New OpenPOWER consortium announced

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Exciting times for Linux and for POWER.

Earlier in the week, a new POWER and Linux consortium was announced - the OpenPOWER consortium.    IBM's Tom Rosamila posted his views on the SmarterPlanet blog.    

Open and Collaborative Development is the Future of Open Computing 

(I added some bold emphasis in the clipped pieces below - see the blog post for more of the details)

Under the OpenPOWER initiative, IBM will license the core intellectual property for our POWER technologies to other companies for use in designing servers employed in cloud data centers.

The initiative is “open” in three ways. 

First, we are licensing the microprocessor technology to other companies openly—meaning they get to look at the blueprints for the processor and the software that goes with it so they can take full advantage of its capabilities. The cloud service providers will be able to hire IBM or other companies to manufacture the processors and other related chips. 

Second, the OpenPOWER Consortium will harness the open-collaboration business model. 

The goal is to create an ecosystem of hardware and software developers to drive innovation in cloud computing.

Lastly, the initiative takes advantage of the open-source Linux operating system, which has become the operating system of choice in cloud data centers.

There's even an official IBM News Release.    

Marks industry first as IBM offers POWER technology for open development

• The move makes POWER hardware and software available to open development for the first time as well as making POWER IP licensable to others, greatly expanding the ecosystem of innovators on the platform. The consortium will offer open-source POWER firmware, the software that controls basic chip functions. By doing this, IBM and the consortium can offer unprecedented customization in creating new styles of server hardware for a variety of computing workloads.