Technology giants Google and a group of other IT hardware companies including IBM Cor have joined hands to launch the coherent accelerator processor interface (OpenCAPI) specification. This specification focuses on giving a foundation for high-speed microprocessor interconnects systems to devices.
The new standard boosts the data center server performance by around ten times. The world's largest chipmakers chose not to join the consortium as the organization is known to protect its technologies especially related to the server. Earlier, Intel Corp chose to stay out of open standards technology groups like Gen-Z and CCIX.
This new consortium has attracted technology giants such as Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Xilinx, Nvidia, and even Dell-EMC who has come in as an observer.
The consortium of the technology giant is planning to release the OPENCAPI specification to the public before the end of the year and anticipates related products including servers based on the new open interface to be ready by the second half of 2017. For now, the open standard would be focussing on increasing big data, analytics, machine learning and other emerging technologies for cloud data and corporate data centers.
According to IT News, the open interface architecture seems to be based on IBM's CAPI for POWER 8 processors. It seems OPENCAPI would be following a processor independent design. OpenCAPI will have a protocol that allows a very low latency interface acting between attached devices and processors. It will also have a 25GB per second signaling as well.If OpenCAPI becomes successful, then there would be no requirement of using device drivers and accelerators, which usually adds to slow performance and latency.
Tech First Post reported that Doug Balog, the general manager of IBM Power, told Reuters that similar to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics has become the price of doing business in today's digital era as it is the norm to anticipate huge volumes of data. He also noted data centers today cannot rely on just one organization to drive innovation.
A research fellow at IBM Brad McCredie states that the company's POWER9 products due next year would feature OpenCAPI.