Arkansas High Performance Computing Center Joins OpenPOWER Foundation

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Arkansas High Performance Computing Center at the University of Arkansas has joined the OpenPOWER Foundation, a technical membership organization that enables its members to customize IBM’s trademarked POWER CPU high-performance processors and system platforms.

The goal of the OpenPOWER Foundation is to create an open ecosystem, using the POWER architecture to share expertise, investment and server-class intellectual property to serve the evolving needs of customers and industry.

“Joining the OpenPOWER Foundation gives us a role in influencing the design of supercomputers that will take us to the next level in scientific and data-intensive computing,” said Rick McMullen, director of the Arkansas High Performance Computing Center. “As a member of the OpenPOWER Foundation we will be exploring the leading edge of supercomputer hardware and software design with a strong alliance of hardware and software companies and research organizations.”

The Arkansas High Performance Computing Center plans to develop a Power8 hybrid cluster with nVidia GPU computational accelerators. The center also plans to and develop and evaluate software for scientific and technical computing using the POWER architecture, and expects to participate in the development of related education and training materials, McMullen said.

Industry members of the OpenPOWER Foundation include IBM, SAP, Google, nVidia, Altera, Chelsio, Tyan, and Mellanox. Academic and research center partners include Rice University and the University of Illinois, Tsinghua University in China, the Forschungszentrum Julich research center in Germany, and the Hartree Centre of the Science & Technology Facilities Council in the United Kingdom.