An Open Source Motherboard?! #Helpful Post

so IBM sponsored us down to IBM think

2019 and I'm here walking around in this

veritable sea of next-generation

technology like they've got everything

here from cloud computing to AI to

quantum computing both from IBM and its

partners and then I spot this out of the

corner of my eye now this might not look

unusual at all we've got what like a

motherboard and like a workstation or

something but what you're looking at

here contains tech that at this time is

simply not available from the CPU

company is that most consumers would

think of PCI Express Gen 4 right here so

these systems are running CPUs based on

IBM's

power 9 architecture and what's really

cool is that the hardware for them

basically all of it even even this

motherboard is open source what on earth

does that mean let me let me explain

that

so IBM's power architecture is nothing

new in fact if you bought a Mac back in

the early 2000s you've used it before

but over the last 10 to 15 years it's

gotten some big upgrades and the power

nine processors in our demo rig here are

the same ones in everything from

high-performance Network storage

appliances to literal supercomputers but

what makes them open-source well

the CPUs themselves are not although IBM

actually does allow even CPU hardware

technology to be licensed but it's the

ecosystem around them that is that's

where the open power foundation comes in

so now instead of only being able to get

a power 9 solution from IBM directly you

can get one from half a dozen or so

different manufacturers and what we're

looking at here are examples of ones

that are open in every way so this

motherboard I could just assuming that I

had the means I could just download the

schematics and build one myself it's

crazy even down to the firmware so it's

got these two BIOS chips with actually

this really cool solution so you can

actually flip this little dip switch and

write protect them so that they can't

become corrupted or infected in any way

and I could just I could build the whole

thing and it would be ready to rock and

then I could just run standard software

on it like Linux or FreeBSD so this

system right here is running regular old

Linux and other than the fact that it's

power 9 instead of x86 is every bit as

normal alike workstation or tower server

as you could expect so you got a couple

CPU sockets for up to a total of 44

cores you got 16 memory slots they run

quad-channel memory I mean the thing

that's exceptional about it is how sort

of unexceptional it is it just looks

like a normal motherboard you've even

got just like a standard Radeon Pro

workstation graphics card in here x5

sound card of all things and PCI Express

slots I mean their Gen 4 that's cool but

like yeah us USB header

normal friggin thing like could I just

like run video games on this thing

hi prince gaming keyboard and mouse on

here nice I like it

keeping it classy right enterprise show

this is what like a quake arena style oh

my god this mouse is so sensitive is

this a shotgun oh god this is the

railgun again Oh Oh balls

there ya go you're done this is like the

least appropriate possible use of a

system like this I love it

team using development workstation for

gaming that's my team one more one more

oh no I finally I died okay so that's

probably enough of me playing games on

the very serious tool actually let's

talk about why all of this so the

openness of open power has some key

advantages from a performance standpoint

it's allowed faster ecosystem

development so they're already shipping

not just PCI Express Gen 4 which is

about twice as fast as the 3rd gen bus

that everyone else is using right now

but they also have support for open copy

which is twice as fast as PCIe Gen 4 and

the ability to run up to 3 Tesla V 100

GPUs off of a single CPU using env link

which is not only faster again than open

copy but it also allows for full data

coherency between the CPUs and the up to

6 GPUs that you can handle in a dual CPU

system so that means that they don't

have to wait around to share information

between them speeding up computationally

intensive workloads like in particular

AI then there's the security side of

things with specter and meltdown to some

extent but more with some of the recent

concerns about the management engine on

some processors there's a huge part of

the open source community or just the

computing community in general that

wants more openness when it comes to

hardware a high-performance chip that

has no binary blobs on it and you can

build everything from source and that is

exactly what we're looking at here so

power 9 processors are available in a

wide variety of configurations with

anywhere from as few as four to as many

as

to processing course but there are a few

things that they all have in common

quad-channel ddr4 44 PCI Express Gen 4

lanes per CPU and a ton of optimization

for massively parallel workloads so you

might be familiar with technologies that

use SMT to allow a single CPU core to

work on more than one thread at a time

well rather than two threads power 9 can

handle 4 threads per CPU so a fully

loaded 44 core rig like this one can

handle 176 threads now then obviously

most people aren't just running out and

buying one of these and one of these and

DIY a tower for the receptionist in

their office with it or whatever so the

question that this raises then is why

have a low cost board like this or even

relatively speaking a low cost board

like this one well systems like this are

mostly geared towards developers so that

they have an affordable way to test

their code at their desk with that said

though that's not necessarily because it

has to be that way forever with the

right software either of these could be

adapted for more conventional you know

consumer or professional use it's just

that that's not the focus right now so

they're mainly there for the developers

who are writing code for the bigger

systems like IBM's a c920 to this crazy

powerful AI optimized server platform

that's been used in the Lawrence

Livermore and Oak Ridge National Labs

which by the way contain the number two

and number one respectively most

powerful supercomputers in the world

right now here's another one this is

something IBM is calling power AI vision

and this is like a new program without a

ton of adoption yet but there's some

amazing real-world applications so they

did some stuff with frontier development

labs that involved space weather

specifically tracking solar flares

recognizing that a hundred years ago

there was one that fried all of the

basic electronics on earth at the time

and they figure wow if that were to

happen today that would be like a multi

trillion dollar event civil

Asian as we know it threatening so

they're trying to use deep learning and

machine learning to put together

historical and predictive data so that

we could prepare for that pretty freakin

cool and important right I mean I guess

that's kind of the theme overall the

show here and all that's left now is to

thank IBM for sponsoring this and thank

you guys for watching our video from

here down at IBM think 2019 if you guys

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