3.21.17

Clarkson University Joins OpenPOWER Foundation

Clarkson University has joined the OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community based on the POWER microprocessor architecture.   

POWER CPU denotes a series of high-performance microprocessors designed by IBM.

Clarkson joins a growing roster of technology organizations working collaboratively to build advanced server, networking, storage and acceleration technology as well as industry leading open source software aimed at delivering more choice, control and flexibility to developers of next-generation, hyper-scale and cloud data centers.

The group makes POWER hardware and software available to open development for the first time, as well as making POWER intellectual property licensable to others, greatly expanding the ecosystem of innovators on the platform.

With the POWER hardware and software, the researchers at Clarkson, especially the faculty in the Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, will be able to elevate their research in multicore/multithreading architectures, the interaction between system software and micro-architecture, and hardware acceleration techniques based on the POWER microprocessor architecture. The Clarkson faculty intend to join the OpenPOWER Foundation’s hardware architecture, system software, and hardware accelerator workgroups.

“As a member of the OpenPOWER Foundation, we will be able to explore the state-of-the-art hardware and software design used in supercomputer and cloud computing platforms, as well as collaborating with researchers from industry and other institutions,” said Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering Chen Liu, who is leading the Computer Architecture and Microprocessor Engineering Laboratory at Clarkson.

“The development model of the OpenPOWER Foundation is one that elicits collaboration and represents a new way in exploiting and innovating around processor technology,” says OpenPOWER Foundation President Bryan Talik. “With the Power architecture designed for Big Data and Cloud, new OpenPOWER Foundation members like Clarkson University will be able to add their own innovations on top of the technology to create new applications that capitalize on emerging workloads.”

To learn more about OpenPOWER and view the complete list of current members, visit www.openpowerfoundation.org.  

Clarkson University educates the leaders of the global economy. One in five alumni already leads as an owner, CEO, VP or equivalent senior executive of a company. With its main campus located in Potsdam, N.Y., and additional graduate program and research facilities in the Capital Region and Beacon, New York, Clarkson is a nationally recognized research university with signature areas of academic excellence and research directed toward the world’s pressing issues. Through more than 50 rigorous programs of study in engineering, business, arts, education, sciences and the health professions, the entire learning-living community spans boundaries across disciplines, nations and cultures to build powers of observation, challenge the status quo, and connect discovery and innovation with enterprise.

Photo caption: IBM POWER8 Processor.

[A photograph for media use is available at http://www.clarkson.edu/news/photos/openpower.jpg.]

[News directors and editors: For more information, contact Michael P. Griffin, director of News & Digital Content Services, at 315-268-6716 or mgriffin@clarkson.edu.]