OpenPOWER
Contents
OpenPOWER Foundation
The OpenPOWER™ Foundation is an entity dedicated to making IBM's POWER systems technology available and accessible to members of industry. It exists separate from IBM and primarily handles access to information on and licensing of POWER technology.
For more information please visit the OpenPOWER website, which contains a list of current members.
Vendors
A non-exhaustive list of OpenPOWER-ready systems and vendors follows:
| Vendor | System | CPU Type | Fully Owner Controllable ("blob-free") |
Commercially Available | BMC/FSP | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raptor Computing Systems | Talos™ II | POWER9 Sforza | Yes | Yes | OpenBMC | Talos |
| IBM | AC922 | POWER9 Monza | No | Yes | OpenBMC | Witherspoon |
| RackSpace | Barreleye G2 | POWER9 LaGrange | No | No (release planned) | OpenBMC | Zaius |
| IBM | S822LC | POWER8 Turismo | No[note 1] | Yes | AMI (OpenBMC does not allow host IPL) | Firestone |
| Rackspace | Barreleye G1 | POWER8 Turismo | Yes | Barreleye | ||
| Tyan | GN70-BP010 | POWER8 Turismo | Maybe | Yes | iBMC | Palmetto |
| Tyan | TN71-BP012 & GT75-BP012 | POWER8 Turismo | No[note 2] | Yes | iBMC | Habanero |
- ↑ While source exists for both the open host firmware and OpenBMC, the two do not work together on real hardware as of last test (2016). Debug efforts stalled due to POWER9 ramping up and POWER8 being of less immediate importance. Failures were in the SBE, making debug difficult with the tools available at the time (2016). Some evidence of a serial/LPC bus problem was gathered as well, since the open host firmware would boot on AMI BMC and vice versa.
- ↑ TN71 and GT75 look like they have similar motherboards (SP012GMR vs SP012GMR-1U) and TN71 is known to have only partially open firmware
Raptor Computing Systems/Raptor Engineering
While Raptor Computing Systems sells OpenPOWER machines, it is Raptor Engineering which is officially a member of the OpenPOWER foundation.
IBM
IBM makes many Power architecture systems, but not all of these are OpenPOWER. In many cases, IBM OpenPOWER machines will have a very similar name to a non-OpenPOWER system using PowerVM, except with a suffix of "LC". For example, the S822 server is a PowerVM machine, while the S822LC is an OpenPOWER machine. Recent machines like the AC922 no longer use this trend.
IBM names their Power systems with a name starting with one or more letters indicating the type of machine, (such as S, E, AC, etc.) followed by a three digit number wherein the first digit is the version of the POWER processor, the second digit is the number of CPU sockets, and the third digit is the height of the machine in Rack Units. The two machines mentioned above are therefore POWER8, 2 socket, 2U tall machines.
Rackspace/Google
For POWER8 Rackspace and Google built entirely separate mainboards. While the Rackspace Barreleye G1 system was made commercially available (through third parties), the Google system was not. Designs for Barreleye G1 are available on the Open Compute Project site.
For POWER9 Rackspace and Google worked together on a single mainboard, Zaius, while making separate systems for their own use: Barreleye G2 for Rackspace, and a Zaius system for Google. Designs for both systems are available on the Open Compute Project site.
OpenPOWER Firmware
There is open source firmware for POWER8 and POWER9 systems developed under the OpenPOWER name. This firmware is used on OpenPOWER machines sold by IBM and other companies. Machines made for use with PowerVM are thought to use different firmware.
External Links
- skiboot platform directory on GitHub
- Talos I comparison charts on Raptor Engineering site
- Comparison charts from Talos I crowdsupply page
