IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
| From: | "Jessie Barrett (US)" <Jessie.Barrett-AT-text100.com> | |
| To: | "lwn-AT-lwn.net" <lwn-AT-lwn.net> | |
| Subject: | IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems at LinuxCon 2013 | |
| Date: | Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:07:42 +0000 | |
| Message-ID: | <C9E8E5B229C5AC41A8C388E883E1D9EB05C6B487@NASFOEXC1.root.int> |
IBM Commits $1 Billion to Fuel Linux and Open Source Innovation on Power Systems NEW ORLEANS, LA, September 17, 2013 ... At LinuxCon 2013<http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-north-a...> today, IBM (NYSE: IBM<http://www.ibm.com/investor/>) announced plans to invest $1 billion (USD) in new Linux and open source technologies for IBM's Power Systems<http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/> servers. The investment aims to help clients capitalize on big data<http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/> and cloud computing<http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/us/en/> with modern systems built to handle the new wave of applications coming to the data center in the post-PC era. Two immediate initiatives announced, a new client center in Europe and a Linux on Power development cloud, focus on rapidly expanding IBM's growing ecosystem supporting Linux on Power Systems which today represents thousands of independent software vendor and open source applications worldwide. Specific details of both initiatives include: * Power Systems Linux Center in Montpellier, France: The new center is among a growing network of centers around the world where software developers can build and deploy new applications for big data, cloud, mobile<http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst/us/en/> and social business<http://www.ibm.com/social-business/> computing on open technology building blocks using Linux and the latest IBM POWER7+ processor technology. The first center<http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41040.wss> opened in Beijing in May. Additional centers<http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41255.wss> are located in New York, NY, and Austin, Texas. * Linux on Power development cloud: To serve the growing number of developers, Business Partners and clients interested in running Linux on Power Systems, IBM is expanding its Power Systems cloud for development. The no-charge cloud service is ramping up its infrastructure to provide more businesses the ability to prototype, build, port, and test Linux applications on the Power platform as well as applications built for AIX and IBM i. IBM Fellow and Vice President of Power Development Brad McCredie revealed the new investment in front of more than 1,400 Linux industry leaders, developers and end-users at the Linux Foundation's LinuxCon conference in New Orleans, noting the monies will be applied to various product research, design, development, ecosystem skills, and go-to-market programs for clients, developers, Business Partners, entrepreneurs, academics, and students. "Many companies are struggling to manage big data and cloud computing using commodity servers based on decades-old, PC era technology. These servers are quickly overrun by data which triggers the purchase of more servers, creating un-sustainable server sprawl," McCredie explained. "The era of big data calls for a new approach to IT systems; one that is open, customizable, and designed from the ground up to handle big data and cloud workloads." Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation commented on the investment stating, "The last time IBM committed $1B to Linux, it helped start a flurry of innovation that has never slowed. IBM's continued investments in Linux for Power Systems is welcomed by the Linux community. We look forward to seeing how the Power platform can bring about further innovation on Linux, and how companies and developers can work together to get the most out of this open architecture." McCredie also addressed how Watson<www.ibm.com/watson>, IBM's cognitive computing<http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/index.shtml> solution that gained fame as the first non-human to win the Jeopardy! game show and now available in a variety of industry solutions<http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/solutions/watson/_%C2%B2>, runs on commercially available Power Systems servers running Linux -- demonstrating how the Linux and Power combination is fueling a new era of computing. Today's news comes on the heels of IBM's recent OpenPOWER announcement<http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41684.wss> that makes the IBM POWER microprocessor available under license to other companies for open collaboration and development. The consortium marks the first time that IBM is making its key server hardware available to drive open innovation. IBM Open Heritage IBM has participated in and led a wide range of open source<http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/ossstds/> projects since 1999, and today this includes OpenPOWER<http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41684.wss>, OpenStack<http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40519.wss>, Hadoop, OpenDaylight<http://www.opendaylight.org/announcements/2013/04/industr...>, KVM, Apache and Eclipse in addition to Linux<http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/ossstds/>. Hundreds of IBM programmers and engineers around the world are contributing to open source and driving open innovation as part of the collection of global open source communities. To learn more about IBM Power Systems, go to www.ibm.com/power<http://www.ibm.com/power>, follow @IBMPowerSystems<https://twitter.com/IBMPowerSystems> on Twitter or visit the Power Systems press room<http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/40312.wss>. To learn more about IBM and Linux, go to www.ibm.com/linux<http://www.ibm.com/linux>. # # # Jessie Barrett Account Manager * Text 100 New York * Global Public Relations 352 Park Avenue South, Floor 7 * New York, New York 10010 * USA * www.text100.com<http://www.text100.com/> D: 212 331 8426 * M: 732 245 4855 E: jessie.barrett@text100.com<mailto:jessie.barrett@text100.com> Winner 2013 Campaign of the Year - PR Week * Winner 2013 Corporate Branding Campaign of the Year - PR Week * Best Midsize Agency to Work For, 2012 - The Holmes Report Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to.
Posted Sep 18, 2013 7:25 UTC (Wed)
by tarvin (guest, #4412)
[Link] (3 responses)
And it generally worked. But when we had a problem with it, we found that IBM's support organization seems completely uninterested in helping us: We had a problem with a "VIO" (management) server which affected a Linux LPAR (virtual server). IBM Support didn't take it seriously, until we could also demonstrate that an AIX LPAR was equally affected. Very disappointing.
Also: Last time I checked, IBM's Spatial (GIS) Extender DB2 did not exist for Linux@Power, while it exists for both DB2@x86_64-Linux and DB2@AIX. And when installing DB2 on Linux@Power, some exotic support software needed to be downloaded from an obscure IBM site, while DB2@x86_64-Linux didn't need this. (Hint to IBM: Being able to use "yum update"-like commands and get the entire OS updated including libraries is one of Linux' greatest features. If your application relies on special libraries, then either make them part of the application, or upstream them and nurse them through the systems, so that they become parts of the Linux distributions.)
In other words: IBM needs to make sure that it's not only parts of their organization who work on this. If it's to be taken seriously, they need to make sure that Linux@Power isn't regarded as a second-class citizen in relation to their other product portfolios.
Posted Sep 20, 2013 23:26 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link]
The announcement doesn't say any of this billion dollar investment will be used to improve Linux on Power, but if it is, it IBM might be able to bring some of this stuff to parity with AIX. But it won't be easy, because getting the open source community to distribute something for you is a lot harder than just putting it into your own code library. Just ask Android developers.
Posted Sep 23, 2013 12:35 UTC (Mon)
by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
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Posted Sep 25, 2013 15:13 UTC (Wed)
by wainersm (guest, #48622)
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Posted Sep 20, 2013 23:30 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (7 responses)
What is this post-PC era they're talking about? I've heard this phrase used to refer to the obsolescence of desktop personal computers by handheld ones, but are there people (who aren't trying to sell an alternative) that believe this also means x86 servers are obsolete? I don't see the connection.
Posted Sep 21, 2013 0:49 UTC (Sat)
by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Sep 21, 2013 1:57 UTC (Sat)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (5 responses)
But I've never heard of IBM POWER processors being energy-efficient.
I read the announcement again, and I think I see what it's getting at: The new handheld computers in the post-PC era are doing new applications that require more and different service from servers on the network compared to what we did with the old desktop computers. It claims the existing x86 servers are underpowered for that and the technology lets you expand only by adding servers, and having a large numbers of servers is a problem.
Therefore, the new post-PC era demands servers with more computational power per server, and the announcement implies that IBM's Power products deliver that.
Posted Sep 21, 2013 3:00 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (4 responses)
However, they are definitely NOT cheap or low-powered. For certain applications that require very fast answer but have fairly low amount of concurrent users it might really make sense to use POWER systems.
Posted Sep 22, 2013 16:30 UTC (Sun)
by deater (subscriber, #11746)
[Link] (3 responses)
You might want to look into the POWER cpus that power the BlueGene/Q
Posted Sep 22, 2013 17:12 UTC (Sun)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link] (2 responses)
I'm not saying they aren't energy-efficient, but this is not why. In general, the need for energy efficiency is not higher for a machine with a million processors than for one with one processor. That's because the BlueGene/Q presumably has a million times the benefits of a one processor machine.
It also has a million times the other costs to be balanced. Making a processor energy efficient costs in other areas, so the only way having a million processors demands more energy efficiency is if those costs, or the energy costs, don't scale with the number of processors per computer. I presume one of these is true of BlueGene/Q.
As stated, it sounds like the "it all adds up" fallacy, as in, "ten cents per shipment doesn't sound like much, but when you ship ten million shipments, it adds up to something significant." This is convincing only if you ignore the other side of it: It all divides down. A million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but when you divide it by ten million satisfied customers, it's almost nothing.
Posted Sep 22, 2013 17:32 UTC (Sun)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (1 responses)
Nothing can be further from truth. How about checking the facts instead? Quite expensive supercomputers are often decommisioned because of huge power bill. Situation is radically different WRT supercomputer then WRT your desktop computer not because it's million CPUs vs one but because it's million loaded CPUs vs one unloaded CPU. If your computer cost $100 million and it's power bill is $9 million then in 5-6 years you'll pay for the power half of what you paid for the computer itself! That's why supercomputer makers are almost as sensitive to the cost of computation as mobile device makers. Nope, it does not. If you stuff million CPUs in your system and then attach it to one power station then you pull few tens of megawatts from said power station. And 100 megawatts is quite decent power station. Not the largest available, but not the smallest one, either. There are nothing to divide: it's one power station, it supplies you with power, you pay for it, end of story. If you can not squeeze million CPUs in the power budget, then you can not use these CPUs, period.
Posted Sep 22, 2013 18:45 UTC (Sun)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link]
That particular fact is irrelevant to the question of whether it's more important for a computer with a million processors to be energy efficient than one with one processor. Small computers are also decommissioned because they are energy inefficient. Big supercomputers are also kept in service in spite of the fact that they have huge power bills.
The large supercomputer in your example is being decommissioned because the computations it does are worth less than the energy it takes to make them. I have shut down single-processor machines in my house for the same reason.
So in spite of starting off by saying my statement that the large number of CPUs isn't what makes energy efficiency especially important in BlueGene/Q, here you agree with me by saying it is instead the high utilization of CPUs that makes energy efficiency especially important in BlueGene/Q.
But I can't see that either, except insofar as the cost of energy efficiency, or of energy, doesn't scale with utilization (my point).
Is there reason to believe it's a different ratio for a machine with fewer processors?
Again, you're talking about unscalable energy costs, and thereby supporting my claim.
You're assuming the supercomputer will be powered by spare capacity in an existing power station. That means energy cost doesn't scale with the number of processors: Doubling the number of processors might increase the energy cost by a factor of 10 (you have to build a new power station), so it makes sense to make more expensive, more energy efficient processors.
That probably isn't realistic, though. Power stations are being built all the time, especially when there are people around who want to plug in supercomputers. In the big picture, assuming energy supply is inelastic probably doesn't lead to the right technology.
The rest of their organization needs to follow along, if this is to succeed
I've done a fair amount of work on IBM Power systems and I'll bet I can explain why IBM Support dragged its feet until you could demonstrate a problem on AIX: IBM has lots more tools available to diagnose the problem when AIX is involved. IBM develops the hardware and AIX in tandem; there are numerous facilities built into AIX and AIX applications that can be used to diagnose and repair hardware (in your case, virtual hardware). There's the AIX error log, which contains messages from the hardware's self-diagnostics that direct IBM Support's procedures. There's the AIX application that runs hardware tests. There's the command from the hardware console that disconnects a device, including getting AIX to quiesce its use of it first.
The rest of their organization needs to follow along, if this is to succeed
The rest of their organization needs to follow along, if this is to succeed
The rest of their organization needs to follow along, if this is to succeed
IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
OK, thanks. I wouldn't have thought of that.
IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
> ones, even faster than Intel's top-of-the-line offerings.
> However, they are definitely NOT cheap or low-powered.
supercomputers. Based on an embedded design, they have pretty good energy efficiency (you need to when you have millions of processors in your computer). These machines are often near the top of the "green500" list although the balance is starting to be tipped toward machines with GPUs these days.
IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
they have pretty good energy efficiency (you need to when you have millions of processors in your computer).
IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
In general, the need for energy efficiency is not higher for a machine with a million processors than for one with one processor.
I presume one of these is true of BlueGene/Q.
This is convincing only if you ignore the other side of it: It all divides down.
IBM Announces $1 Billion Linux Investment for Power Systems
How about checking the facts instead? Quite expensive supercomputers are often decommissioned because of huge power bill.
Situation is radically different WRT supercomputer then WRT your desktop computer not because it's million CPUs vs one but because it's million loaded CPUs vs one unloaded CPU.
If your computer cost $100 million and its power bill is $9 million then in 5-6 years you'll pay for the power half of what you paid for the computer itself!
There is nothing to divide: it's one power station, it supplies you with power, you pay for it, end of story.