IBM makes its Power ISA open source
The OpenPOWER consortium also becomes part of the Linux Foundation.
“OPEN SOURCING HARDWARE REFERENCE DESIGNS ENABLE FASTER ADOPTION OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES”
IBM’S Power CPUS have been powering systems since the 1980s, and the company has now made the Power ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) open source in a bid to make the chips more widely used. The move will enable hardware manufacturers to build their own processors based on IBM Power CPUS, like the Power9, without having to pay royalties. The move will, according to IBM, make the company the “only processor vendor and POWER the only architecture with a completely open system stack, from the foundation of the hardware through the software stack.”
The move is a welcome one, and certainly makes a lot of sense, with the increasing popularity of the open-source RISC-V ISA. RISCV’S success has also lead to its competitor Arm being encouraged to open up its licensing – so IBM could have sensed which way the wind was blowing and decided to make the move early in a bid to remain relevant.
IBM has also open-sourced reference designs for its Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OPENCAPI) and the Open Memory Interface (OMI). Following the move, Computer Business Review interviewed Mendy Furmanek, Director of OPENPOWER Processor Enablement at IBM about IBM’S motives (read the full interview at http://bit.ly/lxf255ibmint 1). According to Furmanek, “Open sourcing hardware reference designs enable faster adoption of new technologies and accelerates hardware innovation across the ecosystem.”
Furmanek also denied that this move was to counter RISC-V’S growing popularity. “IBM is a
1) www.cbronline.com/news/ibm-power-isa-linux-foundation member of the RISC-V Foundation [and] while there could be some overlap between RISC-V and POWER architectures over time, current implementations are focused on different segments of the market, and we believe that there is room in the industry for both architectures to grow.”
IBM also the Openpower Foundation (https://openpowerfoundation.org), an open technical community based on the Power architecture and led by IBM, will become part of the Linux Foundation. Ken King, general manager for Openpower at IBM, told Techcrunch (https://techcrunch.com) that “We are taking the Openpower Foundation, and we are putting it as an entity or project underneath The Linux Foundation with the mindset that we are now bringing more of an open governance approach and open governance principles to the foundation.”
Adding the Openpower Foundation into the Linux Foundation community will help boost innovation, while increasing adoption. It’s definitely a positive move from IBM that looks like it should benefit both he company and the wider open source community, while offering an alternative to RISC-V and tightening the screws on Intel’s dominance in the processor market.