IBM unveils Power8 and OpenPower pincer attack on Intel's x86 server monopoly
By Sebastian Anthony on April 23, 2014 at 1:00 pm
The OpenPower Foundation
While the Power8 chip is veritably beastly, it will take a lot more than a fancy piece of hardware to dislodge Intel x86 as the undisputed king of servers (Intel chips currently power somewhere in the region of 95% of all servers.) What IBM needs is a full top-to-bottom Power architecture stack, from first-party and third-party hardware, through to a broad, healthy ISV (independent software vendor) ecosystem. This is where the OpenPower Foundation comes in.
Basically, IBM is making the Power8 architecture and detailed technical documentation open to members of the Foundation. Currently, the foundation consists of Altera, Google, Nvidia, Micron, Samsung, Tyan, ZTE, and others. Each of these members will use the Power documentation in different ways. Altera is developing FPGAs that connect directly into the Power8 chip via CAPI, to provide stupendous speed-ups for specific tasks. Tyan, with help from Google, will create third-party motherboards that are compatible with the Power8 chip, with the goal of producing cheap, Power8-based machines for internet-scale server farms. Nvidia, like Altera, will develop a Tesla-like GPU coprocessor that connects directly to the CPU via CAPI. Suzhou will license the Power architecture to make its own Power8-compatible chips for China's domestic server market.
Taking down Intel
IBM's giant Power8 chip, being held in a normal-sized hand.
The hope is that, by cultivating a broad hardware and software ecosystem, Power will be able to challenge Intel in the server space. IBM wants to be the ARM of servers, basically: In much the same way that ARM's open architecture and licensing model allowed it to squash Intel in the mobile and embedded spaces, IBM wants to do the same thing in servers.
Usually I would say that it's a fool's errand to challenge Intel, but if anyone can do it, it's IBM. There is a lot of antipathy towards Intel and the strategies it has used to dismantle everyone and everything that has threatened to disrupt its dominion over the computing industry. Server vendors (IBM, HP, Dell) and internet-scale service providers (Google, Facebook) use x86 chips, but only because Intel has ensured that there's no other viable option. I don't think there's a single company that doesn't want to get out from underneath the choking heft of Intel x86 — and now, at long last, IBM might be offering a way out. If the surge in mobile computing has taught us anything it's that Intel isn't unbeatable — that there's a chink in its armor that IBM and the rest of the OpenPower Foundation think it can exploit. "We are entering some new spaces," Sharma told me. "It's a transformational event for Power. It's going to take Power to new spaces we haven't gone before."
New Power8 servers, being tended to by a couple of IBMers
IBM also announced today that Canonical's Ubuntu Server will be available for all Power8-based systems, and that it will continue to invest in Linux (IBM/Power is historically Unix-focused, not Linux). "Now is the time to expand into the Linux space," Sharma said as our interview was wrapping up. "Ubuntu is now one of the primary targets for Power."
The first Power8 servers will be available from June 10, with a range of 1- and 2-socket 2U and 4U models. The Power S812L and Power S822L (both 2U) will exclusively run Linux. The flagship of the Power8 line is the Power S824, a 4U design with two CPU sockets, maxing out at 24 cores (192 threads) and 1TB of RAM. The low-end Linux-powered S812L server starts at $8000. (IBM wouldn't tell us the exact pricing of a standalone Power8 CPU, but it's probably in the region of $5,000.)
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