Ubuntu and HP Will Power ARM Data Centers

After yesterday's announcement of HP's Project Moonshot, a programme that will accelerate the use of ARM low-power CPUs in data centers, Canonical also announced today that it will be involved in the Moonshot project.

HP's announcement includes the launch of the Redstone development platform which harnesses low-power CPUs (both x86 and ARM), the Pathfinder partnership programme, and the HP Discovery laboratory in Houston.

Canonical has just released the first Ubuntu Server for ARM edition, along with the Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) release, and the company thinks that Ubuntu is the perfect choice for big data, web and cloud infrastructure workloads.

Not to mention that movies, such as Avatar, were rendered on Ubuntu. The Apache Hadoop software framework also runs on Ubuntu, and big companies like HP and Rackspace are using Ubuntu Server for their cloud offerings.

"The good news is that Canonical has been working with ARM and Calexda for several years now and we released the first version of Ubuntu Server ported for ARM Cortex A9 class processors last month." - was stated in Canonical's blog announcement.

Because of HP's Moonshot announcement, in six months, Canonical will optimize and benchmark Ubuntu Server ARM edition.

"As HP stated today, this is beginning of a journey to re-inventing a power efficient and less complex data center. We look forward to working with HP and Calxeda on that journey." - said Canonical.