack of standard x86 servers, yet at the same time consume 1/10th the power and occupy 1/10th the space making it an excellent investment for datacentres and enterprises alike.
Boston Viridis - ARM® Microservers