Server startup Bamboo Systems Ltd.  today debuted its new B1000N flagship system, which runs on Arm Ltd. processors and is described as needing up to 75% less power than machines that use Intel Corp. silicon.

The vast majority of servers today ship with Intel central processing units. Arm chip designs are typically used to make CPUs for smaller devices such as smartphones, but there are a number of players that are applying the technology to the data center.

The B1000N is a compact system taking up a single rack unit that can be loaded with either one or two blades. Each blade includes four small servers. Each of these small servers, in turn, packs 16 processors based on Arm’s Cortex-A72 CPU design, which has among others been adopted by Qualcomm Inc. to make one of its mobile processor lines for midrange handsets.

A fully kitted-out B1000N has eight servers with 128 cores between them. Customers also receive up to 512 gigabytes of memory and 64 terabytes of NVMe flash storage. All of this is delivered in a system that, according to Bamboo Systems, uses up to 75% less power than a comparable Intel machines and provides “typical” savings of 50% on the initial acquisition cost.

U.K.-based Bamboo Systems is headquartered in Cambridge, home to Arm’s headquarters, and its co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer John Goodacre spent nearly two decades at the chip designer. Goodacre is also a professor at the University of Manchester’s computer science department.

Bamboo Systems’ servers use a homegrown motherboard design touted as more efficient than those found in Intel-based machines. That unique architecture, the startup recently claimed, also gives it an edge over other companies building Arm-based solutions.

“The x86 system architecture hasn’t particularly changed since the 1980s,” said Tony Craythorne, Bamboo Systems’s Chief Executive. “Without the constraints of legacy designs, we are able to deliver servers that are built for today’s microservices-based software, but which consume a fraction of the energy of traditional systems.”

The B1000N is set to become available in the third quarter at a starting price below $9,995.

Photo: Unsplash