Eyeing a bigger chunk of data centre market and to challenge Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC). International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) has signed a multi-year strategic deal with chip maker Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) to expand the usage of power processors in servers.
Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) makes programmable chips known as field-programmable gate array (FPGAs) that can accelerate some specific types of workloads in the server. FPGA is an integrated circuit that can be programmed in the field after manufacture.
To Develop Open acceleration infrastructure
As per the latest agreement, the two companies will collaborate and develop open acceleration infrastructures, software and middleware to address emerging applications such as machine learning, network functions virtualization (NFV), genomics, high performance computing (HPC) and big data analytics.
This deal will allow International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) and its partners to incorporate Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) chips in Power systems. IBM is focusing on expanding its share in next-generation data centre workloads. OpenPower effort was launched by IBM to reduce Intel’s dominance in the data centre.
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM)’s endeavour is to allow use of the design by other companies through licensing. This is a significant change for the company, which was the exclusive maker of power servers.
FPGAs are becoming essential for increasing performance of servers. Xilinx’s chips will work with IBM’s CAPI (Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface) that provides them direct access to the memory caches on Power processors. This results in enhanced performance.
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) Power is trying take on Intel’s dominant x86 architecture in servers. The other platform is ARM. Recently, Qualcomm announced its plan to develop ARM server chip, and said it was working with Xilinx to combine ARM processors and FPGAs.
But, both IBM and ARM have to work hard on hardware and software to match ecosystem of Intel to give it a tough competition. Intel is already combing its processors with FPGAs and bought FPGA-maker Altera this year.
New platform for cost effectiveness
Market observers feel, there must be new platforms for cost effectiveness and performance reasons, and healthy competition is good for the industry.
Penguin Computing is launching a new high-performance computing system based on International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM)’s Power8 processor. Known as Magna 2001, it is a 2U system, with up to 96 virtual CPU cores, 12 storage drives and 32 memory DIMMs that support up to 2TB of RAM. Like other Penguin systems, it runs a Linux stack. The company believes it is a key competitor to x86.