Level: Introductory developerWorks Power Architecture editors, Editors, IBM
02 Dec 2004 This interview focuses on the structure and aims of Power.org, a major new standards consortium in the marketplace. Discover what this new body has to do with open standards, customizable processors, consumer devices -- and doughnuts.
IBM®, along with other leaders from the electronics industry, today announced the creation of a new organization devoted to defining open standards around the customizable Power Architecture™ processor family. The announcement was made at a Power Everywhere™ event in China (see Resources for a link to the full press release, which includes information on other announcements made at the same event today).
Standards and specs columnist Peter Seebach and the developerWorks editors spoke with
William A. Dykas, manager of Power Ecosystem Development; and Mark
Ireland, who manages the PowerPC® Business Line in the weeks leading up to
the announcement. Bill and Mark both have been instrumental in working with
the founders of Power.org, and in making Power.org a reality.
developerWorks:
Can you tell us more about the announcement that is being made
today?
William A. Dykas:
I would say it's an extension of IBM's Power Everywhere initiative. It's
one of the first instantiations of our plans to create an open
environment, an open ecosystem for the Power Architecture, and all of
those who are members of that ecosystem, to take advantage of
the architecture.
dW:
So this is a lot broader than the Apple®/IBM/Motorola® alliance?
Dykas:
It is a lot broader than the Apple-IBM-Motorola [Alliance]... We're
trying to create an environment, a broad ecosystem of many interested
community members that are inclusive of not just IBM and Apple, in terms
of owning the Power Architecture, but also inclusive of people who build
systems on it; also inclusive of people that might be in
market spaces as broad as -- from servers to consumer devices to embedded
devices that might include industrial controllers. And as we like to
promote at IBM, the Power Architecture works from embedded devices, all
the way to servers, to supercomputers, to planetary rovers...
One of the primary benefits of the Power Architecture is its ability to
scale, and when I mean scale, I don't just mean in terms of one, two,
three, four, five, but to scale from very small applications, such as a
toaster [laughs], all the way up to large supercomputers that we see
today. Blue Gene®, for instance, is based upon the Power Architecture.
So what we don't want people to think about with respect to this
initiative is that the Power ecosystem is solely focused on existing
applications or the most popular or the most widely known ones, which you
would know of as servers.
dW:
So Power.org is sort of an umbrella organization for what could be a
fairly large number of committees, marketing committees, technical
committees -- you name it.
Dykas:
Yes. This is a challenge to people's imagination. If you think about
it, many standards organizations focus on a single problem that they're
trying to solve, whether it be the VoiceXML organization writing an
XML-like language that you can write voice application for speech
recognition, for contact centers and things like that. It's a fairly
highly focused initiative on a particular technical problem.
Power.org is a little bit broader because we are creating a place where
people could come to work together on very broad problem sets. Or, it's
analogous -- I don't know if you've ever heard of the Consumer Electronics
Linux Forum? They have an organization and a structure; such that --
while it is focused on Consumer Electronics Linux -- that is the
focal point -- but there are specific technical aspects that they've been
working on with respect to creating a Linux® for a consumer product.
They were working on a number of problem areas all related to supporting their singular mission. They had a couple of focal areas that were really saying, "Look, while this is all going towards a Consumer Electronics Linux, we're working on these areas separately, and we'll work to combine them as time goes on" (see Resources for more on the Consumer Electronics Linux
Forum).
I view this sort of the same way, except it's slightly different in that
the Power Architectures can be broadly used; therefore, the work
initiatives can be broadly defined. But if we were to think about
horizontal and vertical aspects, the horizontal being very specific
technical components that need to be worked on, some of those might be
more related to the industrial market segments or might be related to
servers -- or within a server architecture you could have servers
everywhere from super high-level servers down to what we call high-volume
servers, which will probably be equated to your low-end Intel® server.
They come together and figure out whatever the problem is you're going to
solve.
So there might be this intersection of horizontal technical or
product sets intersected with markets -- and actually servers might be
viewed as a market by themselves -- but there might be things that might
relate to industrial controllers that have specific technical problems
that need to be solved. So if you look at a matrix, there are specific
technical and market opportunities that need to intersect, and the
specific subcommittee might work on more than one aspect of that
intersection. It just depends on how you prioritize.
Participating in the doughnut space
dW:
This is a time of great changes in the processor industry, from processes
to business models. What are some of the implications of the Power.org
organization?
Dykas:
Well, I think the way we look at it, from a business perspective,
people's abilities to modify or build around different processor
architectures today can be highly limited. There are varying degrees, but
in many of the traditional approaches used by vendors, the architectural
elements are very tightly controlled. Not only are they tightly
controlled, the value chain, in terms of how people can build upon them,
becomes highly limited.
In the approach that we're presenting here with this Power ecosystem, IBM
is proposing that while IBM manages the instruction set to prevent fragmentation, we are creating a community and an approach that will enable people to build a lot of value around the Power Architecture and capture that value themselves. So if you think about a doughnut with a hole in the middle, the little doughnut in the middle is the part that IBM controls and captures value from. Whereas, the outer
perimeter is a large number of other companies that are capturing or
designing and coming together to create specifications that will then
enable them to create designs and implementations where they could then,
therefore, capture the value from it.
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Doughnuts defined
In marketing, the
doughnut diagram illustrates a "whole product" -- what started life as
a generic product (as the doughnut hole), but has since been augmented by
the thing or things needed for the customer to have a compelling reason to
buy.
The concept was first formally introduced by Theodore Levitt in The
Marketing Imagination (Simon & Schuster, 1983). Find the other classic
doughnut definition on gurunet.com.
-eds.
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It's a classic doughnut definition (see the sidebar, "Doughnuts defined" -- eds.). You've seen that, except we're
trying to have a smaller doughnut in the middle and the larger circle
around the outside with large white space, which represents the value, the
opportunity, and, therefore, the value capture that can accrue to all
those who participate in that space.
dW:
It seems like
you're trying to make sure all the players are talking to each other so
that they may still be competing at some levels, but they aren't going to
compete in ways that end up screwing things up for everybody.
Dykas:
Right. Think of -- well, we see this phrase frequently, and this how you
implement it. Collaborative Innovation is what we're trying to do
here. There's a learning curve that goes along with this. That is, each
company has to step outside and figure out how the structure can solve
their problems by collaborative innovation. They have to say, "By
coming together, I save money or make money by doing this."
On AMCC and Power Everywhere
dW:
The sale of some of the 4xx IP to AMCC earlier this year fueled
speculation that IBM was getting out of the chip business -- that isn't
the case, though, is it?
Dykas:
All indications to me are that is not the case.
Mark Ireland:
The AMCC deal was really the last step in completing that transformation
to a licensing business model and a custom product business model through
our ASIC business [Application Specific Integrated Circuit --eds.]. So we continue to sell custom products and we're pushing
very, very hard on the licensing front, with AMCC being one of IBM's largest
licensees for the PowerPC 4xx-series cores.
To talk about the AMCC deal, you have to look at the business models for
embedded.
If you're trying to expand the architectural penetration in the embedded
space, the most successful path is proven to be through licensing. If you
could imagine myself owning a licensing business unit, trying to at the
same time compete with potential licensees with very similar standard products based on the PowerPC 4xx-series cores, that's very difficult to do.
So it was a conscious decision to move from PowerPC 4xx standard products in the embedded System on a Chip market to a licensing and custom products business model.
If you look at the commitment to the Power Architecture, the commitment
remains very strong. In the System on a
Chip business you need to have many different flavors of chips to penetrate the market. It could
be a dozen different flavors for networking, and for consumers it could be
hundreds of different chips. You just can't make all those different
varieties as a single company. That's why the licensing business works, because you get
maximum penetration and get other people bringing their IP in and doing chip integration to get those products to the market.
And then on the higher end,
for the stand-alone MPU business, we continue to sell those
microprocessors. We design those microprocessors for Apple, clearly for
IBM Systems Group, and we plan to move those microprocessors into the
embedded space, where appropriate.
This [Power.org announcement] is really just more validation
that our licensing program is on the upswing, it's very successful and
it's really demonstrating transformation from being a 4xx standard product
provider for embedded solutions, [to now, after the] AMCC deal where we're actually
really getting great licensing traction in the marketplace.
dW:
So IBM will continue making chips, but IBM wants other people making
chips, too, because that makes for a healthier market.
Ireland:
Absolutely. The truth of the embedded space in the market is huge, and
it's highly fractured. It involves much more IP than just the processor.
So if you're going to get maximum penetration, you can't go at it alone in
the embedded space. You need partnerships and other people designing
chips around the processor.
Organizational structure
dW:
Are there any other existing models for open hardware and collaboration
that we can compare this to?
Dykas:
I think what's unique about this is that we are enabling a broader
community. As I was sort of explaining before, compared to the other
models, whether they be software or --
This is more closely aligned to what happens in the software world than
is what's traditionally found in a hardware world. What we are trying to
create here, with this approach compared to others, is to be more open
than them, and to enable more companies to come together and take a
greater level of ownership with the complementary aspects of the work they
want to do.
dW:
Okay. So it wouldn't be associated with something like ISO®, but it's
going to do the same kind of thing that creates a standard.
Dykas:
Right. I mean, if you think of something analogous. My analogies run
more along the lines of a W3C®. While that's focused on Internet-type
infrastructure components, our initiative is focused on the Power
Architecture and the things that might go around to improve that for the
community at large.
dW:
How will that be structured?
Are you going to have regular meetings for the whole organization, or
will meetings only be held per-project, or per-committee?
Dykas:
Well, how IBM envisions this, is similar to how other organizations work.
You have a Board of Directors who are managing the initiatives of the
organization, trying to promote others to come together to work on these
things. There could be, for instance, a technical committee, a marketing committee, an
operations committee, something that really manages the whole
organization.
And then underneath some of these individual committees, for example, the
most obvious is the Technical Committee. The Technical Committee would have
individual subcommittees focused on, say, creating specifications for high-volume servers, specifications for digital rights management,
specifications for trusted computing, specifications for nomenclature. You
know, having anywhere from one to n possible subcommittees. Then
there might be marketing; there might be compliance subcommittees. So
they would all come together and you manage through these individual ...
Ireland:
There are some initial working groups that IBM has envisioned and has
actually been talking to potential founders about. For instance, there is
a group of potential founders who really want to pursue Linux on
Power-based servers in more of a mass market mode, not just from IBM.
However these groups really need to be voted on by the board. So it would
be presumptuous to say these are the working groups in advance of the
organization being formed and voting on them. It's really a founding member board decision to form those
groups.
So we are really giving the power to Power.org to make these decisions
through collaboration; it's not IBM saying, "It must be this way."
Commitments and dues
dW:
How long has this been in the works?
Ireland:
Really, since the August time frame. So it hasn't been that long.
We've made a lot of progress.
dW:
What has been the reaction of the companies we've approached to be among the
founders?
Ireland:
The founders have been very positive. This is clearly on a fast time
line.
I'd say they were welcoming of the idea. They understand the value
proposition for them. That's really where most of the focus has been
working with the founders.
Because it's much more than just spending money on joining the
organization. It's as commitment to contribute to the organization, which
is much more than a membership fee, it's putting resources on it. That's
the key, the value proposition to them, and their
commitment to actually put resources into the organization to contribute.
dW:
You mention membership fees; what kind of dues are involved?
Dykas:
Yes. Some of the dues thinking is being finalized, but as we are right
now there is a Participant level ... all the way up to the Board level,
of being a member of the Board of Directors, which is where the power of
managing the organization [rests].
At the highest level of the organization, where the Board of Directors
occur, where the Founding Members will be on the Board of Directors
managing the budget, the activities of the organization, certifying output
or ratifying output of the individual technical and marketing and
compliance committees, that's where the [masters] or the running of the
organization come from. And those dues are currently being finalized.
dW:
So it's not as if anyone has to be a multimillion dollar company just to
play?
Dykas:
Not at all.
dW:
That's pretty open, as standards go.
Dykas:
Yes, it is. And there's an intermediate level there called a Sponsor,
which will be for those companies that, while at a Participant level you
can participate in committees, you can't really run any of it. You don't
have the right to run the committee, and then that's the next level of
sponsorship.
As well, there is an Advisory Council, which is made up of those
companies that have the greatest investment and licensing of the Power
Architecture. You know, there are architectural licenses that enable
people to dive down into the deepest levels of what Power Architecture is
and do things and modify it for their needs.
For example, you would not have, say, an Application Vendor or a Linux vendor care very
much about the Advisory Council at that level, but you might have somebody
who is a chip manufacturer or a chip designer say, "Look, I have these
needs for designing a Power Architecture-based chip, but I need these
modifications." So those sorts of things would be run through the
Advisory Council. That Advisory Council is an advisory council for IBM.
dW:
How about individuals? Let's say I'm really curious about Power
Architecture and I want to start going to meetings. Can I just do that?
Dykas:
There is a certain level of participation that we're calling the
Developer level, and your ability to participate in meetings, and that's
more the individual level. The ability to participate in those meetings
is more limited.
There will be what we're calling a Developer Community that will focus on
supporting the individual in terms of what's going on with the Power
Architecture, and then, also, there will probably be a Web site where
other information about the work that's actually going on inside the Power
organization is available for people to take advantage of and see what's
actually being worked on once it reaches a certain level of maturity. But
the organization, as a whole, is open to any company that wants to do work
inside the organization with respect to the Power Architecture and come
and work in committee.
dW:
So as far as the structure goes, at some point down the road there might
be, for instance, a
sub-Technical Committee focused on something like, I don't know, things
common to all the Linux on Power vendors, for instance.
Dykas:
Yes! Exactly. Maybe it's a compiler. Maybe it's something related to
tools.
dW:
So if there was a compiler meeting, you would end up expecting to have,
say, some Metrowerks™ people and some GNU people, and whoever else is doing
compilers targeting Power.
Dykas:
Yes.
dW:
So would that be something where basically each of those subcommittees
would set the rules for attending its own meetings?
Dykas:
Yes.
dW:
Will there be some information about each of those committees up on the
Power.org Web site?
Dykas:
At varying degrees there will be public access, and there will be private
access ... but there are specific things where
there's work in progress, that you don't expose to the broad audience
until you're ready to kind of get it to that 0.9 level, and then when it
gets to that 0.9 level you put it out for comment.
dW:
Yes. That makes sense. So, basically, the idea is that any such
committee that would be related to the Power Architecture should in
theory be somewhere around Power.org?
Dykas:
Yes.
dW:
How would the intellectual property for that then be licensed?
Dykas:
Well, the Power Architecture by itself is still licensed from IBM. But if you're designing, say, some complementary work around a bus structure -- say, in an SoC, a specific bus structure other than CoreConnect™ -- the goal is to have people be able to come together and work on that particular bus structure, and in the end part of the prerequisite for joining that sort of technical subcommittee is that subcommittees will choose from a limited number of IP rights policies before they begin. It could be a royalty-free basis -- it could be a RAND basis [a RAND meaning reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms --eds.], or it could be some other basis. But the point is that you agree to participate in some of the developing and technical activities of that group, and agree to whatever IP policy that group is formed under from the beginning.
dW:
Are we going to be opening up documentation to the extent maybe
approaching the same level of openness as, say, the Purple Book?
Dykas:
Yesss..... I think right now we are working through the specific level
of what IBM exposes and what IBM donates to the specific subcommittees.
Some of these things will be dependent upon -- you know, it would be a
balance of things that we know we need to expose and/or donate to see
these new areas, and some things that we need to not donate.
Enlarging the doughnut: Linux G5 servers and more
dW:
The difference in the marketplaces for X86 and PowerPC embedded boards
and single board computers is incredible, just because there are so many
X86-related chips out there now. For X86, I can find five or six
different boards I can buy for US$200 or US$300. For PowerPC, I found a
couple vendors who will come down as low as US$1500. So I see some benefit
to getting more licensing and people in the field.
Ireland:
Absolutely. And for the single board computers, for the higher end of
those board computers, are still using stand-alone processors, for the
lower end, maybe more system on a chip solutions. On both fronts, we need
more partners. We need more people designing those computers, we need
more software available for those companies to succeed. This is really a great example of the
whole premise around the Power organization we're launching.
With Power.org, we expect many more of these ODMs or OEMs to be providing
board solutions and it can be higher-end solutions, server class machines
or embedded solutions, more use for control. More companies who will be
offering board-level computers using a variety of different software.
We expect this is going to be a key focus, especially around high-volume servers.
One idea is to create a high-volume server platform based on the G5 or 970FX class chips, which are really derivatives of the POWER™ line. So
we're trying to get a lower price point, high-volume server platform
around the Power Architecture. You are starting to see solutions today from Apple and IBM. You see Virginia Tech stacking many of
these 970FX processors together with Apple machines and also with IBM Blades to create
very powerful supercomputers.
It is the plan to get as many direct sources available for member and
non-member companies, to have more solutions available in the
marketplace.
dW:
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.
Dykas:
No problem.
Ireland:
Thank you.
Resources
- Visit Power.org to see what all the excitement is about!
In addition to Power.org, IBM also announced today that it has shipped more than 1 million Power 970FX chips to date; introduced new Linux development kits for Power 750FX and GX boards -- and introduced the newest Power licensee, Shanghai Beijing (China's largest semiconductor company). See today's press release for more details.
- Power.org is in many ways a
continuation of the Power Everywhere initiative announced in
March. See also press coverage of that announcement:
IBM's Power
Play (Electronics Weekly, April 2004) and
IBM opens up its
Power line (ZDNet, March 2004).
- See also industry coverage of this announcement:
-
In April 2004, AMCC and IBM
announced an agreement for AMCC to acquire intellectual property and a
portfolio of assets associated with IBM's 400 series of embedded PowerPC
standard products and a Power Architecture license. Less than six months
later, AMCC unveiled a
new chip, the 440SPe.
-
The Consumer Electronics Linux
Forum (CELF) is an industry group focused on the advancement of Linux
for consumer electronics (CE) devices.
-
Power.org is probably more like W3C than
ISO.
- Have experience you'd be willing to share with Power Architecture zone
readers? Article submissions on all aspects of Power Architecture technology from authors inside and outside
IBM are welcomed. Check out the Power Architecture author
FAQ to learn more.
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related in the developerWorks Power
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About the author | | | The developerWorks Power Architecture editors welcome your comments on this article. E-mail them at dwpower@us.ibm.com. |
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