IEF: Open Source Hardware To Muscle Into Data Centers

Open-source hardware, much of it produced by new players in the computing market, is likely to become the main beneficiary of the the massive spend on cloud-computing infrastructure rather than the established enterprise-computing suppliers, LSI fellow Rob Ober told delegates the International Electronics Forum in Bratislava today.

Ober claimed the rise of internet-enabled devices is leading to rapid growth in server hardware and a change in how it’s designed: “For every 120 tablets sold, you need one more server in the cloud. Apple’s iPhone 5 launch generated a need for 10,000 servers in the cloud.

“We see seeing a migration from compute-intensive to dataflow intensive applications. What is now prevalent is bringing in data, streaming through it and doing real-time analytics. There is an increased focus on storage and networking rather than compute.”...