IBM, Google and several other tech industry leaders have formed an alliance seeking to boost data center server performance – and, in the future, PCs – as demand grows for processing power. They will take on Intel, which isn’t a member and is the world’s largest chip producer.
Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, super computing power and the growing demand for data processing are among the factors worrying the alliance partners as they seek to ensure servers can handle the growing load fast enough. PCs could benefit, too, but servers are the initial target.
The group is called the Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI) with an emphasis on “open.”
OpenCAPI says the group “provides an open, high-speed pathway for different types of technology – advanced memory, accelerators, networking and storage – to more tightly integrate their functions within servers. This data-centric approach to server design, which puts the compute power closer to the data, removes inefficiencies in traditional system architectures to help eliminate system bottlenecks and can significantly improve server performance.”
Other members of the new group, which was announced Friday, include: Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, Mellanox Technologies Ltd, Micron Technology Inc, NVIDIA Corp and Xilinx Inc.
“As artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics become the price of doing business in today’s digital era, huge volumes of data are now the norm,” Doug Balog, general manager for IBM Power, explained to Reuters news service in an interview.
“It’s clear that today’s datacenters can no longer rely on one company alone to drive innovation.”
PCWorld notes that “new specifications from two new consortia will bring data unprecedented boosts in data transfer speeds to computers as early as next year.
“OpenCAPI … will link storage, memory, GPUs, and CPUs, much like PCI-Express 3.0, but will be 10 times faster with data speeds of 150GBps (gigabytes per second).”
Demand keeps growing, PCWorld adds.
“Graphics processors are now handling demanding applications like virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and complex scientific calculations. Also in the wings are superfast technologies like 3D Xpoint, a new type of storage and memory technology that can be 10 times faster than SSDs and 10 times denser than DRAM.”
Read the announcement at:
Read more at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-consortium-idUSKCN12E0C5
And:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3131412/google-ibm-and-others-team-up-to-hasten-data-transfers-in-computers.html
