Microsoft job ad hints at ARM-based servers

The engineer, with at least five years experience — and preferably a second degree — will work for the Bing Autopilot Hardware team and be based in Bellevue, Washington.

The Autopilot hardware team is involved in data center planning, hardware experimentation including SSD [solid-state drives] and ARM and vendor relationships, amongst other things. ARM processors are often used as disk drive controllers, but this ad seems to imply an ARM processor could be used for the main server in an attempt to save power. I does not mention Intel.

Whoever gets the job "can own the decision on the hardware that we use," the job description said, and added that power management is a key aspect of the job. The engineer will be responsible for the "analysis, monitoring, control of the power infrastructure of the Microsoft Search Data Centers with specific goals to maximize the machines per colocation by keeping on the edge of the power envelope (but not exceeding rated power capacity)."

Microsoft was reportedly experimenting with the Intel Atom microprocessor in February 2009 with a view to creating a green data center. One issue discussed then was the Atom microprocessor lacked performance compared with other Intel processor and that therefore any power saving might be negated by the need for more processors to carry a given computational load.

The Bing Autopilot team designs and builds the software infrastructure that powers more than 100,000 servers and provides core platform services for a variety of online applications, Microsoft said in the job ad.

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