In the overall efforts to increase the performance / power consumption + floor space ratio, it’s now HP’s turn to hit hard with its new HyperScale Apollo 6000 system, designed in close collaboration with Intel and primarily aimed at single-threaded applications.

HP’s Apollo 6000 is a 5U rack that can hold up to 10 trays with 2 ProLiant XL220a blades. Rather than integrating Intel Xeon E5 dual-socket servers, the blades are powered by Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3 processors (4 cores @ 3.7 GHz) which, compared to the Xeon E5, offer more and faster cores in less space. HP also announced 20% more performance for single-threaded applications, 60% less surface area compared to a Dell M620 10U/16 or an HP 160 48U server and, more generally, a doubling of performance per watt per dollar. A sort of return to more simplicity as well as increased flexibility.

Regarding flexibility, the Apollo systems stand out with a wide variety of configurations. A 5U chassis can accommodate server, storage or acceleration trays (Intel Xeon Phi or NVIDIA Tesla). With up to 6 chassis powered by a single system, up to 160 blades can be placed in a 48U space, a high density solution that should meet some expectations on the part of the private HPC community.