Google, IBM, Mellanox, NVIDIA and Tyan today have announced plans to form the OpenPOWER Consortium.

An alliance, not like others. In fact today Connetikpeople has assisted at the launching of an open development alliance which includes Google, IBM, Mellanox, NVIDIA and Tyan. The Consortium intends to build advanced server, networking, storage and GPU-acceleration technology aimed at delivering more choice,
control and flexibility to developers of next-generation, hyperscale and cloud data centers.

According to the terms of alliance, the consortium will also offer:

·        Open-source power firmware, the software that controls basic chip functions.

·        Customization in creating new styles of server hardware for a variety of computing workloads.

·        NVIDIA and IBM will work together to integrate the CUDA GPU and POWER ecosystems. 

 “Combining our talents and assets around the POWER architecture can greatly increase the rate of innovation throughout the industry. Developers now have access to an expanded and open set of server technologies for the first time. This type of ‘collaborative development’ model will change the way data center hardware is designed and deployed.” said Steve Mills, senior vice president, and group executive, IBM Software & Systems.

Note: OpenPOWER is open to any firm that wants to innovate.