23 ms·

IBM Open-Sources Power Chip Instruction Set

587 points by Katydid 7y ago

bem94 7y ago
I have so many questions: - Where can I get the ISA specification?[1] - Where can I get a compiler? - Is there a link to the "softcore model"? With RISC-V you can start very simple and small (micro-controller) and work your way up in understanding and implementation to a very large core (application class). POWER is a monster of an architecture, designed more for "big iron". I guess that might limit the "hobbyist" factor RISC-V has. 1. This I think, all 1200 pages of it: https://openpowerfoundation.org/?resource_lib=power-isa-version-3-0 https://openpowerfoundation.org/?resource_lib=power-isa-vers...
- benchaney 7y ago
  In response to your second question, I believe that gcc and llvm both support power.
- kop316 7y ago
  I own a Talos II (https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/) computer. It actually runs an official port of Debian (https://wiki.debian.org/PPC64 https://wiki.debian.org/PPC64) on it, which includes a compiler.
  - mshook 7y ago
    If I may ask why did you get it, which reasons? I like the cool non x86 factor but it's quite expensive... EDIT: Forgot to mention the open argument which is quite amazing as well (I've followed what Talos does).
    - kop316 7y ago
      I tend to buy server level hardware for my own usage. It tends to last a LOT longer. With that in mind, it was roughly comparable to what I would have paid for a comparable Intel Xeon, and I like the fact that I know all of the code that runs on it (the only code that I can't actually change is the OTP memory that it first executes when it boots up, and even then you can inspect it!).
      - Avamander 7y ago
        Thanks for supporting the development of open hardware and software. Very few of us can afford to do so.
        kop316 7y ago
        They actually came out with a Blackbird, and I have been considering getting one of them to replace my server (it runs FreeNAS, but I have gotten my Debian system to run an encrypted ZFS drive).
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      The 18-core has decent performance. If it weren't for AMD EPYC Rome chips coming out a month ago, I would have considered a Talos II. 18-cores with 4x SMT == 72 threads per Power9. That's a lot of threads, no matter how you look at it.
      - slovenlyrobot 7y ago
        That's a whole lot of SMT. Can anyone comment on how it behaves compared to hyperthreading? I'm assuming at 4x each core must have a ton more execution units to go around
        dragontamer 7y ago
        Power9 is basically "Bulldozer done right". Each SMT4 Power9 core is incredibly fat, with 4x load/store units 4x ALUs, 2x Vector units. Bulldozer probably would have called each SMT4 core a collection of 4-cores. But only 1x divider, 1x crypto unit per SMT4 core. The chief downside to Power9 is that it only supports 128-bit vectors, and these 128-bit vectors are executed by ganging-together the ALU units. (so 4x 64-bit ALUs == 2x 128-bit vectors processed per clock tick). Compared to AMD Zen (4x 128-bit pipelines), AMD Zen 2 (4x 256-bit pipelines), and Intel Skylake-X (3x 512-bit pipelines), Power9's SIMD capabilities are tiny. Another oddity: most instructions take 2-clock ticks to execute, even simple instructions like XOR or Add. This increased latency is likely the reason why it performs so poorly with Python / PHP code. But when code is written for Power9, it works quite well. Stockfish chess seems to work extremely well on Power9, likely because Stockfish scales to many "cores" well (fully taking advantage of SMT4), and only has 64-bit operations. One more wildcard: Power9 has 10MB (!!!) L3 cache for every 2-cores. That's 90MB L3 cache on the 18-core. I presume that real-life database applications would benefit greatly from this oversized L3 cache. EDIT: It should be noted that the L3 caches serve as victim-caches of other L3 caches. So Power9 core-pair 01 can have its 10MB L3 cache serve as a "L3.1 cache" of core-pair 23. AMD Zen / Zen2 L3 cache CANNOT use this functionality. So AMD Zen2 64-core may have 128MB of L3 cache, but each core only "really" can go up to 16MB of L3 cache (because the other 112MB of L3 cache is only for other cores/module) EDIT: Also note, Power9 came out a few years ago at 14nm, while Zen2 came out on the 7nm node a month ago. I think a new 7nm Power9 update is planned, but I don't know what its timeframe is. In effect, you could have 1-program using the entire 90MB L3 cache for itself on Power9. While AMD Zen2 requires (at minimum) 8-programs, each program using only 16MB L3. This design decision is clear in the intended use of the chips: Zen2 is clearly targeted at the cloud-market, while Power9 is big-iron / databases. -------- Unfortunately, most of the benchmarks these days show that AMD EPYC / Rome is just the better overall processor. Still, 18-core Power9 is relatively cheap: a complete 18-core / 72-thread system for $4000ish: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS3/purchase.html https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS3/purchase.html Cheap for Power9 anyway. AMD EPYC is also relatively cheap. You can get a 16-core / 32-thread / 32MB L3 cache AMD Ryzen 9 3950x for only $700 these days (and maybe a complete system build for only $2500).
  - voldacar 7y ago
    I have drooled over the Talos II for quite some time... Do you have a particular use case that makes POWER make sense over x86, or do you share my paranoia and love of non-mainstream ISAs?
    - kop316 7y ago
      I share and respect your paranoia. I have a love of inspecting code and not having backdoors in my processor.
      - voldacar 7y ago
        For sure. It's nice that open source firmware replacements have been making progress, especially since the Intel ME fiasco, but it never ceases to amaze me that right now you can go out and get a modern, ultra high performance workstation with every single chip running auditable firmware. Hopefully we will start seeing more affordable POWER systems now that it is a fully open architecture
        acqq 7y ago
        > with every single chip running auditable firmware But disks? Isn’t their firmware closed?
        voldacar 7y ago
        Ugh I guess there always has to be an exception. Maybe you could run everything in a ramdisk? It supports up to 2TB of ram after all
        justinclift 7y ago
        Maybe OpenSSD would be functional enough to use: http://openssd.io http://openssd.io http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project
        tpearson-raptor 7y ago
        What you can do with a trusted CPU domain is use FDE. FDE is standard practice for anyone even remotely concerned about security in the first place. So the firmware that matters -- the firmware that can subvert the system due to privilege level, etc. -- is open. No other vendor aside from some lower end ARM toy SoCs can say that.
  - cipherboy 7y ago
    Fedora [0], Red Hat [1], Ubuntu [2], and SUSE [3] all have their own ppc64le ports as well so there are lots of choices out there if anyone is interested. Even Gentoo has one [4][5]! [0]: https://alt.fedoraproject.org/alt/ https://alt.fedoraproject.org/alt/ [1]: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html-single/8.0_release_notes/index#architectures https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp... [2]: https://ubuntu.com/download/server/power https://ubuntu.com/download/server/power [3]: https://www.suse.com/products/power/ https://www.suse.com/products/power/ [4]: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:PPC64 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:PPC64 [5]: https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/ https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/
    - classichasclass 7y ago
      Fedora 30 on this Talos II. Works well.
    - _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
      Void Linux as well: https://www.talospace.com/2019/01/void-linux-goes-power9.html https://www.talospace.com/2019/01/void-linux-goes-power9.htm... Although it's not official at this point I don't think.
      - classichasclass 7y ago
        No, though my impression is it's progressing pretty well, so I think it will get there.
  - martin1975 7y ago
    can you run AIX on it?
    - CrystalGamma 7y ago
      No. AFAIK AIX only runs on PowerVM systems, which none of the OpenPOWER systems are.
      - Annatar 7y ago
        Then what's the point if I can't run AIX on it?!?
  - Annatar 7y ago
    "Talos™ II 2U Rack Mount Server TL2SV1 Talos™ II 2U Rack Mount Server Starting at $6,089.00" Not at $6,089.00; they can forget that. It has to cost no more than $500 USD or this will be a repeat of the same mistake Sun Microsystems did. Will these companies ever learn? One cannot charge enterprise prices if one wants to build an upward spiral. Intel systems dominate because they are dirt cheap and convenient to buy.
    - fluffything 7y ago
      You can't find a modern Intel Xeon Gold CPU for less than 2000$. If you buy 2, and a motherboard, you are already in the 6000$ ballpark, and then you still need to buy everything else (PSU, RAM, SSDs, GPGPU, etc.).
      - Annatar 7y ago
        I can build (and have) a fully decked-out intel-based 1U server for $1,800 USD, so this Talos thing can't compete: it's not cost-effective no matter how one slices and dices it. This company is repeating the same mistake IBM, hp, SGI and Sun before it made. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat mistakes of those who came before them. Have you bought one of those Talos systems?
        fluffything 7y ago
        I'll believe you if you are able to provide a link to two Xeon Gold CPUs costing the same or less than the 1800$ you claim you are able to build a full 1U rack with two of them.
  - jammygit 7y ago
    Have you had any issues with it, or has it required any additional configuration? I'm extremely curious about the real world use of Power chips
- blattimwind 7y ago
  PowerPC and POWER are relatively mainstream. It's supported by IBM XL, GCC, Clang and most major JITs (including luajit).
  - floatboth 7y ago
    > including luajit Well, a fork of luajit. LuaJIT proper has been abandoned for months…
    - ksec 7y ago
      I thought somebody picked up as new maintainer and then Mike Pall was back. What happened? He lost interest?
      - jpfr 7y ago
        No new commits since January. https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    Exactly. I can't speak for big iron and server usage because last time I used a POWER based server at work it was still AIX restricted (though IBM was already aiming at Linux for the future), however on PPC about everything user level was available 15 years ago, including USB devices support and compilers. When the very first PPC Mac Mini came out I purchased one to be used as a living room media PC connected to a projector and running a customized Debian which would load a media player (Freevo) just after boot. Worked like charm for years, no complains at all save for the atrocious loud "boonnnngggg" sound at power up that I was never able to turn off:^)
- shawnz 7y ago
  > POWER is a monster of an architecture, designed more for "big iron". It's the same architecture as PowerPC, designed for desktops, isn't it? Have things really changed so much since then?
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if they have, given that PowerPC desktops haven't been mainstream for more than a decade now, and in the meantime IBM's servers have been marching on.
    - close04 7y ago
      The last truly mainstream PowerPC desktop was Apple's 2005 Quad-G5 PowerMac. There were other PowerPC machines after this, the PS3 being the most notable. But they were either not desktops or not mainstream. I'm a hardware nostalgic and have both gathering dust in my basement. So I can't wait for a PowerPC revival of any kind.
      - floatboth 7y ago
        Raptor Talos/Blackbird is a niche, expensive revival, but a revival nonetheless :)
        close04 7y ago
        I may have been overly generous with the "of any kind" :). That's a bit on the expensive side and the ecosystem and platform flexibility in terms of upgrade are still pretty slim/locked in. Something that's open and cheap enough to spark general interest would be much more interesting.
        yellowapple 7y ago
        The Blackbirds don't look too expensive, and Talos' hardware in general is about as open as it gets (putting even the x86 market to shame, let alone the PowerPC Apple desktops).
- circuit 7y ago
  - Where can I get a compiler? PGI has a free POWER compiler https://www.pgroup.com/products/community.htm https://www.pgroup.com/products/community.htm
  - zie 7y ago
    LLVM and GCC both support POWER.
- floatboth 7y ago
  > all 1200 pages of it Sounds weak, one of the versions of ARMv8 has a spec that's exactly 6666 (!) pages. I would expect IBM to be more detailed lol
  - mhh__ 7y ago
    Spec or manual? The ARM Spec I've seen is also 1200ish pages whereas the programmers manual is indeed thousands of pages
    - floatboth 7y ago
      Ah, they indeed have a shorter spec, but it's at 2611 pages now https://static.docs.arm.com/ddi0596/d/ISA_A64_xml_v85A-2019-06_OPT.pdf https://static.docs.arm.com/ddi0596/d/ISA_A64_xml_v85A-2019-... It's actually a document generated from machine-readable XML files https://alastairreid.github.io/ARM-v8a-xml-release/ https://alastairreid.github.io/ARM-v8a-xml-release/
  - CrystalGamma 7y ago
    IBM doesn't do wacky stuff like Pointer authentication that creeps into every corner of the spec, making everything more complicated …
- ajross 7y ago
  > POWER is a monster of an architecture FWIW: the original RS/6000 devices were 20-40 MHz in-order CPUs with architectures objectively simpler than a RISC-V microcontroller like the E310.
- ksec 7y ago
  And more questions, Correct me if I am wrong, So this is opening up of POWER ISA, since there is quite a few different version or Revision of that, I assume that is the one beings used in POWER9 and in the future POWER10? And it is more like RISC-V ISA open source rather than MIPS open source ?( I believe POWER was previously opened but with Cooperate Protection speak all over it ). And this does not include Implementations, like POWER9? I mean, if all of these were true, without implementation , or at leats licensing it for cheap, it still doesn't change the market one bit.
- ajdlinux 7y ago
  The toy soft-core VHDL model that is referred to there will be available at https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt at some point in the next couple of days.
llampx 7y ago
If only this had happened as Opteron was taking a beating in the server market. Now with EPYC Rome, I wonder just how many takers IBM will have.
- ch_123 7y ago
  I think the best bet for POWER would be for Chinese manufacturers, given the trade war and general distrust of American-made tech in their systems. There are already manufacturers who have licensed the EPYC IP from AMD, but a for-free design could be compelling.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    AMD uses TSMC’s process, so PowerPC could end competing with x86 for Western consumers as well.
- vasilia 7y ago
  Power clusters are used for ML because they have integrated NVLink and as I remember OpenCApi for FPGA. It’s not general purpose platform.
  - classichasclass 7y ago
    I'm typing this reply to you on one (in Firefox 68). What's not general purpose about it?
    - vasilia 7y ago
      From Power9 cluster with array of GPUs? For work loads like http servers/php code/MySQL/etc intel CPU will be much faster. We have CPU samples from all vendors, unfortunately Intel right now is the best platform.
      - classichasclass 7y ago
        That didn't answer my question. That's fine if you think Intel is better (I don't, but that's orthogonal), but that doesn't make PowerPC less general purpose.
the_trapper 7y ago
Interesting move by IBM. See also OpenSPARC. [1] I'm curious if anyone will do anything interesting with this. [1] https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/opensparc/index.html https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/opensparc/index.h...
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Will this do any better than open source SPARC, which was open sourced in 1999? https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1140292 https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1140292
- blihp 7y ago
  I can't see why it would. This would have mattered 20 years ago when there weren't more compelling ISA's out there. But that's not today's world: ARM is fairly ubiquitous and dirt cheap while RISC-V is a promising and open source up-and-comer. This seems like a relatively non-event (or worse: confirming that it's effectively a dying/dead platform) unless one has a significant investment in Power.
  - chx 7y ago
    Yes -- the target for POWER is basically competition with AMD Rome and Intel Cascade Lake and you need to have extremely deep pockets to compete there.
  - UncleOxidant 7y ago
    Don't forget that MIPS also open sourced their ISA earlier this year as well.
    - mindcrime 7y ago
      Sort of. From what I've read, they "open sourced" their ISA in only a very weak sense of what it means to be "open source". Apparently there are a ton of restrictions on what you can do with their ISA even now.
  - dooglius 7y ago
    Why does RISC-V being "promising" and an "up-and-comer" make it more compelling than an ISA that been around for a long time?
    - gumby 7y ago
aap_ 7y ago
Interesting. I would like to take a look at that softcore model.
std_throwaway 7y ago
Is there a second independent manufacturer for Power processors?
- blihp 7y ago
  NXP/Freescale
  - floatboth 7y ago
    Did they ever make anything faster than the 4-core QorIQ chip that powerpc-notebook.org is using? Current NXP networking chips are ARM Cortex based, like the LX2160 that's in the upcoming SolidRun workstation (which they still haven't publicly demonstrated ECAM PCIe on, sadly…)
    - aidenn0 7y ago
      Their very first of the T4 series was 12 core / 24 thread 64-bit e6500 based (T4240).
alttab 7y ago
Use xlc once. I'm done thanks.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Last time I checked it was one of the compilers mostly used in HPC. For example, https://hpc.mines.edu/using-xl-compilers/ https://hpc.mines.edu/using-xl-compilers/
  - fergbrain 7y ago
    Ah cool! My alma matter!
  - petschge 7y ago
    The compiler is used fairly commonly in HPC, but every time i tried to use it, it was not a fun experience.
- arghwhat 7y ago
  Why in the world would you use xlC, unless you're masochistic enough to target IBM-AIX? PowerPC is a very well supported architecture, supported by common compilers and operating systems.
  - StillBored 7y ago
    For the same reason people use icc, it generates faster code. A couple of years ago I compiled part of the application I was building for power8. The perf was pretty bad, so I rebuilt parts of it with xlc, and it was literally over 2x faster. That made the machine competitive/faster than the x86's we were using. Now GCC/clang have bee getting better and the gap with icc is nearly closed. I'm not sure how much of that applies to xlc, but i'm betting there hasn't been nearly as much work optimizing for POWER as there has been for arm and x86.
  - alttab 7y ago
    At one point in my career I was masochistic enough to work at IBM in the AIX power division. We were working on sub-components of DB2 where speed was critical to the point where production configurations took advantage of uDAPL as well. Needless to say I quit...
olivierduval 7y ago
Naive questions: - Will Huawei be able to use this processor design (now that it is open sourced) to build it's own chips, bypassing ARM restriction & US IP ? - Are these processor designs usable in mobile device, or only in workstations and servers (using to much power for example) ?
- somepig 7y ago
  POWER is about as far from a good fit for most ARM applications as you can possibly get. It's all about shoving a ton of hot power hungry multithread cores as close together as you can and running them at full bore.
  - amock 7y ago
    POWER already has a place next to arm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ.
    - somepig 7y ago
      POWER and Power (formerly PowerPC) are similar but quite different. PPC has been in embedded (but generally not mobile) for quite a long time, but even then, the cores are still hot, power hungry, and poorly suited for mobile.
      - StillBored 7y ago
        Because the designs predate the big push into extremely high efficiency processors. Like the big "server class" processors, the investment required to create a truly high efficiency processor is quite large. Small in-order cores with limited functional units, and lacking much of what makes a modern processor fast (vector units, specialty instructions/etc) can fool people into thinking that minimal clock domains/gating is sufficient to create a high efficiency design.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    The Freescale/NXP 4xx/75x PowerPC cores are fairly common embedded CPUs. These days POWER and PowerPC are the same ISA.
rgblambda 7y ago
Naive question: What would this mean for Xbox 360 emulators?
- EamonnMR 7y ago
  Or Mac, for that matter.
- floatboth 7y ago
  They were fine anyway, in fact Xenia has been in development for a long time already. ISA royalties are for chip vendors. QEMU implements like most ISAs out there and I don't think anyone ever had to explicitly acquire any rights for that…
- monocasa 7y ago
  As someone writing a 360 emulator, probably not much. The Cell docs are already available (Xenon is a modified Cell PPE), and the ways that it's different are a one off for Xenon that probably won't be documented in this dump.
- mepian 7y ago
  Nothing at all.
- hajile 7y ago
  I wouldn't think it would matter very much for emulators, but there has been some amount of work with old game consoles running on an FPGA to give the actual experience (and you can add quite a few old console chips on a single modern FPGA). If someone is up to re-design a POWER chip, running games would be a lot easier.
baybal2 7y ago
I'm afraid the are doing it at least 10 years too late.
gumby 7y ago
Not a problem with the article but when it lists the various past contenders, MIPS (with many times the lifetime installed base of, say SPARC, and still in active production) doesn't get a mention. MIPS's IS has also been recently open sourced. It's a cautionary tale. I don't see the point of this effort for IBM. These things need communities, and POWER simply doesn't have the community; as a proprietary architecture for so long that nobody really decided to buy POWER but rather they wanted some device/ecosystem/price point and POWER was how IBM could deliver it. The article mentions RISC-V, which still has a nascent ecosystem and no significant design wins (yet!!). But if you want to design a chip with it you can find designers with some experience with it, people developing some IP you might want to use, etc. Even that has more momentum.
haolez 7y ago
What does it mean to open source an instruction set? What can we do now that we couldn't earlier? (genuine doubt)
- albandread 7y ago
  Probably means they wont sue you or bill you if you use it in your own processor designs. The article mentioned releasing a softcore for FPGA; that at least means you can run the instruction set on something. There are even enthusiasts that might be interested in using an FPGA to build a whole computer; for example the Amiga community have a PowerPC based operating system. Instruction sets must also be an acquired taste; Power seems complex to me; but a lot of people clearly like it.
peter303 7y ago
3 of the top 11 supercomputers in this years ranking are Power-9s.
gigatexal 7y ago
Phoronix ran benchmarks and current Talos II systems run hotter and slower than equivalent x86 systems but maybe they will improve over time.
- std_throwaway 7y ago
  AFAIK those benchmarks weren't specifically optimized for that processor architecture. Most programs are optimized with x86 systems in mind. The results for your specific application might come out differently.
  - mshook 7y ago
    Yeah but that's the thing in a way: people don't necessarily optimize. They just run the stuff right out of the box or after compiling it themselves... That's the hurdle which needs to be overcome and that's why x86 is years ahead because people have been taking care of the optimizations for you...
  - ajdlinux 7y ago
    Cases in point: https://sthbrx.github.io/blog/2018/08/15/improving-performance-of-phoronix-benchmarks-on-power9/ https://sthbrx.github.io/blog/2018/08/15/improving-performan...
cipherboy 7y ago
I'd like to recommend the friendly people at Oregon State University Open Source Labs [0] who host POWER resources for open source projects. If you're looking to see what the ISA can do on P8 or P9 system, I'd definitely contact them and see if you can get a VM. There's also a cool vector library [1] that bridges the gap between different versions of the ISA and different compiler versions. [0]: https://osuosl.org/services/powerdev/ https://osuosl.org/services/powerdev/ [1]: https://github.com/open-power-sdk/pveclib https://github.com/open-power-sdk/pveclib
- ecnahc515 7y ago
  As someone who previously worked as a student at the OSUOSL, thanks for promoting it!
- tpearson-raptor 7y ago
  Shameless plug, but you can so grab a POWER9 micro VPS (and large ones too) without any human intervention at integricloud.com . Those are commercial / paid though, not free.
- fluffything 7y ago
  Note that some of these also have nVidia GPGPUs, so you can test your open source software on both.
crb002 7y ago
IBM is dead until it gets Z mainframes and Power servers in big a three data center (AWS, GCP, Azure). Guessing Microsoft will start with putting mainframes in the West Des Moines data center since so many insurance companies are still dependent on DB2 batch crunching.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > IBM is dead until it gets Z mainframes and Power servers in big a three data center (AWS, GCP, Azure). Google is using POWER9 servers in their data centers: > https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/headed-into-its-fifth-year-openpower-has-momentum-into-the-power9-generation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/head... > https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/03/26/google-and-its-hyperscale-peers-add-power-to-the-server-fleet/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/03/26/google-and-its-hyper... Of course, most of their servers are still x86; as far as I am aware, the reason why Google also uses POWER9 servers is that they don't want to be too dependent on the two manufacturers of x86 CPUs.
vermaden 7y ago
Still waiting for that modern POWER9 based laptop with 7-row classic ThinkPad keyboard ...
ausjke 7y ago
might be too little too late. I used to be powerpc developer myself, now nearly all the communities, the ecosystem, the core developers are gone, it's beyond repair, sigh.
phkahler 7y ago
YAWN
andyjpb 7y ago
An open, high end CPU design is really going to change the cloud market. An ISA like this is a first step in that direction. Facebook and Google already have their own compute projects and, like Amazon, have access to custom versions of silicon from a variety of vendors. With a properly open CPU design we'll start to see the first tightly integrated, vertical "cloud" products that maybe still have a "commodity" API on the top (or maybe not?) but are custom all the way down from there. With the end of Dennard Scaling, if not Moore's Law, Open ISAs and Open CPU designs will radically change both the hardware and compute markets and ecosystems over the next 5 to 15 years, similar to what we saw with Open Source in the 1990s. Of course, it's not clear that POWER will be the one to do that, and RISC-V isn't going to be making a grab for Intel's crown any time soon, but this looks like IBMs bid to lead in that area. When the cloud vendors start building systems like this they'll not look too much different from mainframes and IBM wants to continue to own that market.
- verall 7y ago
  I'm not sure about this - there are many open processor designs in academia if a fb/google wanted to pick them up - the difficulty is integration and software. They could easier just work on ARM, the reference designs are available if you are fb or google. I guess what I'm saying is, even if a reletively modern, 2-issue, OoO, with SMT and 256b vector proc, came out open source, would anybody really bother to integrate it and fab it? From what I see fb and Google work with silicon vendors because they don't want be silicon vendors.
  - andyjpb 7y ago
    Google have been experimenting with POWER in their datacenters for a while now: https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/headed-into-its-fifth-year-openpower-has-momentum-into-the-power9-generation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/head... More historically, Google have been building their own networking gear for some time https://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-connects-online-empire/ https://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-con... I'm focussing on Google in particular because they have always had a strong preference for Open components wherever possible and they've traditionally taken advantage that openness wherever they think they need to even if that goes against common practice. (There's a story I can't find the link to where, in the very early days, they wrote their own patches to Linux to work around some bad RAM chips that they'd scavenged from somewhere.) If Google can get an advantage then they will take it. They will also invest heavily, over years, to research these advantages and opportunities. Their attitude to things like ARM is still fairly accurate at the scale of their datacenters: https://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36448.pdf https://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36448.pdf
sandfly 7y ago
How is does this different from publishing the instruction set, which was presumably already available (if it weren't, how would one write an application for it)?
- Koshkin 7y ago
  I guess, publishing something does not necessarily mean making it public domain.
  - tpearson-raptor 7y ago
    Right. For instance, the x86 architecture is published. If you try to build anything that can interpret it, you'll get sued by Intel or AMD (or both, if you really copied anything good). What is less widely considered is that emulation is considered an implementation of a CPU. So e.g. research labs at universities have been told in no uncertain terms by CPU vendor legal notices to stop working on research that is emulating the x86 or ARM instruction sets. Now with the POWER ISA being open, everything about the ISA is fair game for research in emulation, soft cores, hardware, etc., which does put it in a space that only academic "toy" ISAs and RISC-V really sat in before.
    - crististm 7y ago
      Is this a thing today (or was it in the past)? Was Cyrix or Transmeta in such position? The Zilog Z80 is notoriously an extension over Intel 8080. I find it hard to believe and hard to enforce since emulators of various quality are practically everywhere (and not only for x86). QEMU?
    - reirob 7y ago
      But we have qemu [0] that emulates quite a lot of Instruction Sets. How comes that it is allowed to exist, qemu is emulating quite a lot of instruction sets [1] ? [0] https://www.qemu.org/ https://www.qemu.org/ [1] https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms
freemint 7y ago
The IP/patents was doomed to expire anyway. But hey they got a free PR stunt out of it. Anyway it will be interesting what "non expired" patents they bundle with this. Mostly because of https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/patent_exhaustion/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/patent_exhaus... which would allow people in the US to use these patents in any context as long, they derived their worked from an Open Source Power processor which got the patents exhausted and did not violate the Open Source license the processor.
PaulHoule 7y ago
I like it. Back in the day IBM ran a "System on Chip" factory based on PowerPC that gave us the Bluegene/L supercomputer, the GameCube/Wii/Wii U, the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360. All of these combined one or more cores, coprocessors and tweaks to hold its own against x86. RISC-V is meant to be used like that, but memory management support is not yet finalized. They are sampling prototype RISC-V chips with an MMU you can put in a dev box to develop Linux on. Other than that you are not using Linux or Windows. If you think mainstream OS is bloated, then RISC-V has your number. If you want very low cost it would be exciting to cut RISC-V down to have fewer and less wide registers. The other day I saw an article about a guy who wants to build RISC-V out of vacuum tubes and thought... 'cripes with all of those wide registers it is a lot of tubes. POWER is good-to-go right now for high end applications and can stay relevant against ARM and x86 by staying open.
mrtweetyhack 7y ago
Sort of like Microsoft opensource Calc. Yawn.
Animats 7y ago
28 years after introduction. A bit late.
Annatar 7y ago
They are misunderstanding why RISC-V and Raspberry Pi are popular: it's not so much that they're freeware but that they are cheap. Very few people in IT know how to implement processors in hardware even with an FPGA. What makes a processor popular are cheap, affordable systems people can easily acquire in an online shop at prices which compete with or are below contemporary P. C. tin bucket hardware. If IBM wants an uptake of POWER systems and people to develop on them and for them, the only thing which might make a dent are sub-$500 USD complete workstations and rack mountable servers. Otherwise, they will repeat the same mistake which Sun made, that is, they open sourced their UltraSPARC T1 under GNU GPL but the uptake was nil, because few had the knowledge to design systems around the processor. People want cheap, ready made toys they can tinker with immediately.
bogomipz 7y ago
That article statues: >"No one is saying that the OpenPower Foundation will have an easy time growing its ecosystem, despite the many architectural advantages that Power holds over other ISAs ..." Could someone elaborate on what some of those "architectural advantages" over other ISA are exactly?
StillBored 7y ago
Does this include the system IP? I asked that question when openpower started, and it took a number of years before any of that started to show up. Even now, i'm not sure its all there. Its pretty hard to build a reasonable/compatible machine when you have to "reinvent" the interrupt controller/iommu's/etc.

587 points by Katydid 7y ago

I have so many questions: - Where can I get the ISA specification?[1] - Where can I get a compiler? - Is there a link to the "softcore model"? With RISC-V you can start very simple and small (micro-controller) and work your way up in understanding and implementation to a very large core (application class). POWER is a monster of an architecture, designed more for "big iron". I guess that might limit the "hobbyist" factor RISC-V has. 1. This I think, all 1200 pages of it: https://openpowerfoundation.org/?resource_lib=power-isa-version-3-0 https://openpowerfoundation.org/?resource_lib=power-isa-vers...

benchaney 7y ago
In response to your second question, I believe that gcc and llvm both support power.
kop316 7y ago
I own a Talos II (https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/) computer. It actually runs an official port of Debian (https://wiki.debian.org/PPC64 https://wiki.debian.org/PPC64) on it, which includes a compiler.
- mshook 7y ago
  If I may ask why did you get it, which reasons? I like the cool non x86 factor but it's quite expensive... EDIT: Forgot to mention the open argument which is quite amazing as well (I've followed what Talos does).
  - kop316 7y ago
    I tend to buy server level hardware for my own usage. It tends to last a LOT longer. With that in mind, it was roughly comparable to what I would have paid for a comparable Intel Xeon, and I like the fact that I know all of the code that runs on it (the only code that I can't actually change is the OTP memory that it first executes when it boots up, and even then you can inspect it!).
    - Avamander 7y ago
      Thanks for supporting the development of open hardware and software. Very few of us can afford to do so.
      - kop316 7y ago
        They actually came out with a Blackbird, and I have been considering getting one of them to replace my server (it runs FreeNAS, but I have gotten my Debian system to run an encrypted ZFS drive).
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    The 18-core has decent performance. If it weren't for AMD EPYC Rome chips coming out a month ago, I would have considered a Talos II. 18-cores with 4x SMT == 72 threads per Power9. That's a lot of threads, no matter how you look at it.
    - slovenlyrobot 7y ago
      That's a whole lot of SMT. Can anyone comment on how it behaves compared to hyperthreading? I'm assuming at 4x each core must have a ton more execution units to go around
      - dragontamer 7y ago
        Power9 is basically "Bulldozer done right". Each SMT4 Power9 core is incredibly fat, with 4x load/store units 4x ALUs, 2x Vector units. Bulldozer probably would have called each SMT4 core a collection of 4-cores. But only 1x divider, 1x crypto unit per SMT4 core. The chief downside to Power9 is that it only supports 128-bit vectors, and these 128-bit vectors are executed by ganging-together the ALU units. (so 4x 64-bit ALUs == 2x 128-bit vectors processed per clock tick). Compared to AMD Zen (4x 128-bit pipelines), AMD Zen 2 (4x 256-bit pipelines), and Intel Skylake-X (3x 512-bit pipelines), Power9's SIMD capabilities are tiny. Another oddity: most instructions take 2-clock ticks to execute, even simple instructions like XOR or Add. This increased latency is likely the reason why it performs so poorly with Python / PHP code. But when code is written for Power9, it works quite well. Stockfish chess seems to work extremely well on Power9, likely because Stockfish scales to many "cores" well (fully taking advantage of SMT4), and only has 64-bit operations. One more wildcard: Power9 has 10MB (!!!) L3 cache for every 2-cores. That's 90MB L3 cache on the 18-core. I presume that real-life database applications would benefit greatly from this oversized L3 cache. EDIT: It should be noted that the L3 caches serve as victim-caches of other L3 caches. So Power9 core-pair 01 can have its 10MB L3 cache serve as a "L3.1 cache" of core-pair 23. AMD Zen / Zen2 L3 cache CANNOT use this functionality. So AMD Zen2 64-core may have 128MB of L3 cache, but each core only "really" can go up to 16MB of L3 cache (because the other 112MB of L3 cache is only for other cores/module) EDIT: Also note, Power9 came out a few years ago at 14nm, while Zen2 came out on the 7nm node a month ago. I think a new 7nm Power9 update is planned, but I don't know what its timeframe is. In effect, you could have 1-program using the entire 90MB L3 cache for itself on Power9. While AMD Zen2 requires (at minimum) 8-programs, each program using only 16MB L3. This design decision is clear in the intended use of the chips: Zen2 is clearly targeted at the cloud-market, while Power9 is big-iron / databases. -------- Unfortunately, most of the benchmarks these days show that AMD EPYC / Rome is just the better overall processor. Still, 18-core Power9 is relatively cheap: a complete 18-core / 72-thread system for $4000ish: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS3/purchase.html https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS3/purchase.html Cheap for Power9 anyway. AMD EPYC is also relatively cheap. You can get a 16-core / 32-thread / 32MB L3 cache AMD Ryzen 9 3950x for only $700 these days (and maybe a complete system build for only $2500).
- voldacar 7y ago
  I have drooled over the Talos II for quite some time... Do you have a particular use case that makes POWER make sense over x86, or do you share my paranoia and love of non-mainstream ISAs?
  - kop316 7y ago
    I share and respect your paranoia. I have a love of inspecting code and not having backdoors in my processor.
    - voldacar 7y ago
      For sure. It's nice that open source firmware replacements have been making progress, especially since the Intel ME fiasco, but it never ceases to amaze me that right now you can go out and get a modern, ultra high performance workstation with every single chip running auditable firmware. Hopefully we will start seeing more affordable POWER systems now that it is a fully open architecture
      - acqq 7y ago
        > with every single chip running auditable firmware But disks? Isn’t their firmware closed?
        voldacar 7y ago
        Ugh I guess there always has to be an exception. Maybe you could run everything in a ramdisk? It supports up to 2TB of ram after all
        justinclift 7y ago
        Maybe OpenSSD would be functional enough to use: http://openssd.io http://openssd.io http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project
        tpearson-raptor 7y ago
        What you can do with a trusted CPU domain is use FDE. FDE is standard practice for anyone even remotely concerned about security in the first place. So the firmware that matters -- the firmware that can subvert the system due to privilege level, etc. -- is open. No other vendor aside from some lower end ARM toy SoCs can say that.
- cipherboy 7y ago
  Fedora [0], Red Hat [1], Ubuntu [2], and SUSE [3] all have their own ppc64le ports as well so there are lots of choices out there if anyone is interested. Even Gentoo has one [4][5]! [0]: https://alt.fedoraproject.org/alt/ https://alt.fedoraproject.org/alt/ [1]: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html-single/8.0_release_notes/index#architectures https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp... [2]: https://ubuntu.com/download/server/power https://ubuntu.com/download/server/power [3]: https://www.suse.com/products/power/ https://www.suse.com/products/power/ [4]: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:PPC64 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:PPC64 [5]: https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/ https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/
  - classichasclass 7y ago
    Fedora 30 on this Talos II. Works well.
  - _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
    Void Linux as well: https://www.talospace.com/2019/01/void-linux-goes-power9.html https://www.talospace.com/2019/01/void-linux-goes-power9.htm... Although it's not official at this point I don't think.
    - classichasclass 7y ago
      No, though my impression is it's progressing pretty well, so I think it will get there.
- martin1975 7y ago
  can you run AIX on it?
  - CrystalGamma 7y ago
    No. AFAIK AIX only runs on PowerVM systems, which none of the OpenPOWER systems are.
    - Annatar 7y ago
      Then what's the point if I can't run AIX on it?!?
- Annatar 7y ago
  "Talos™ II 2U Rack Mount Server TL2SV1 Talos™ II 2U Rack Mount Server Starting at $6,089.00" Not at $6,089.00; they can forget that. It has to cost no more than $500 USD or this will be a repeat of the same mistake Sun Microsystems did. Will these companies ever learn? One cannot charge enterprise prices if one wants to build an upward spiral. Intel systems dominate because they are dirt cheap and convenient to buy.
  - fluffything 7y ago
    You can't find a modern Intel Xeon Gold CPU for less than 2000$. If you buy 2, and a motherboard, you are already in the 6000$ ballpark, and then you still need to buy everything else (PSU, RAM, SSDs, GPGPU, etc.).
    - Annatar 7y ago
      I can build (and have) a fully decked-out intel-based 1U server for $1,800 USD, so this Talos thing can't compete: it's not cost-effective no matter how one slices and dices it. This company is repeating the same mistake IBM, hp, SGI and Sun before it made. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat mistakes of those who came before them. Have you bought one of those Talos systems?
      - fluffything 7y ago
        I'll believe you if you are able to provide a link to two Xeon Gold CPUs costing the same or less than the 1800$ you claim you are able to build a full 1U rack with two of them.
- jammygit 7y ago
  Have you had any issues with it, or has it required any additional configuration? I'm extremely curious about the real world use of Power chips
blattimwind 7y ago
PowerPC and POWER are relatively mainstream. It's supported by IBM XL, GCC, Clang and most major JITs (including luajit).
- floatboth 7y ago
  > including luajit Well, a fork of luajit. LuaJIT proper has been abandoned for months…
  - ksec 7y ago
    I thought somebody picked up as new maintainer and then Mike Pall was back. What happened? He lost interest?
    - jpfr 7y ago
      No new commits since January. https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT
- squarefoot 7y ago
  Exactly. I can't speak for big iron and server usage because last time I used a POWER based server at work it was still AIX restricted (though IBM was already aiming at Linux for the future), however on PPC about everything user level was available 15 years ago, including USB devices support and compilers. When the very first PPC Mac Mini came out I purchased one to be used as a living room media PC connected to a projector and running a customized Debian which would load a media player (Freevo) just after boot. Worked like charm for years, no complains at all save for the atrocious loud "boonnnngggg" sound at power up that I was never able to turn off:^)
shawnz 7y ago
> POWER is a monster of an architecture, designed more for "big iron". It's the same architecture as PowerPC, designed for desktops, isn't it? Have things really changed so much since then?
- yellowapple 7y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if they have, given that PowerPC desktops haven't been mainstream for more than a decade now, and in the meantime IBM's servers have been marching on.
  - close04 7y ago
    The last truly mainstream PowerPC desktop was Apple's 2005 Quad-G5 PowerMac. There were other PowerPC machines after this, the PS3 being the most notable. But they were either not desktops or not mainstream. I'm a hardware nostalgic and have both gathering dust in my basement. So I can't wait for a PowerPC revival of any kind.
    - floatboth 7y ago
      Raptor Talos/Blackbird is a niche, expensive revival, but a revival nonetheless :)
      - close04 7y ago
        I may have been overly generous with the "of any kind" :). That's a bit on the expensive side and the ecosystem and platform flexibility in terms of upgrade are still pretty slim/locked in. Something that's open and cheap enough to spark general interest would be much more interesting.
        yellowapple 7y ago
        The Blackbirds don't look too expensive, and Talos' hardware in general is about as open as it gets (putting even the x86 market to shame, let alone the PowerPC Apple desktops).
circuit 7y ago
- Where can I get a compiler? PGI has a free POWER compiler https://www.pgroup.com/products/community.htm https://www.pgroup.com/products/community.htm
- zie 7y ago
  LLVM and GCC both support POWER.
floatboth 7y ago
> all 1200 pages of it Sounds weak, one of the versions of ARMv8 has a spec that's exactly 6666 (!) pages. I would expect IBM to be more detailed lol
- mhh__ 7y ago
  Spec or manual? The ARM Spec I've seen is also 1200ish pages whereas the programmers manual is indeed thousands of pages
  - floatboth 7y ago
    Ah, they indeed have a shorter spec, but it's at 2611 pages now https://static.docs.arm.com/ddi0596/d/ISA_A64_xml_v85A-2019-06_OPT.pdf https://static.docs.arm.com/ddi0596/d/ISA_A64_xml_v85A-2019-... It's actually a document generated from machine-readable XML files https://alastairreid.github.io/ARM-v8a-xml-release/ https://alastairreid.github.io/ARM-v8a-xml-release/
- CrystalGamma 7y ago
  IBM doesn't do wacky stuff like Pointer authentication that creeps into every corner of the spec, making everything more complicated …
ajross 7y ago
> POWER is a monster of an architecture FWIW: the original RS/6000 devices were 20-40 MHz in-order CPUs with architectures objectively simpler than a RISC-V microcontroller like the E310.
ksec 7y ago
And more questions, Correct me if I am wrong, So this is opening up of POWER ISA, since there is quite a few different version or Revision of that, I assume that is the one beings used in POWER9 and in the future POWER10? And it is more like RISC-V ISA open source rather than MIPS open source ?( I believe POWER was previously opened but with Cooperate Protection speak all over it ). And this does not include Implementations, like POWER9? I mean, if all of these were true, without implementation , or at leats licensing it for cheap, it still doesn't change the market one bit.
ajdlinux 7y ago
The toy soft-core VHDL model that is referred to there will be available at https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt at some point in the next couple of days.

llampx 7y ago

If only this had happened as Opteron was taking a beating in the server market. Now with EPYC Rome, I wonder just how many takers IBM will have.

ch_123 7y ago
I think the best bet for POWER would be for Chinese manufacturers, given the trade war and general distrust of American-made tech in their systems. There are already manufacturers who have licensed the EPYC IP from AMD, but a for-free design could be compelling.
- ryacko 7y ago
  AMD uses TSMC’s process, so PowerPC could end competing with x86 for Western consumers as well.
vasilia 7y ago
Power clusters are used for ML because they have integrated NVLink and as I remember OpenCApi for FPGA. It’s not general purpose platform.
- classichasclass 7y ago
  I'm typing this reply to you on one (in Firefox 68). What's not general purpose about it?
  - vasilia 7y ago
    From Power9 cluster with array of GPUs? For work loads like http servers/php code/MySQL/etc intel CPU will be much faster. We have CPU samples from all vendors, unfortunately Intel right now is the best platform.
    - classichasclass 7y ago
      That didn't answer my question. That's fine if you think Intel is better (I don't, but that's orthogonal), but that doesn't make PowerPC less general purpose.

the_trapper 7y ago

Interesting move by IBM. See also OpenSPARC. [1] I'm curious if anyone will do anything interesting with this. [1] https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/opensparc/index.html https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/opensparc/index.h...

bryanlarsen 7y ago

Will this do any better than open source SPARC, which was open sourced in 1999? https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1140292 https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1140292

blihp 7y ago
I can't see why it would. This would have mattered 20 years ago when there weren't more compelling ISA's out there. But that's not today's world: ARM is fairly ubiquitous and dirt cheap while RISC-V is a promising and open source up-and-comer. This seems like a relatively non-event (or worse: confirming that it's effectively a dying/dead platform) unless one has a significant investment in Power.
- chx 7y ago
  Yes -- the target for POWER is basically competition with AMD Rome and Intel Cascade Lake and you need to have extremely deep pockets to compete there.
- UncleOxidant 7y ago
  Don't forget that MIPS also open sourced their ISA earlier this year as well.
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    Sort of. From what I've read, they "open sourced" their ISA in only a very weak sense of what it means to be "open source". Apparently there are a ton of restrictions on what you can do with their ISA even now.
- dooglius 7y ago
  Why does RISC-V being "promising" and an "up-and-comer" make it more compelling than an ISA that been around for a long time?
  - gumby 7y ago

aap_ 7y ago

Interesting. I would like to take a look at that softcore model.

std_throwaway 7y ago

Is there a second independent manufacturer for Power processors?

blihp 7y ago
NXP/Freescale
- floatboth 7y ago
  Did they ever make anything faster than the 4-core QorIQ chip that powerpc-notebook.org is using? Current NXP networking chips are ARM Cortex based, like the LX2160 that's in the upcoming SolidRun workstation (which they still haven't publicly demonstrated ECAM PCIe on, sadly…)
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    Their very first of the T4 series was 12 core / 24 thread 64-bit e6500 based (T4240).

alttab 7y ago

Use xlc once. I'm done thanks.

pjmlp 7y ago
Last time I checked it was one of the compilers mostly used in HPC. For example, https://hpc.mines.edu/using-xl-compilers/ https://hpc.mines.edu/using-xl-compilers/
- fergbrain 7y ago
  Ah cool! My alma matter!
- petschge 7y ago
  The compiler is used fairly commonly in HPC, but every time i tried to use it, it was not a fun experience.
arghwhat 7y ago
Why in the world would you use xlC, unless you're masochistic enough to target IBM-AIX? PowerPC is a very well supported architecture, supported by common compilers and operating systems.
- StillBored 7y ago
  For the same reason people use icc, it generates faster code. A couple of years ago I compiled part of the application I was building for power8. The perf was pretty bad, so I rebuilt parts of it with xlc, and it was literally over 2x faster. That made the machine competitive/faster than the x86's we were using. Now GCC/clang have bee getting better and the gap with icc is nearly closed. I'm not sure how much of that applies to xlc, but i'm betting there hasn't been nearly as much work optimizing for POWER as there has been for arm and x86.
- alttab 7y ago
  At one point in my career I was masochistic enough to work at IBM in the AIX power division. We were working on sub-components of DB2 where speed was critical to the point where production configurations took advantage of uDAPL as well. Needless to say I quit...

olivierduval 7y ago

Naive questions: - Will Huawei be able to use this processor design (now that it is open sourced) to build it's own chips, bypassing ARM restriction & US IP ? - Are these processor designs usable in mobile device, or only in workstations and servers (using to much power for example) ?

somepig 7y ago
POWER is about as far from a good fit for most ARM applications as you can possibly get. It's all about shoving a ton of hot power hungry multithread cores as close together as you can and running them at full bore.
- amock 7y ago
  POWER already has a place next to arm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ.
  - somepig 7y ago
    POWER and Power (formerly PowerPC) are similar but quite different. PPC has been in embedded (but generally not mobile) for quite a long time, but even then, the cores are still hot, power hungry, and poorly suited for mobile.
    - StillBored 7y ago
      Because the designs predate the big push into extremely high efficiency processors. Like the big "server class" processors, the investment required to create a truly high efficiency processor is quite large. Small in-order cores with limited functional units, and lacking much of what makes a modern processor fast (vector units, specialty instructions/etc) can fool people into thinking that minimal clock domains/gating is sufficient to create a high efficiency design.
- monocasa 7y ago
  The Freescale/NXP 4xx/75x PowerPC cores are fairly common embedded CPUs. These days POWER and PowerPC are the same ISA.

rgblambda 7y ago

Naive question: What would this mean for Xbox 360 emulators?

EamonnMR 7y ago
Or Mac, for that matter.
floatboth 7y ago
They were fine anyway, in fact Xenia has been in development for a long time already. ISA royalties are for chip vendors. QEMU implements like most ISAs out there and I don't think anyone ever had to explicitly acquire any rights for that…
monocasa 7y ago
As someone writing a 360 emulator, probably not much. The Cell docs are already available (Xenon is a modified Cell PPE), and the ways that it's different are a one off for Xenon that probably won't be documented in this dump.
mepian 7y ago
Nothing at all.
hajile 7y ago
I wouldn't think it would matter very much for emulators, but there has been some amount of work with old game consoles running on an FPGA to give the actual experience (and you can add quite a few old console chips on a single modern FPGA). If someone is up to re-design a POWER chip, running games would be a lot easier.

baybal2 7y ago

I'm afraid the are doing it at least 10 years too late.

gumby 7y ago

Not a problem with the article but when it lists the various past contenders, MIPS (with many times the lifetime installed base of, say SPARC, and still in active production) doesn't get a mention. MIPS's IS has also been recently open sourced. It's a cautionary tale. I don't see the point of this effort for IBM. These things need communities, and POWER simply doesn't have the community; as a proprietary architecture for so long that nobody really decided to buy POWER but rather they wanted some device/ecosystem/price point and POWER was how IBM could deliver it. The article mentions RISC-V, which still has a nascent ecosystem and no significant design wins (yet!!). But if you want to design a chip with it you can find designers with some experience with it, people developing some IP you might want to use, etc. Even that has more momentum.

haolez 7y ago

What does it mean to open source an instruction set? What can we do now that we couldn't earlier? (genuine doubt)

albandread 7y ago
Probably means they wont sue you or bill you if you use it in your own processor designs. The article mentioned releasing a softcore for FPGA; that at least means you can run the instruction set on something. There are even enthusiasts that might be interested in using an FPGA to build a whole computer; for example the Amiga community have a PowerPC based operating system. Instruction sets must also be an acquired taste; Power seems complex to me; but a lot of people clearly like it.

peter303 7y ago

3 of the top 11 supercomputers in this years ranking are Power-9s.

gigatexal 7y ago

Phoronix ran benchmarks and current Talos II systems run hotter and slower than equivalent x86 systems but maybe they will improve over time.

std_throwaway 7y ago
AFAIK those benchmarks weren't specifically optimized for that processor architecture. Most programs are optimized with x86 systems in mind. The results for your specific application might come out differently.
- mshook 7y ago
  Yeah but that's the thing in a way: people don't necessarily optimize. They just run the stuff right out of the box or after compiling it themselves... That's the hurdle which needs to be overcome and that's why x86 is years ahead because people have been taking care of the optimizations for you...
- ajdlinux 7y ago
  Cases in point: https://sthbrx.github.io/blog/2018/08/15/improving-performance-of-phoronix-benchmarks-on-power9/ https://sthbrx.github.io/blog/2018/08/15/improving-performan...

cipherboy 7y ago

I'd like to recommend the friendly people at Oregon State University Open Source Labs [0] who host POWER resources for open source projects. If you're looking to see what the ISA can do on P8 or P9 system, I'd definitely contact them and see if you can get a VM. There's also a cool vector library [1] that bridges the gap between different versions of the ISA and different compiler versions. [0]: https://osuosl.org/services/powerdev/ https://osuosl.org/services/powerdev/ [1]: https://github.com/open-power-sdk/pveclib https://github.com/open-power-sdk/pveclib

ecnahc515 7y ago
As someone who previously worked as a student at the OSUOSL, thanks for promoting it!
tpearson-raptor 7y ago
Shameless plug, but you can so grab a POWER9 micro VPS (and large ones too) without any human intervention at integricloud.com . Those are commercial / paid though, not free.
fluffything 7y ago
Note that some of these also have nVidia GPGPUs, so you can test your open source software on both.

crb002 7y ago

IBM is dead until it gets Z mainframes and Power servers in big a three data center (AWS, GCP, Azure). Guessing Microsoft will start with putting mainframes in the West Des Moines data center since so many insurance companies are still dependent on DB2 batch crunching.

wolfgke 7y ago
> IBM is dead until it gets Z mainframes and Power servers in big a three data center (AWS, GCP, Azure). Google is using POWER9 servers in their data centers: > https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/headed-into-its-fifth-year-openpower-has-momentum-into-the-power9-generation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/head... > https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/03/26/google-and-its-hyperscale-peers-add-power-to-the-server-fleet/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/03/26/google-and-its-hyper... Of course, most of their servers are still x86; as far as I am aware, the reason why Google also uses POWER9 servers is that they don't want to be too dependent on the two manufacturers of x86 CPUs.

vermaden 7y ago

Still waiting for that modern POWER9 based laptop with 7-row classic ThinkPad keyboard ...

ausjke 7y ago

might be too little too late. I used to be powerpc developer myself, now nearly all the communities, the ecosystem, the core developers are gone, it's beyond repair, sigh.

phkahler 7y ago

YAWN

andyjpb 7y ago

An open, high end CPU design is really going to change the cloud market. An ISA like this is a first step in that direction. Facebook and Google already have their own compute projects and, like Amazon, have access to custom versions of silicon from a variety of vendors. With a properly open CPU design we'll start to see the first tightly integrated, vertical "cloud" products that maybe still have a "commodity" API on the top (or maybe not?) but are custom all the way down from there. With the end of Dennard Scaling, if not Moore's Law, Open ISAs and Open CPU designs will radically change both the hardware and compute markets and ecosystems over the next 5 to 15 years, similar to what we saw with Open Source in the 1990s. Of course, it's not clear that POWER will be the one to do that, and RISC-V isn't going to be making a grab for Intel's crown any time soon, but this looks like IBMs bid to lead in that area. When the cloud vendors start building systems like this they'll not look too much different from mainframes and IBM wants to continue to own that market.

verall 7y ago
I'm not sure about this - there are many open processor designs in academia if a fb/google wanted to pick them up - the difficulty is integration and software. They could easier just work on ARM, the reference designs are available if you are fb or google. I guess what I'm saying is, even if a reletively modern, 2-issue, OoO, with SMT and 256b vector proc, came out open source, would anybody really bother to integrate it and fab it? From what I see fb and Google work with silicon vendors because they don't want be silicon vendors.
- andyjpb 7y ago
  Google have been experimenting with POWER in their datacenters for a while now: https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/headed-into-its-fifth-year-openpower-has-momentum-into-the-power9-generation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2018/03/19/head... More historically, Google have been building their own networking gear for some time https://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-connects-online-empire/ https://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-con... I'm focussing on Google in particular because they have always had a strong preference for Open components wherever possible and they've traditionally taken advantage that openness wherever they think they need to even if that goes against common practice. (There's a story I can't find the link to where, in the very early days, they wrote their own patches to Linux to work around some bad RAM chips that they'd scavenged from somewhere.) If Google can get an advantage then they will take it. They will also invest heavily, over years, to research these advantages and opportunities. Their attitude to things like ARM is still fairly accurate at the scale of their datacenters: https://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36448.pdf https://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36448.pdf

sandfly 7y ago

How is does this different from publishing the instruction set, which was presumably already available (if it weren't, how would one write an application for it)?

Koshkin 7y ago
I guess, publishing something does not necessarily mean making it public domain.
- tpearson-raptor 7y ago
  Right. For instance, the x86 architecture is published. If you try to build anything that can interpret it, you'll get sued by Intel or AMD (or both, if you really copied anything good). What is less widely considered is that emulation is considered an implementation of a CPU. So e.g. research labs at universities have been told in no uncertain terms by CPU vendor legal notices to stop working on research that is emulating the x86 or ARM instruction sets. Now with the POWER ISA being open, everything about the ISA is fair game for research in emulation, soft cores, hardware, etc., which does put it in a space that only academic "toy" ISAs and RISC-V really sat in before.
  - crististm 7y ago
    Is this a thing today (or was it in the past)? Was Cyrix or Transmeta in such position? The Zilog Z80 is notoriously an extension over Intel 8080. I find it hard to believe and hard to enforce since emulators of various quality are practically everywhere (and not only for x86). QEMU?
  - reirob 7y ago
    But we have qemu [0] that emulates quite a lot of Instruction Sets. How comes that it is allowed to exist, qemu is emulating quite a lot of instruction sets [1] ? [0] https://www.qemu.org/ https://www.qemu.org/ [1] https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms

freemint 7y ago

The IP/patents was doomed to expire anyway. But hey they got a free PR stunt out of it. Anyway it will be interesting what "non expired" patents they bundle with this. Mostly because of https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/patent_exhaustion/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/patent_exhaus... which would allow people in the US to use these patents in any context as long, they derived their worked from an Open Source Power processor which got the patents exhausted and did not violate the Open Source license the processor.

PaulHoule 7y ago

I like it. Back in the day IBM ran a "System on Chip" factory based on PowerPC that gave us the Bluegene/L supercomputer, the GameCube/Wii/Wii U, the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360. All of these combined one or more cores, coprocessors and tweaks to hold its own against x86. RISC-V is meant to be used like that, but memory management support is not yet finalized. They are sampling prototype RISC-V chips with an MMU you can put in a dev box to develop Linux on. Other than that you are not using Linux or Windows. If you think mainstream OS is bloated, then RISC-V has your number. If you want very low cost it would be exciting to cut RISC-V down to have fewer and less wide registers. The other day I saw an article about a guy who wants to build RISC-V out of vacuum tubes and thought... 'cripes with all of those wide registers it is a lot of tubes. POWER is good-to-go right now for high end applications and can stay relevant against ARM and x86 by staying open.

mrtweetyhack 7y ago

Sort of like Microsoft opensource Calc. Yawn.

Animats 7y ago

28 years after introduction. A bit late.

Annatar 7y ago

They are misunderstanding why RISC-V and Raspberry Pi are popular: it's not so much that they're freeware but that they are cheap. Very few people in IT know how to implement processors in hardware even with an FPGA. What makes a processor popular are cheap, affordable systems people can easily acquire in an online shop at prices which compete with or are below contemporary P. C. tin bucket hardware. If IBM wants an uptake of POWER systems and people to develop on them and for them, the only thing which might make a dent are sub-$500 USD complete workstations and rack mountable servers. Otherwise, they will repeat the same mistake which Sun made, that is, they open sourced their UltraSPARC T1 under GNU GPL but the uptake was nil, because few had the knowledge to design systems around the processor. People want cheap, ready made toys they can tinker with immediately.

bogomipz 7y ago

That article statues: >"No one is saying that the OpenPower Foundation will have an easy time growing its ecosystem, despite the many architectural advantages that Power holds over other ISAs ..." Could someone elaborate on what some of those "architectural advantages" over other ISA are exactly?

StillBored 7y ago

Does this include the system IP? I asked that question when openpower started, and it took a number of years before any of that started to show up. Even now, i'm not sure its all there. Its pretty hard to build a reasonable/compatible machine when you have to "reinvent" the interrupt controller/iommu's/etc.