IBM power source Power Server innovation hardware business

"Tenkine Server channel August 7 News" IBM in the x86 business to Lenovo Group, power server became ibmhttp://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/36300.html "> The hardware business is the most important. IBM's earnings also showed a sharp drop in hardware business revenues, and to break through, IBM's unprecedented openness to nurturing the power biosphere.

As one of the main supporters of the open source community, IBM is currently introducing open source into its flagship, power-based server family, which pushes its power server technology to the open source community through the OpenPOWER Foundation. Turning the power server platform into open source is no doubt a major decision for IBM's server business and represents the key transition phase of IBM.

The power-represented mini-machine is being hit hard by the x86 architecture server, and if power retains its previously closed state, it is clearly unable to adapt to current server market developments. IBM is open to POWER8 technology because it allows more vendors to participate in the power system, and before that, the power server stands for closure, which guarantees IBM's high profits, but it is difficult to form x86 as a broad ecosystem. With open source, IBM will undoubtedly enhance its competitive edge with Intel in the server market and build a new open source ecosystem on the server side.

Just recently, IBM has open source management Power8 chip boot sequence of microcode, which is very similar to the x86 platform BIOS. IBM has published 420000 lines of Power8 firmware code on behalf of the OpenPOWER Foundation, and the code can be downloaded from GitHub. The open source Power8 firmware code contains a opal,opal that is an abbreviation of the Open Power abstraction Layer (The Open Power Abstraction layer).

With OPAL,IBM, the Power8 boot order is more like the x86 boot sequence. In the x86 boot sequence, the BIOS is loaded into the x86 chip, and the Linux operating system can then interact directly with the chip. The point of Opal is that you can start the Power8 system directly into Linux, and then enter the KVM and OpenStack, and the x86 machine.

The flexibility of IBM power is enhanced by the introduction of OPAL,IBM Power8 to enable users to have more options. In this move, we see the blue giant trying to build an open power biosphere. Starting with POWER8, any enterprise with a technical capability can design and produce CPU chips based on the power architecture and can improve them.

In April of this year, IBM officially released the POWER8 processor, the new processor emphasizing openness and scalability. The POWER8 system is the first OpenPOWER compatible system and the first product to make full use of all the current OpenPOWER innovations. This has transformed the POWER8 processor from IBM's proprietary product into a collaborative product in the POWER8 ecosystem.

IBM has been advocating, participating and supporting Linux and open source software, and integrating open source technology into the power platform. 2013 IBM invested as much as $1 billion on the power BAE server to develop the latest Linux and other open source technologies. Major investment projects include new products, Global 5 power BAE Linux Center and Power development platform. The Power development platform is a free development cloud platform designed to help developers test and migrate x86 solutions to the power platform.

In the open source power ecosystem, IBM's collaboration with partners begins at the bottom of the chip, with a rich variety of collaborative models that can form a variety of ecosystems. IBM provides a special API for users to produce processors with special I/O for specific workloads. At the same time, the Power processor is widely recognized for its high-end advantages, such as reliability, performance, etc., and partners can do more differentiated and efficient products based on the power processor.

IBM2013 year was set up to launch the OpenPOWER program. At the heart of this program is the open IBM Power microprocessor hardware and software architecture, where companies within the OpenPOWER Alliance can obtain power licensing and enable the customization and openness of power processors.

The OpenPOWER program is dedicated to creating a healthier and more prosperous power biosphere. Power hardware and software will be open to Alliance members for the first time, and Alliance members will have access to open-source power firmware, the software that controls basic chip functionality. With IBM's authorization, affiliate companies can also use IBM-designed circuits in chip designs to develop related products, such as servers, networks, and storage devices, with other members of the consortium. As a result, IBM and the entire alliance will provide unprecedented openness to help developers tailor new server hardware to various computing workloads.

Editorial Reviews: Whether it is the establishment of the OpenPOWER Foundation or the openness of the POWER8 processor, IBM is creating an ecosystem of comparable x86 through open power. With IBM's operating experience in open source mode, we have reason to believe that the Power architecture open source after the development prospects are still very bright, wait and see!