Since its founding two years ago, the OpenPOWER Foundation, which is an open development alliance based on IBM’s POWER microprocessor architecture, has grown to more than 200 participating companies and organizations. The goal is to build advanced server, networking, storage and GPU-acceleration technology for next-generation, hyperscale data centers.
At the second annual OpenPOWER Summit held in San Jose this week, more than 50 new infrastructure and software innovations, spanning the entire system stack, including systems, boards, cards and accelerators are showcased.
Some highlights:
- New Servers for High Performance Computing and Cloud Deployments – Foundation members introduced more than 10 new OpenPOWER servers, offering expanded services for high performance computing and server virtualization.
- Google is developing a next-generation OpenPOWER and Open Compute Project form factor server. Google is working with Rackspace to co-develop an open server specification based on the new POWER9 architecture, and the two companies will submit a candidate server design to the Open Compute Project.
- Rackspace announced that “Barreleye” has moved from the lab to the data center. Rackspace anticipates “Barreleye” will move into broader availability throughout the rest of the year, with the first applications on the Rackspace Public Cloud powered by OpenStack. Rackspace and IBM collectively contributed the “Barreleye” specifications to the Open Compute Project in January 2016.
- IBM, in collaboration with NVIDIA and Wistron, plans to release its second-generation OpenPOWER server, which includes support for the NVIDIA Tesla Accelerated Computing platform. The server will leverage POWER8 processors connected directly to the new NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerators via the NVIDIA NVLink high-speed interconnect technology. Early systems will be available in Q4 2016. Additionally, IBM and NVIDIA plan to create global acceleration labs to help developers and ISVs port applications on the POWER8 and NVIDIA NVLink-based platform.
- Expanded use of CAPI for Acceleration Technology – Foundation members, including Bittware, IBM, Mellanox and Xilinx, unveiled more than a dozen new accelerator solutions based on the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI). Alpha Data also unveiled a Xilinx FPGA-based CAPI hardware card at the Summit. These new accelerator technologies leverage CAPI to provide performance, cost and power benefits when compared to application programs running on a core or custom acceleration implementation attached via non-coherent interfaces. This is a key differentiator in building infrastructure to accelerate computation of big data and analytics workloads on the POWER architecture.
- A Continued Commitment to Genomics Research – Following successful collaborations with LSU and tranSMART, OpenPOWER Foundation members continue to develop new advancements for genomics research. Edico Genome announced the DRAGEN Genomics Platform, a new appliance that enables ultra-rapid analysis of genomic data, reducing the time to analyze an entire genome from hours to just minutes, allowing healthcare providers to identify patients at higher risk for cancer before conditions worsen.
“To meet the demands of today’s data centers, businesses need open system design that provides greater f1exibility and speed at a lower cost,” said Calista Redmond, President of the OpenPOWER Foundation and Director of OpenPOWER Global Alliances, IBM. “The innovations introduced today demonstrate OpenPOWER members’ commitment to building technology infrastructures that provide customers with more choice, allowing them to leverage increased data workloads and analytics to drive better business outcomes.”