Rackspace is the latest member to join the OpenPOWER Foundation – an open development alliance based on IBM’s POWER microprocessor architecture. One year after its formation, the OpenPOWER Foundation now has 80 members.
For 2015, OpenPOWER said it is planning a slate of development activities through its work groups as well as collaborative member projects. For example, currently 12 members are designing OpenPOWER systems, and several universities are conducting research with OpenPOWER based technologies. These projects and other member work underway build upon a growing set of OpenPOWER compatible solutions introduced in the last quarter of 2014 including:
- Nallatech collaboration with Altera produced the OpenPOWER CAPI Developer Kit for IBM POWER8
- Tyan launched the TYAN GN70-BP010, the world’s first OpenPOWER customer reference system
- NVIDIA and IBM collaboration produced the IBM Power S824L server with GPU acceleration
- Redis Labs, Altera, Canonical and IBM collaboration produced the IBM Data Engine for NoSQL, a CAPI-enabled solution for NoSQL data stores
The OpenPOWER Foundation’s Technical Steering Committee has chartered six work groups. The latest one formed addresses interoperability, allowing different server component technologies to work together. Named the 25G IO Interoperability Mode Work Group, this new work group focuses on physical interfaces — the wiring that connects componentry — and will provide members a forum to work out an interoperability mode for custom 25Gbps PHYs. The interoperability work group joins the previously established Systems Software, OpenServer Development Platform, Hardware Architecture, Compliance and Accelerator work groups.
“We’re very excited with what we’ve accomplished over the past year, not just in terms of our expanding roster but as measured by our ability to tap into the unique talents each member brings to our growing community of innovators,” said OpenPOWER Chairman Gordon MacKean.
In addition, the foundation plans to host the first OpenPOWER Summit on March 17-19, 2015, at the San JoseConvention Center in California.
