New Industry Group Pushes Plan to Boost Server Speed
October 14 2016 - 1:37PM
Dow Jones News
By Don Clark
Nine big names in computing are launching an effort to shape the
evolution of servers, posing a challenge to Intel Corp.
The companies said Friday they would support technology
developed by International Business Machines Corp. that promises to
transfer data among components in servers up to 10 times faster
than current circuitry. The companies hope to persuade others to
adopt the technology.
The new technology aims to overcome an emerging bottleneck in
handling some computing jobs. While standard microprocessors are
getting faster, their calculations are frequently delayed by the
need to fetch data from nearby memory chips, graphic chips or other
components used to handle specialized tasks.
The problems are particularly acute, industry executives say, as
computers tackle vast sets of data such as images or speech
patterns.
"We are going to need to bring new computer architectures, new
technologies to bear to service the needs of these new modern
workloads, " said Brad McCredie, an IBM vice president.
In addition to IBM, the other participants in the new effort are
Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Dell
Technologies Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Micron Technology
Inc., Nvidia Corp., Mellanox Technologies Ltd. and Xilinx Inc.
Some companies are also pushing for more technical diversity.
Intel not only supplies the vast majority of microprocessors used
in servers, but also has heavily influenced or invented much of the
technology that connects its chips with other components.
IBM has particular reasons to push for alternatives.
International Data Corp. last month estimated that revenue from
IBM's servers -- powered by IBM's Power chips -- declined 34% to
$1.3 billion in the second quarter, while revenue from vendors
using x86-based designs powered by Intel or AMD increased 7.3% to
$11.6 billion.
After years of reserving Power-based chips for its own servers,
IBM in 2013 began licensing the technology to other makers of chips
and systems.
Google, which relies heavily on x86 systems it designs itself,
became a prominent member of that group. In April, the web-search
giant announced a plan to develop a server design based on IBM's
latest Power chip. A Google spokeswoman said it also plans to use
the IBM-developed communications technology as part of that
design.
That technology is called CAPI, for coherent accelerator
processor interface, and the new group promoting it is dubbed
OpenCAPI. Coherent refers mainly to technology that allows multiple
components -- such as cards containing graphics chips and
microprocessors -- to share the same pool of memory chips.
Analysts say that approach has advantages in many computing jobs
compared with the standard connections now used in most servers,
which require graphics cards to use separate memory chips. But they
question whether OpenCAPI will gain Intel's support. Intel has its
own alternatives, including a coherent connection technology called
QuickPath Interconnect.
"This is not something that Intel would want to participate in,"
said Patrick Moorhead, founder of the market research firm Moor
Insights & Strategy.
An Intel spokesman said its own technology "provides our
customers with the best combination of choice, performance, and
total cost of ownership."
IBM said servers and related products based on OpenCAPI are
expected in the second half of 2017.
Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 14, 2016 13:22 ET (17:22 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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