POWER8 processor technical information has been released through the OpenPOWER Foundation (formed in August 2013 by IBM, Google, Mallanox, Nvidia and Tyan). IBM expects this move to solve problems for the data center ecosystem by allowing derivative products. POWER8 will be available to more customers and wider markets, and this will also bring innovation to the POWER platform.
Dave Vellante said at IBM Pulse 2014 that IBM will still make gains with this model:
o “We’ll sell our intellectual property, just like an ARM model, to those who want to take it and use it within their market. It’s a license model.
o We’ll sell Power chips to those buying motherboards from Tyan, and deploy within their internet center. That’s a chip sale from IBM.
o The amount of innovation these partnerships are driving allows IBM to bring phenomenal innovation to their clients.”
He also said POWER8 would be ideal for rapid pace innovation and dynamic, hybrid cloud. You may recall I blogged earlier this year about IBM’s $1 billion investment in Linux and other open source technologies for IBM’s Power Systems servers. Besides the PowerLinux servers, IBM now has five Power Systems Linux centers globally and a no-charge development cloud for developers to test and port x86-based applications to the Power platform.
OpenPOWER introduction
POWER8 roadmap