Start-Up Calxeda Joins Open Compute Project

Calxeda, Inc., in the low power server market, is a member of the Open Compute Project (OCP) as it exhibits as a sponsor of the Open Compute Summit.

Calxeda is also one of the first silicon partners to announce support for the OCP’s newly released common slot architecture specification. It also demonstrated Project Knockout, its ARM server motherboard design contribution to the OCP’s Open Vault storage solution. To highlight these and other innovations, Calxeda was teaming with Avnet Embedded in the Americas, a division of Avnet, Inc., showcasing ARM-based server solutions in OCS booth.

"We are honored to have the OCP single out our contribution to Open Vault today at OCS," said Karl Freund, VP marketing, Calxeda. "Project Knockout injects more compute in customers’ storage tier, putting efficient processing close to the data. We are also excited about our collaboration with Avnet, which is producing some amazing rack-level solutions, optimized for performance and TCO, and exploiting the Calxeda Energycore Fabric, the only on-die fabric switch on the market."

OCP chairman Frank Frankovsky recognized Calxeda for their contributions in his keynote at the Open Compute Summit today, and showed Project Knockout on stage.

"Partners like Calxeda are critical to bringing creative new design options to the Open Compute Project community and we applaud their technical contributions to the project," Frankovsky said. "Not only is Calxeda an important supporter of OCP’s new common slot specification, but today they are also showing their unique Project Knockout board, which is ready to be evaluated by the OCP community."

Frank Frankovsky shows Calxeda’s Knockout board at his Open Compute Summit Keynote.

Project Knockout is Calxeda’s ARM-based server motherboard design for the Open Vault storage platform. By installing the Project Knockout board into Open Vault, end users can eliminate the need for a separate server to control the disks in Open Vault.

Calxeda and Avnet were also showcasing work targeting the data center space. The two companies are working jointly to deliver ARM-based contributions to the OCP that will leverage Avnet’s data center technologies. The co-developed solutions are expected to be available to the OCP community Fall 2013 and were demonstrated by both companies for the first time at OCS.
 
About Calxeda
Founded in January 2008 and funded with a $48M investment, Calxeda brings performance density to the datacenter with server-on-a-chip technology. It currently employs 100 professionals in Austin, TX and the Silicon Valley area. It is funded by a syndicate comprising VC firms and semiconductor innovators, including ARM Holdings, Advanced Technology Investment company, Austin Ventures, Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Highland Capital Partners and Vulcan Capital.