HPE announces Arm-based Ampere servers

HP Enterprise says it will deliver a series of servers powered by the Arm-based Altra and Altra Max by Ampere, the CPU startup run by former Intel executive Renee James.

Ampere, not to be confused with the GPU processor of the same name from Nvidia, has scored some wins with cloud providers, notably Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, but it had yet to land in OEM partner. Until now.

Starting in Q3 2022, HPE says it will ship ProLiant RL300 Gen11 servers, available for both outright purchase and for leasing through HPE’s GreenLake consumption model. HPE says this will be the first in a series of HPE ProLiant RL Gen11 servers using 80-core Altra and 128-core Altra Max processors.

The servers will provide a single-socket design and are designed for scale-out applications such as digital services, media streaming, social platforms, e-commerce, financial or online services, and cloud-based services such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. providers, according to Krista Satterthwaite, senior vice president and general manager for mainstream compute at HPE.

“These organizations are looking to transform their businesses by delivering as-a-service offerings that will help accelerate innovation and better serve their customers,” she said via email. Target workloads include cloud-native microservices and/or container-based services.

HPE already has its first customer: CloudSigma, a cloud IaaS and PaaS provider that offers enterprise-class cloud servers and cloud hosting in the US, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East.

Satterthwaite said the Ampere-based servers comlement HPE’s existing ProLiant offerings and don’t compete with the x86-based versions. But she said the focus is on cloud-native workloads. ”These customers can expect to see high performance-per-watt, which is critical for cloud-scale data centers that are facing growing constraints in power consumption and rack space,” she said.