Category Archives: Open Compute

Quanta intros Intel RSA Open Compute proof of concept

Quanta is mashing up Intel's RSA and Open Compute designs

Quanta is mashing up Intel’s RSA and Open Compute designs

Taiwanese datacentre vendor Quanta has introduced an Intel Rack Scale Architecture (Intel RSA) proof of concept rack solution based on Open Compute specifications which the company is pitching at hyperscale datacentre operators and cloud providers.

Intel RSA is the chip vendor’s own modular architecture design that disaggregates compute, storage and networking and weaves them together in a fabric it claims makes resources easier to pool and pod.

Now Quanta has developed a proof of concept for a server that blends Intel’s RSA specs and Open Compute designs.

The hardware vendor, which already offers hardware based on Open Compute designs, claims will significantly reduce datacentre energy consumption and costs, reduce vendor lock-in and ease management and maintenance.

“Datacentres face significant challenges to efficiency, flexibility and agility,” said Mike Yang, general manager of QCT. “Working with Intel on the Intel RSA program, we have developed our product lineup based on Open Compute to give customers the utmost in efficiency and performance, supported by open standards.”

“In addition, we provide manageability from the chassis level and rack level, up to pod level, so customers can easily pool resources across these levels to support dynamic workloads,” Yang said.

ODMs like Quanta have gained strong share in the hyperscale datacentre space because of their cost competitiveness, and at the same time the Open Compute project, an open source hardware project founded by Facebook a few years back, seems to be gaining favour among large cloud providers. Facebook, IBM, HP and Rackspace are among some of the larger providers building out Open Compute-based services at reasonable scale.

OpenPower members reveal open source cloud tech mashups

OpenPower members have been busy creating open source server specs based on the Power8 architecture

OpenPower members have been busy creating open source server specs based on the Power8 architecture

OpenPower Foundation members pulled the curtain back on a number of open source cloud datacentre technologies including the first commercially available OpenPower-based server, and the first open server spec that combines OpenStack, Open Compute and OpenPower architectures.

Members of the open source hardware community, which IBM – the community’s founding organisation – said now numbers over 110 organisations, revealed a number of joint hardware initiatives falling under the OpenPower umbrella.

The Foundation announced the first OpenPower-based servers, developed by Chinese ODM Tyan (TYAN TN71-BP012), a variant of those IBM recently said it would add to its SoftLayer datacentres. The servers will be commercially available in the second half of 2015.

IBM and Wistron also revealed an OpenPower-based server using GPU and networking technology from Nvidia and Mellanox, respectively, which is being aimed at high performance compute workloads.

The foundation also announced the first server spec and motherboard mock-up combining the design concepts of the Facebook-led open source hardware project, Open Compute, with OpenStack and OpenPower technologies, an initiative Rackspace – among other service providers with a vested interest all three open source projects – was keen to bring to fruition.

“Collaborating across our open development communities will accelerate and broaden the raw potential of a fully open datacentre. We have a running start together and look forward to technical collaboration and events to engage our broader community,” said Corey Bell, chief executive officer of the Open Compute Project.

In an interview with BCN earlier this month Brad McCredie, IBM fellow and vice president of IBM Power Systems Development and president of the OpenPower Foundation said there is a big opportunity for Power to succeed in the market, and that IBM hopes to claim up to 30 per cent of the scale-out market in a matter of years.

Ken King, general manager OpenPower Alliances at IBM said: “OpenPower started off as an idea that immediately resonated with our technology partners to strengthen their scale out implementations like analytics.  Now, OpenPower is fundamental to every conversation IBM is having with clients — from HPC to scale out computing to cloud service providers.  Choice, freedom and better performance are strategic imperatives guiding customers around the globe, and OpenPOWER is leading the way.