Google, IBM, Mellanox, Nvidia, Tyan Form OpenPOWER Consortium

Google, Inc., IBM Corp., Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., NVIDIA Corp. and Tyan Computer (MiTAC International Corporation) announced plans to form the OpenPOWER Consortium, an open development alliance based on IBM’s POWER microprocessor architecture.

The Consortium intends to build advanced server, networking, storage and
GPU-acceleration technology aimed at delivering more choice, control
and flexibility to developers of next-generation, hyperscale and cloud
data centers.

The move makes POWER hardware and software available to open development
for the first time as well as making POWER IP licensable to others,
expanding the ecosystem of innovators on the platform. The consortium
will offer open-source POWER firmware, the software that controls basic
chip functions. By doing this, IBM and the consortium can offer
customization in creating new styles of server hardware for a variety of
computing workloads.

"The founding members of the OpenPOWER Consortium represent the next generation in data-center innovation," said Steve Mills, SVP, and group executive, IBM Software and Systems. "Combining
our talents and assets around the POWER architecture can greatly
increase the rate of innovation throughout the industry. Developers now
have access to an expanded and open set of server technologies for the
first time. This type of ‘collaborative development’ model will change
the way data center hardware is designed and deployed."

"We are happy taking part in the OpenPOWER Consortium and its mission
to further accelerate the rate of innovation, performance and
efficiency for advanced data center solutions," said Gilad Shainer, VP marketing, Mellanox. "Open
source and community development are key to enabling innovative
computer platforms and better serve the scalable and emerging
applications in the areas of high-performance, Web 2.0 and cloud
computing. Mellanox’s mission is to provide the most efficient
interconnect solution for all compute and CPU architectures and deliver
the highest return-on-investment to our users."

As part of their initial collaboration within the consortium, NVIDIA and
IBM will work together to integrate the CUDA GPU and POWER ecosystems.

"The OpenPOWER Consortium brings together an ecosystem of hardware,
system software, and enterprise applications that will provide powerful
computing systems based on NVIDIA GPUs and POWER CPUs," said Sumit Gupta, GM, Tesla accelerated computing business, NVIDIA.

"OpenPOWER will bring a new wave of innovation to next-generation data centers," said Albert Mu, GM, Tyan, and VP, MiTAC International "A
strong ecosystem built around OpenPOWER will bring a range of new
technology choices to market, offering more capabilities for Tyan’s
customers."

OpenPOWER is open to firms that want to innovate on the POWER platform and participate in an open, collaborative effort.