It's a radical thought. What if Microsoft is secretly planning to ditch Intel? With all of the recent talk about Windows RT "PCs", distinctions between the consumer roles associated with RT-based devices and the more traditional PC roles normally reserved for Intel-based systems have become blurred.

Suddenly, usage scenarios and form factors that were firmly part of Intel's territory are being encroached upon by a cornucopia of non-x86 Windows offerings. And cheering them all on is the chip maker's longtime comrade-in-arms, Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash.-based behemoth has been looking for a way out of the Wintel duopoloy for some time now, and the combination of increasingly powerful ARM designs and a tepid response to Intel's Ultrabook campaign has given the company the perfect opportunity to step out on its old partner.

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Late in 2011, Hewlett Packard announced "Project Moonshot," an initiative to shrink data center size and energy consumption by using "hyperscale" low-power servers.

Initially, HP announced the project's low-power server design codenamed "Redstone" was based on Calxeda's ARM-based EnergyCore processors which used just 1.5 Watts of power per SoC. At the same time, ARM announced it was getting into the server business with its first ever 64-bit architecture. The excitement for ARM servers was high.

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