There's a big connection between my love for water sports and hardware design -- both involve observing waves and planning several moves ahead. Four years ago, when we started sketching the POWER9 chip from scratch, we saw an upsurge of modern workloads driven by artificial intelligence and massive data sets. We are now ready to ride this new tide of computing with POWER9. It is a transformational architecture and an evolutionary shift from the archaic ways of computing promoted by x86. POWER9 is loaded with industry-leading new technologies designed for AI to thrive.

SILICON VALLEY, CA - 14 Oct 2016: Technology leaders AMD, Dell EMC, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM (NYSE: IBM), Mellanox Technologies, Micron, NVIDIA and Xilinx today announced a new, open specification that can increase datacenter server performance by up to 10x, enabling corporate and cloud data centers to speed up big data, machine learning, analytics, and other emerging workloads. Servers and related products based on the new standard are expected in the second half of 2017. OpenCAPI sets a new standard for the industry, providing a high bandwidth, low latency open interface design specification built to minimize the complexity of high-performance accelerator design. Capable of 25Gbits per second data rate, OpenCAPI outperforms the current PCIe specification which offers a maximum data transfer rate of 16Gbits per second. Companies in finance, Internet services, retail, hospitality, medical, and automobile manufacturing are increasingly turning to data-intensive workloads such as machine learning, advanced analytics and other rapidly emerging technologies for competitive advantage.

Google and a group of IT hardware companies have joined forces to develop the open coherent accelerator processor interface (OpenCAPI) specification, providing a foundation for high-speed microprocessor interconnect systems to devices. The open interface architecture is based on IBM's CAPI for POWER8 processors. OpenCAPI will however be processor design-agnostic. The idea is to allow fast, direct connections between applications and user-level hardware accelerators and advanced memory systems for cloud servers and big data and analytics. OpenCAPI does away with the need to run device drivers and communication with accelerators over a bus like PCIe, which adds latency and slows performance.

AMD, Dell EMC, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Mellanox Technologies, Micron, NVIDIA and Xilinx announced a new, open specification that can increase datacenter server performance by up to 10 times. The new standard is called Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI). It is an open consortium to provide a high bandwidth, low latency open interface design specification. It will enable corporate and cloud data centers to speed up big data, machine learning, analytics, and other emerging workloads. Servers and related products based on the new standard are expected in the second half of 2017. Capable of 25Gbits per second data rate, OpenCAPI outperforms the current PCIe specification which offers a maximum data transfer rate of 16Gbits per second.

Computational workloads are growing, and processors, memory, and storage are getting faster at a blazing pace. Emerging technologies could leave computers choking for bandwidth. The potential chokepoint worries companies like Google, IBM, Samsung, and Dell, which are moving to remedy the problem. New specifications from two new consortia will bring data unprecedented boosts in data transfer speeds to computers as early as next year. OpenCAPI Consortium's connector specification will bring significant bandwidth improvements inside computers.

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 14, 2016) - Technology leaders AMD, Dell EMC, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Mellanox Technologies, Micron, NVIDIA and Xilinx today announced a new, open specification that can increase datacenter server performance by up to 10x, enabling corporate and cloud data centers to speed up big data, machine learning, analytics, and other emerging workloads. Servers and related products based on the new standard are expected in the second half of 2017. The new standard, called OpenCAPI and released today by the newly formed OpenCAPI Consortium, 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. OpenCAPI sets a new standard for the industry, providing a high bandwidth, low latency open interface design specification built to minimize the complexity of high-performance accelerator design.

Computational workloads are growing, and processors, memory, and storage are getting faster at a blazing pace. Emerging technologies could leave computers choking for bandwidth. The potential chokepoint worries companies like Google, IBM, Samsung, and Dell, which are moving to remedy the problem. New specifications from two new consortia will bring data unprecedented boosts in data transfer speeds to computers as early as next year. OpenCAPI Consortium's connector specification will bring significant bandwidth improvements inside computers.