IBM and Google have partnered with Mellanox, NVIDIA and Tyan on plans to form an open development alliance based on IBM's POWER microprocessor architecture.
The OpenPOWER Consortium consortium intends to build advanced server, networking, storage and GPU-acceleration technology designed for next-generation, hyperscale and cloud data centers.
The move makes POWER hardware and software available to open development for the first time as well as making POWER IP licensable to others. The consortium will also offer open-source POWER firmware.
“Combining our talents and assets around the POWER architecture can greatly increase the rate of innovation throughout the industry,” said Steve Mills, SVP and group executive at IBM Software & Systems. “Developers now have access to an expanded and open set of server technologies for the first time.”
As part of their initial collaboration within the consortium, NVIDIA and IBM will work together to integrate the CUDA GPU and POWER ecosystems.