6 ms·

Google, IBM, Mellanox, Nvidia, Tyan form OpenPower Consortium

79 points by pdknsk 13y ago

hga 13y ago
Industry consortiums are always iffy things, but here's one thing I don't think I've seen since Lisp Machine days that's potentially very interesting: "The consortium will offer open-source POWER firmware, the software that controls basic chip functions."
- wmf 13y ago
  Open source firmware is a thing; check out U-Boot and Coreboot. I hear Google loves Coreboot.
  - hga 13y ago
    Of course, but those aren't CPU firmware. With MIT and LMI's Lisp Machines (and probably the Symbolics LM-2 repackaging of MIT's, don't know about their own architectures), depending on how much microcode SRAM you had you could add your own microcoded instructions to the machine. There was even a compiler to make it easier, although I don't know how widely that was used. ADDED: the elReg article in this item, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6168144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6168144, based on talking to an IBM guy, implies it is that level of BIOS/chipset firmware that's being talking about. Ah well.
    - wmf 13y ago
      It sounds like you're going to be disappointed. Firmware != microcode, and we didn't say we're opening the microcode.
      - aray 13y ago
        We? Are you involved in the OpenPOWER project?
        wmf 13y ago
        Not personally.
angersock 13y ago
What is the status of the old T1/T2 SPARC chips? Those were similarly open-sourced, yes?
- tcas 13y ago
  The RTL source was released under the GPLv2, GPL and hardware is a bit iffy since synthesis isn't the same as compilation, but depending on who owns the IP (in this case Oracle) they could make the case you need to open source your RTL source as well. I personally wouldn't invest the high hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars needed to produce a chip without getting a license agreement first with the ambiguity of the license, and which point I would probably consider the POWER architectures (like many FPGAs vendors used to) or ARM. In the case of pushing it to FPGAs, the OpenSPARC would use a ton of resources to the point where I'd rather have a dedicated off chip processor, or a FPGA with a built in processor. I know people have put the OpenSPARC code on FPGAs, but I don't know of any use in industry in FPGAs or ASICS. I'd be interested if anybody knows any.
  - angersock 13y ago
    It's a shame too... so many beautiful threads.
ksec 13y ago
Too little too late? I dont get it. Intel has been iterating x86 at insane speed. In the high performance side Intel has finally caught on and eclipse Power. While Intel x86 has been winning the performance and performance / power in certain wattage scenario, they still dont have something to show for in Low Power segment. Although the next gen Intel Atom should be on par with the best in ARM, pricing would put Intel at disadvantage. And that means in Low Power segment ARM realm supreme. Not likely to be dethrone in the next coming decade. As they have solid roadmap and pretty much the plan for next few years are all set and done. So where does it left for Power? Coming from IBM they are very likely to be expensive. IBM has never been known to iterate as fast as Intel. Let alone ARM which now offers all sort of ARM chips for everything except High performance in their portfolio. I just dont see how this could change anything.
- perryh2 13y ago
  For those that do not know, IBM processors are used in high-performance computing applications. Some of the world's fastest supercomputers are based on POWER [1]. These supercomputers can have hundreds of thousands or even millions of cores for massively parallel computing. We've seen recently from some of these systems that the POWER processors are much more effective than x86 processors. They consume lower power and generate less heat. If combined with Nvidia GPU's for CUDA and Mellanox's commodity InifiniBand interconnect hardware, we could have affordable clusters for heterogenous high-performance computing. In the past, the supercomputers/clusters sold by IBM do not include hardware from these other companies. I think this partnership with Tyan (major manufacturer of current x86 chipsets) will also allow 3rd-party vendors to build systems with IBM POWER processors. In other words, POWER is not in the same market as x86 or ARM. It does have its own niche in the market. [1] http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/ http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/
  - andor 13y ago
    We've seen recently from some of these systems that the POWER processors are much more effective than x86 processors. They consume lower power and generate less heat. In other words, POWER is not in the same market as x86 or ARM. It does have its own niche in the market. Look at that Top500 list again and compare #1 (x86) and #3 (POWER). #1 has about double the number of cores, performance and power usage. I'd say the high-end Xeons are comparable to POWER in all aspects.
AsymetricCom 13y ago
Probably a good idea to deprecate your POWER infrastructure. This can only mean bad things for the customer support. Getting your APIs twisted in this so-called "open" software on proprietary, niche hardware mess with no single POC will mean you're dependent on them for a long time to come and your software will only become more and more complex and integrated as time goes on, until nobody on earth can untangle it.
pdknsk 13y ago
I have a question. Why did a moderator lowercase OpenPOWER? It makes a difference.
- speeder 13y ago
  To the mod: POWER is not a typo, and it is not a emphasis, this is the trademark from IBM, the thing is really named POWER in all caps.
  - marshray 13y ago
    IMHO, that doesn't mean it's not shouting. At some point, gratuitous typography runs the risk of people refusing to respect it. For example, that company that seems to expect people to spell its name with a trailing exclamation point. I have a bit more sympathy for IBM since they weren't exactly going for viral adoption and (seriously) their products have a long tradition of being lowercase-challenged.
    - mburns 13y ago
      >"The name is an acronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER_Instruction_Set_Architecture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER_Instruction_Set_Archi...
      - marshray 13y ago
        Right, not contrived at all. It will be interesting to see if the New York Times refers to it as "I.B.M.'s P.O.W.E.R. technology."
        wmf 13y ago
        A.F.A.I.K., N.Y.T.'s quaint style guide advises periods for initialisms (which are pronounced letter-by-letter) but no periods for acronyms (which are pronounced like words).
speeder 13y ago
If something cool comes out of this I will be very happy. I always considered POWER much more cool than x86, and was pretty sad when Apple abandoned it. Also I was happy the current gen consoles used it, but I think Sony move to make it bizarrely complex to the point that noone could code for it, kinda stupid.
dmm 13y ago
IBM is furloughing US hardware employees this month: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm-to-furlough-most-of-its-u-s-hardware-staff-in-late-august/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm...
1O0101ll100O 13y ago
Hmmm. Google having significant influence on the lowest level of my hardware...
- lmm 13y ago
  You mean the bits that are already made in china?
rayiner 13y ago
Relevant, for anybody thinking of jumping aboard that sinking ship: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm-to-furlough-most-of-its-u-s-hardware-staff-in-late-august http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm....
fortmac 13y ago
So should I not throwout my powerbook G4?
oscargrouch 13y ago
any chance to have a parallella sort of SOC, a cheap HPC contender out of this consortiums? imagine a PowerPC HPC SOC for less than $99 :)
- iyulaev 13y ago
  POWER != PowerPC, although they are related. There are/were plenty of PowerPC-based microcontrollers. Freescale, among other vendors, had a few families. It's all ARM now though as far as I know.
  - bashinator 13y ago
    PPC is still incredibly common in industrial embedded systems.
dlinder 13y ago
Anyone else here remember the CHRP/PReP days? Good times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platf... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PReP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PReP
- jjindev 13y ago
  Yes, there is a Back To The Future aspect. That said, cpus are just cheaper and easier these days. POWER, as a core, might break out.
marshray 13y ago
"OpenPOWER is open to any firm that wants to innovate on the POWER platform and participate in an open, collaborative effort." Translation: There is no way that this hardware is going to end up being affordable for small time builders, hackers, and enthusiasts. Unless someone screws up and accidentally ships something like a Playstation 3 rev 1 using it. I'm only cynical because I'm jealous.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I find this move greatly entertaining. Its like a Hollywood remake, "AIM Alliance II"[1] Many of the things that make ARM successful IBM has dismissed in the past as pandering to special interests. And, like Sun with its failed attempt to make SPARC a thing, IBM has shown it can be a bit schizophrenic when it comes to sharing enough that folks can compete. ARM, not having a fab, and not having any products for sale, has very little to discourage it from agreeing to things. IBM on the other hand has other interests that are often in tension with the goal of making a processor architecture ubiquitous. Glad they are trying again, not sure if they will be any more successful this time, but will be pleasantly surprised if we get a credible third horse in the 'mass market instruction set architecture' race. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance

79 points by pdknsk 13y ago

hga 13y ago

Industry consortiums are always iffy things, but here's one thing I don't think I've seen since Lisp Machine days that's potentially very interesting: "The consortium will offer open-source POWER firmware, the software that controls basic chip functions."

wmf 13y ago
Open source firmware is a thing; check out U-Boot and Coreboot. I hear Google loves Coreboot.
- hga 13y ago
  Of course, but those aren't CPU firmware. With MIT and LMI's Lisp Machines (and probably the Symbolics LM-2 repackaging of MIT's, don't know about their own architectures), depending on how much microcode SRAM you had you could add your own microcoded instructions to the machine. There was even a compiler to make it easier, although I don't know how widely that was used. ADDED: the elReg article in this item, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6168144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6168144, based on talking to an IBM guy, implies it is that level of BIOS/chipset firmware that's being talking about. Ah well.
  - wmf 13y ago
    It sounds like you're going to be disappointed. Firmware != microcode, and we didn't say we're opening the microcode.
    - aray 13y ago
      We? Are you involved in the OpenPOWER project?
      - wmf 13y ago
        Not personally.

angersock 13y ago

What is the status of the old T1/T2 SPARC chips? Those were similarly open-sourced, yes?

tcas 13y ago
The RTL source was released under the GPLv2, GPL and hardware is a bit iffy since synthesis isn't the same as compilation, but depending on who owns the IP (in this case Oracle) they could make the case you need to open source your RTL source as well. I personally wouldn't invest the high hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars needed to produce a chip without getting a license agreement first with the ambiguity of the license, and which point I would probably consider the POWER architectures (like many FPGAs vendors used to) or ARM. In the case of pushing it to FPGAs, the OpenSPARC would use a ton of resources to the point where I'd rather have a dedicated off chip processor, or a FPGA with a built in processor. I know people have put the OpenSPARC code on FPGAs, but I don't know of any use in industry in FPGAs or ASICS. I'd be interested if anybody knows any.
- angersock 13y ago
  It's a shame too... so many beautiful threads.

ksec 13y ago

Too little too late? I dont get it. Intel has been iterating x86 at insane speed. In the high performance side Intel has finally caught on and eclipse Power. While Intel x86 has been winning the performance and performance / power in certain wattage scenario, they still dont have something to show for in Low Power segment. Although the next gen Intel Atom should be on par with the best in ARM, pricing would put Intel at disadvantage. And that means in Low Power segment ARM realm supreme. Not likely to be dethrone in the next coming decade. As they have solid roadmap and pretty much the plan for next few years are all set and done. So where does it left for Power? Coming from IBM they are very likely to be expensive. IBM has never been known to iterate as fast as Intel. Let alone ARM which now offers all sort of ARM chips for everything except High performance in their portfolio. I just dont see how this could change anything.

perryh2 13y ago
For those that do not know, IBM processors are used in high-performance computing applications. Some of the world's fastest supercomputers are based on POWER [1]. These supercomputers can have hundreds of thousands or even millions of cores for massively parallel computing. We've seen recently from some of these systems that the POWER processors are much more effective than x86 processors. They consume lower power and generate less heat. If combined with Nvidia GPU's for CUDA and Mellanox's commodity InifiniBand interconnect hardware, we could have affordable clusters for heterogenous high-performance computing. In the past, the supercomputers/clusters sold by IBM do not include hardware from these other companies. I think this partnership with Tyan (major manufacturer of current x86 chipsets) will also allow 3rd-party vendors to build systems with IBM POWER processors. In other words, POWER is not in the same market as x86 or ARM. It does have its own niche in the market. [1] http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/ http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/
- andor 13y ago
  We've seen recently from some of these systems that the POWER processors are much more effective than x86 processors. They consume lower power and generate less heat. In other words, POWER is not in the same market as x86 or ARM. It does have its own niche in the market. Look at that Top500 list again and compare #1 (x86) and #3 (POWER). #1 has about double the number of cores, performance and power usage. I'd say the high-end Xeons are comparable to POWER in all aspects.

AsymetricCom 13y ago

Probably a good idea to deprecate your POWER infrastructure. This can only mean bad things for the customer support. Getting your APIs twisted in this so-called "open" software on proprietary, niche hardware mess with no single POC will mean you're dependent on them for a long time to come and your software will only become more and more complex and integrated as time goes on, until nobody on earth can untangle it.

pdknsk 13y ago

I have a question. Why did a moderator lowercase OpenPOWER? It makes a difference.

speeder 13y ago
To the mod: POWER is not a typo, and it is not a emphasis, this is the trademark from IBM, the thing is really named POWER in all caps.
- marshray 13y ago
  IMHO, that doesn't mean it's not shouting. At some point, gratuitous typography runs the risk of people refusing to respect it. For example, that company that seems to expect people to spell its name with a trailing exclamation point. I have a bit more sympathy for IBM since they weren't exactly going for viral adoption and (seriously) their products have a long tradition of being lowercase-challenged.
  - mburns 13y ago
    >"The name is an acronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER_Instruction_Set_Architecture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER_Instruction_Set_Archi...
    - marshray 13y ago
      Right, not contrived at all. It will be interesting to see if the New York Times refers to it as "I.B.M.'s P.O.W.E.R. technology."
      - wmf 13y ago
        A.F.A.I.K., N.Y.T.'s quaint style guide advises periods for initialisms (which are pronounced letter-by-letter) but no periods for acronyms (which are pronounced like words).

speeder 13y ago

If something cool comes out of this I will be very happy. I always considered POWER much more cool than x86, and was pretty sad when Apple abandoned it. Also I was happy the current gen consoles used it, but I think Sony move to make it bizarrely complex to the point that noone could code for it, kinda stupid.

dmm 13y ago

IBM is furloughing US hardware employees this month: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm-to-furlough-most-of-its-u-s-hardware-staff-in-late-august/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm...

1O0101ll100O 13y ago

Hmmm. Google having significant influence on the lowest level of my hardware...

lmm 13y ago
You mean the bits that are already made in china?

rayiner 13y ago

Relevant, for anybody thinking of jumping aboard that sinking ship: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm-to-furlough-most-of-its-u-s-hardware-staff-in-late-august http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm....

fortmac 13y ago

So should I not throwout my powerbook G4?

oscargrouch 13y ago

any chance to have a parallella sort of SOC, a cheap HPC contender out of this consortiums? imagine a PowerPC HPC SOC for less than $99 :)

iyulaev 13y ago
POWER != PowerPC, although they are related. There are/were plenty of PowerPC-based microcontrollers. Freescale, among other vendors, had a few families. It's all ARM now though as far as I know.
- bashinator 13y ago
  PPC is still incredibly common in industrial embedded systems.

dlinder 13y ago

Anyone else here remember the CHRP/PReP days? Good times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platf... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PReP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PReP

jjindev 13y ago
Yes, there is a Back To The Future aspect. That said, cpus are just cheaper and easier these days. POWER, as a core, might break out.

marshray 13y ago

"OpenPOWER is open to any firm that wants to innovate on the POWER platform and participate in an open, collaborative effort." Translation: There is no way that this hardware is going to end up being affordable for small time builders, hackers, and enthusiasts. Unless someone screws up and accidentally ships something like a Playstation 3 rev 1 using it. I'm only cynical because I'm jealous.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I find this move greatly entertaining. Its like a Hollywood remake, "AIM Alliance II"[1] Many of the things that make ARM successful IBM has dismissed in the past as pandering to special interests. And, like Sun with its failed attempt to make SPARC a thing, IBM has shown it can be a bit schizophrenic when it comes to sharing enough that folks can compete. ARM, not having a fab, and not having any products for sale, has very little to discourage it from agreeing to things. IBM on the other hand has other interests that are often in tension with the goal of making a processor architecture ubiquitous. Glad they are trying again, not sure if they will be any more successful this time, but will be pleasantly surprised if we get a credible third horse in the 'mass market instruction set architecture' race. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance