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Intel Tuesday grew its Atom family of low-power processors with the launch of its Atom S1200 line-up, targeted at high-density microservers.
According to the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker, the new Atom S1200 family, code-named Centerton, is the world's first 64-bit system-on-a-chip (SoC) that can deliver server-class reliability, without driving up power consumption levels or overall data center costs. The Atom S1200 is aimed largely at customers providing cloud or Web-hosting services, along with those using lower-end storage and networking systems.
"With the launch of Atom, we see design wins across the full spectrum," said Diane Bryant, head of Intel's Data Center Group. Bryant said the Atom S1200 family already has 20 design wins with vendors including Dell, Supermicro and Huawei. The new SoCs are also being used in Hewlett-Packard's first wave of its Project Moonshot servers, code-named Gemini.
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The Atom S1200 family consists of three different dual-core chips, each of which is equipped with four threads and Intel's Hyper Threading Technology. The stand-out chip in the line-up is the Atom S1260, which has a 6.1-watt thermal design power (TDP) and runs up to 2GHz. The series also consists of the Atom S1220, which has an 8.1-watt TDP and is clocked at 1.6GHz, and the Atom 1260, which has an 8.5-watt TDP and also runs up to 1.6GHz.
The new Atom S1200 family also delivers 64-bit support, meaning they are fully compatible with all existing 64-bit software based on Intel's x86 architecture. For customers already leveraging x86-based and 64-bit systems in their data centers, Bryant said the transition to the new Atom SoC would be "truly seamless."
"There is a massive install base of applications, middleware, operating systems that all just simply run on the Atom SoC," Bryant said. "And we have large software providers like Red Hat and Oracle that can speak first-hand to the benefits of having a single hardware architecture running in your data center."
Intel's new Atom S1200 series is shipping now and will go head to head with server processors from U.K.-based chip licensor ARM, whose processors are commonly found in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets and have been making their way into the data center because of their ultra low-power designs.
