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With me on stage, it's a wonderful person
who will talk to us about CPU
development, power,
open source and
how this all fits together and how this
will hopefully influence of future
CPU architecture and development.
So please give a very warm
round of applause to Matthew Michel.
OK.
Thanks for having me here today.
And I apologize at the beginning for my
strong German accent mixture of German
and English. So sorry for that
because I'm coming from
second year actually living in Kemet,
still born in chemist's, grew up in
Kemet, so starts whoever
knows about that.
Um, that's why the accent is still a
mixture of sex and German, but still
want to show that are still smart people
living in Saxony, not just
people in Western waving
some strange flecks all the time.
Um, I want to say
thanks.
I just want to give a preproduction
today about how I got inspired.
I think two years ago by a talk by David
Caplan, who was talking about Sebou
development altogether from
scratch through the final product and all
these steps for it.
I also want to touch that briefly
today, but I want to go more
into open power and
just tell you something about this
because I'm not really sure if everybody
knows about that.
Uh, yeah, foundation.
And um, might also
be a little off topic in this conference
here. But uh, maybe it's still of
interest.
Um, this is
my agenda for the day.
So first of all, uh, like to
just talk a little bit of
Barbie then uh, as mentioned
about this, if you would open flow at all
and y or power, uh,
myself, as I mentioned, um,
still living in cabinets.
But I'm um, my desk is located
here. This is Steve bobbling of IBM
Germany. Um, I'm there
in the verification department of
CPU development.
Um, it's not just located there,
it's uh, built by a distributed team,
virtual teams.
Um, I'm looking to get to with people in
Bangalore, US, uh, France
and so on. So will you?
Uh, yeah, all the candidates are
included.
Um, my main focus is verification.
Um, I'm also not an expert of a
power. Um, but I just still
involved in some topics of it.
Uh, that's why I think I can at least
talk about some steps to you,
and that's all about me.
Let's go into the technical
agenda.
Um, this is the CPU development
for s we are still looking at today
at IBM.
Um, so we basically it's um,
you know, a simple overview.
You start at the left,
uh, by either coding or
generating or somehow specifying
some hardware description.
Um, maybe it should
maybe be a log or whatever you think
might work.
Um, this is also, um,
this, uh uh, large
arrow pointing to it.
Um, this also I'm using usually for
verification. Um, there are also multiple
different versions of each year that are
possible.
But just assume it's basically one
thing that's busy specifying
the hardware how it should work.
And uh, yeah, there are
some kind of two or three that body
converts. Um, all the different
things to the final product, um.
Right? Um, so out
of the HL, uh, you will get the
list with all those logic components
being generated.
Uh, that also some other specific
application teams working on that one.
Um, then you can generate the
schematics out of it.
Uh, yeah, you will see
some resistors in there.
Um, yeah, maybe.
Uh, forming those transistors into layout
and layout, you basically get to
define a product at the end of
the application process.
Um, I will also have some numbers
later today, but uh, assume this process.
Uh, you can go through
hell on a daily basis, but uh,
from a first line of uh,
yes, code until the final product.
Uh, I just assume like two or four years
until you have a real working product.
Um, now there's some
nasty, uh, uh, flowchart
from some of my colleagues, but somehow
it just should illustrate how the
overall flow is somehow working.
So you just saw the diversion
coming from, uh, hot weather scripting
language into the product.
Now this is the workflow inside
the company itself. You have basically
some kind of product.
Um, you believe CEO
targets or the previous version.
You have some customer that somehow
has some need for certain things to
run on that and typically gives some
kind of specification.
You have some teams working on high level
design and then this is basically your
input source. Uh, sometimes very
specific, sometimes very loose.
Um, and then you have different teams
working in parallel, uh, trying to to get
this product put together.
So we have some kind of system component
teams that are looking at the boards
and all the electrical components on it.
You have a team that's looking at this
black box. Uh, we gotta to put it at the
end, you have premier teams, you have
basically a design team that writing that
visual code or very low code and then you
have basically at the end, uh,
verification team that is busy making
sure that this also
works at the end before you go through
it and get it produced.
And then you have also other teams
looking at timing and looking at circuit
design integration.
So that's all going into physics,
which is really important that the
process design, because you want to have
the maximum performance coming out of
your product.
Um, yeah, when you're done Besley,
you push the button, get it fabricated.
Then there are some tests going on.
And if that goes well, then you have
a good machine.
Um, sometimes you
find bugs.
That's why this small red
bellows is coming in.
Um, if you find bugs, you
basically want to find them as early as
possible to basically
turn and turn around your logic until it
really works before you get to the FAP.
Um, if you missed that point, um, do
you have to spend much more dollars on
it? And then you, yeah, um,
have to spend multiple cycles on that.
Um, just be sure you don't want to be
that person being responsible for having
to respond, uh, through the FAP, because
that process going to that is
like two months, 12 months.
Uh, and you don't want to be
that person, first of all, spending the
money and also causing the delay for the
customers at the end.
And if you are a really bad person, then
um, at the end you get into
manufacturing.
All these machines are being put to the
customer sites, they push a button
and nothing works. And um, yeah,
let's don't talk about that.
Um, but I didn't see that in my life so
far.
Um, this is not the picture
somehow trying to illustrate the same
thing again, but now
trying to decide to the left more
to design verification on the right side,
more to, uh um, prevent
physical stuff that is being done.
So you see a physical science into this
placement routing stuff that you
know needs to be done.
But I personally don't want to be
that we are.
It's always critical and you'll always
be at the end of the process.
Um, everybody's waiting for you to push
the button.
That's why I chose the left side of being
willing to do verification front.
Um, also dealing very close
50 design teams.
Um, and you see, it's it's two circles
circling because you are always
some hole in the same source, different
times and that's basically what you do
all the time.
You are going into a kind of continuous
integration.
OK. And here are the numbers that I
promised um, some would try to compare
the numbers from
building a larger ship
compared to a processor.
And that's quite interesting because
somehow at the end, when comparing
you for both things you
need for the whole system, about 5000
people. Um, also
about the construction type.
It's similar.
So we're like three years with the ship,
like a four to five years for the whole
protozoan system.
It's not four to five years for just one
shot. It's basically a multiple turns
of the processor until the machine is
basically ready to ship to the customer.
And also, you see it
because at the end, so it's
more than one billion dollars that needs
to be spent for one generation
of those systems.
Just to mention, there are two
architectures currently still being
worked on at IBM.
It's the power architecture and the sea
architecture. Those numbers are for this
processor.
But you can compare those
pretty similar from a cost point of view.
So that's already it
from the um, CPU
development side.
So let's jump into Apollo.
Um, and
you are looking at that.
Um, that's my
view of white power because,
um, sometimes it looks strange.
Um, why should something
change in that kind of popular stuff?
It's always be there.
Uh, so you see you look on your PC, you
see somehow getting smaller, you have
your phones, but somehow a
similar kind of stuff
in there, also from the server part
of it. Um, it's somehow in some
building in the cellar and uh, it's just
work. Um, but there is some
commercial component to it.
Um, over years, this
kind of process worked very well for
players like IBM or others.
Um, but all the time
the market shifted drastically.
Um, so you have a Moore's law,
which basically, uh, provided over years,
uh, a very constant flow of, uh,
performance improvements.
So we didn't have to do much.
Uh, you just had to move to the next
generation of your technology.
And then surprisingly, you got, uh, ten
twenty whatever percent of new
performance or changing much in your
design.
Nevertheless, you added more features to
it, uh, to satisfy customer needs,
but that it's, uh, more more,
uh, never true anymore.
Um, also on the other side, you have, uh,
other trends like, uh, new kind of
workloads are coming up.
Uh, just think about, uh, some
kind of bitcoin mining, which is, uh,
somehow trending today.
Uh, or these days, but also a
um, kind of, uh, consumption
of, um, those server farms
are changing.
In previous years, it was like, uh,
somebody from some company called the
I need new machines and the customer.
They moved there and, uh, yeah, uh,
sold something of which was staying there
for the next couple of years.
Uh, but these days, um, cloud
is something, uh, very
drastically changing, uh, the operation
model of our sellers at IBM.
And that also was something
that we felt because at the
end, um, just less and less products
were sold. Um, the cloud
infrastructure was not up and running
from our point of view because, uh, we
didn't bet on that.
Other companies like Amazon were very
fast on bringing it up.
Um, so as you can see today, uh, most
of the cloud infrastructure is x86 based.
And uh, I think it's hard to
find, uh, power servers
for the open public cloud
providers or others
that you have seen.
Also, the software ecosystem changed
a little so the UM two more
open and mature open
providers, um, that's
one part of it.
And on the other side, you have some kind
of strategy changes that you
need to do now. Um, but more to that
later on.
Um, just back to the, uh, to Moore's
law. Um, on that
chart, you see, uh, it's basically
complete performance per dollar.
That's something um, the customers
look at, um, they they look at
how much money they need to spend for
which kind of performance.
And that's the number they compare
between the different providers.
And then only if you can, uh,
match or be below the
the other companies that you are able to
to sell stuff to them.
Um, and as I mentioned before, that
was working quite well, uh, for the past
couple of years. But now obviously,
Moore's law is slowing down and doesn't
help and more.
So what you are now trying to
do is, um, you need to
somewhat enhance the performance by other
means. So what could it be?
Um, so you could plug something to your
system so you can't move everything onto
the processor because you just can't
fabricated so you you need
to do something close to the post so you
can plug some extra radios on it.
You can somehow.
On the storage systems to be faster, you
can look at the I o.
If you can move to a new generation there
or you can look at the memories.
If they can provide you something.
Um, but yet everything
comes together at a data point.
So data is that thing that somehow
is supposed to be the issue over
the next couple of years because of
different trends you have, in other
things, providing
much or sometimes too much data
and you just somehow need to handle it.
So every device is
somehow creating data.
At the end, you need to have some
backbone working on it and basically
use some computer centers that can deal
with all those data and to see
what kind of data the
greatest of those charts basically
envisioned coming from different fields.
Um, coming to
power, um,
and typically, um,
the Moore's law is something I've already
talked about. But there will be two other
things that forced this kind of creation
of this open power community.
The second thing was Google.
Um, Google was basically known to be
a large provider of something
like search or other stuff.
Um, and somehow
they were not really happy with their x86
infrastructure. So some of the big talks,
um, in other companies
and also with IBM, and they
basically ran some stuff on the
back then power aids machines and
uh, surprised, uh, form
different patterns that were surprisingly
good. And um, on the other side,
they also, um, basically were looking
right in the eye of a monopoly of intel.
Um, so that was the second thing.
Uh, Google was not being afraid,
was afraid of uh, and
basically, um, seeing that this
was creating a very costly
infrastructure, basically being bound
to a monopolist um and then
not open to any movement, something else.
That's why the better you felt to
to do something else and also, um,
at the end, um, I
don't really know, but at the end they
want to build their own, uh, computers,
and that's why they did the search for
some partnering.
Um, and they didn't came to IBM and
uh, yeah, looked at us if
we can do something together as well as
the third point is extend the
reach of power architecture.
Um, so as mentioned before, in
the past there were PowerPC years
architecture was somehow a little, uh,
stronger before, um,
how architecture is, uh,
getting market share or gaining market
share in the last couple of years.
But the overall Unix market
is decreasing that fast, that
it's basically not really working out
well for keeping that architecture
just how it is.
So you need to find other means to
to strengthen your whole
infrastructure and the architecture of
those boundaries and see how
you can work with other parties
to get into other different markets.
And that was basically the root cause
to basically get this
open power initiative being
done in 2013.
Um, if you look at the other part
of this chart, it back then it looked
like all those companies somehow losing
market share of all
right to come together and found
something.
But basically looking at this,
you base, it somehow looks
like a good move.
And let me show you how that worked
out.
Um, the first steps that were done,
um, were basically done
by ABM, um, first of all,
basically, uh, investing a lot of money
into a Linux, uh, Linux, being able
to run on power.
Um, that was a complaint even done
by engineers internally over
the last decades, basically that
even our own applications were not
finding really good on our own machines
because we built our own computer pool
was, uh, mainly, uh, based on x86
machines because we were
selling them all before.
Um, that was a strong complaint,
but it didn't help, uh, to complain
internally about, uh, the customers,
uh, basically, uh, showed us that
the machines we weren't really, uh, able
to, uh, to beat the market.
So there was some kind of mind shift
going on. And uh, basically, uh, resulted
in investing a lot of money in,
uh, structuring the code around Linux
and basically even the little engine big
engine complications to sort
them out and get them resolved at the
end.
The second thing is this kind of
off source model for hardware.
Um, I think I will talk about that in a
minute.
And basically, it's do you feel step
to release, uh, lots of firmware
code to really make it available?
I myself was even surprised.
Uh, sometimes I just, uh, googled
my name and, uh, some kind of, uh,
word.
Um, and surprisingly,
I, uh, one of the first five
matches was, uh, just something that I
wrote myself with a colleague.
Um, so just try to to search for
it. Uh, you should find it very easily
on the net. No.
Um, this is the mission statement, uh,
I think nothing to really read through
completely, but um, the
idea behind this is it's not a
new company to fire phone, but
um, it's some kind of partnership
or some some open community
that, um, is to be installed
to get people together that want
to improve the power architecture, as
well as to to work on the whole stack.
So that includes basically the basics of
the development, as well as the the
software development flow and basically
use, uh, same tooling use, same
infrastructure, same
boundaries.
That's just a picture to illustrate that
on the left. Um, so you have
to have the component, um, that
basically consists basically of, first of
all, the process itself and uh,
still the process that doesn't hurt much.
You need to have, uh, some connection
points and which is interfaces to
accelerators and not just those
interfaces, but have them rather open
that other companies can also use them
also roadmaps for both of it.
Um, that's what I learned.
Also, uh, very early in
my work, um, that
customers really want to see a roadmap
over the next couple of years that they
are, uh, we can be sure to invest
in your product. And, uh, yeah,
can be sure that this continuous over the
next, uh, technology that technology
cycles, uh, as well as, um,
it is not just a of it to make
sure that this is basically, uh, common
and uh, being used by many,
uh, different parties, um, and that it
basically gets debunked.
The.
Um, and that basically gets
us to the ecosystem as of today.
So the top before there showed you have
seen there were five parties, um, funding
this community.
I know you have a whole stack that is
basically, uh, starting with the basics
at the bottom.
Uh, now with Infinium as well as
included with the chips, the bolt
manufacturers.
I o storage companies.
System integration companies.
Also software, but
as well. You have, uh, many research
teams included.
Um, and that's basically, uh, something
that is, um, also a key
interest of that group to not just do
something with companies and, uh, try
to sell stuff, but also to to keep
people involved in research and
trying to get this, uh,
whole method enhanced
to trust them up. Uh, like,
uh, twenty members, uh, as of today,
uh, in thirty two countries, um,
you know, these days, I think
most of that is still centered around the
US because they are basically the
headquarters of IBM and the main, uh,
labs still located.
And that's why also many of the
universities, they're joined
in those areas.
Um, but still basically, um,
try to get members
over the whole stack.
And even those partners,
um, also started to
bring out first products.
Um, but I think
I have one chart for that
later as well.
That's basically, um,
just to illustrate also, um,
how Opal is somehow Mitrice or the
other initiative initiatives.
So we have this open compute group that
is, I think, more concentrating
on mechanical electrical synchronization
and specifications.
Um, the Opal club somehow
is trying to, uh, to fill that gap
between whatever is coming
from top from, uh, software.
Linux, OpenStack, um
and open compute at the bottom.
Um, open capital is, uh,
some a part of that open power
initiative, but it's basically, uh, just
one fact of it.
And as you can see at the screen box in
there, uh, limits itself to
a protocols and uh, I own the
connections internally.
Um, so that's how it would fit
um or how it's intended to be.
Um, and now what's so special about it?
Um, just to show you that's the the
current road map.
I'm not sure if this is even still
accurate, but at least it gives you an
overview of how that, uh, it's, uh,
what's been worked out over the last
years. Um, so as a process
of manufacture, you try to to have a real
good, uh, uh, sense of,
uh, regular push of
products out into the markets so
that different needs.
Um, if you look at power, um,
there are different circumstances.
Uh, because you have a different, um
uh, there are markets that you want to
attack if you look at, uh, see,
architecture. This will look much
different. Uh, a C processor will come
out each and every time at
the same point in time so that it's a
very regular pattern by the site
that needs to be much more flexibility
due to the customer changes or market
changes at the end.
But as you can see in the next year, um,
10 seven nanometer quality products that
need to come out and basically you
will be, uh, specified and
pushed 50 partners.
Um, but that's the really interesting
thing about the initiative, um,
that you somehow try
to to connect at the end.
Um uh, as I mentioned before.
Um, external accelerators into the
system. It's not just to plug them into,
but to make them part of the system, to
make them part of the the transmission of
the processor. So it's, uh, not just
enabling, uh, some PCI also,
but it's a protocol layer that makes it
really fast, uh, compared to
other customers.
Um, also, uh, with
this power eight enhanced product,
um, built together with Nvidia
um, the building was introduced as
in, uh, its own link, uh,
built into the CPU, um, to
make that, uh, point with,
uh, much faster into those
chip use.
Um, I'm not sure if you heard about this
announcement quite some weeks ago.
Um, there are those labs
in the US which are basically distributed
with those new systems.
Um, there was some kind of government
contract, um one by
Nvidia together with IBM to distribute
those systems. And basically, they
consist with the latest hardware, um
of, uh, power processors connected
to the latest chip use and basically,
uh, built a room full of those servers.
Uh, and basically make possible
some um computations
and use this year to use generation
of the willing and uh,
that provides, um bentworth that you
are not able to get with other CPUs.
Um, that's the
same thing. Um, but
you see that you have um, the interface
is not just over Ivy League, you still
have PCI generations available
to get that faster, just to decouple
you extensions that you have.
And um, here you can
get, uh, Xilinx products attached.
Uh, also with, uh, Cappy open copy.
Um, which is basically this
new protocol and, uh, hardware
built into the processor.
This is just for numbers, not for
marketing.
Um, basically, they were able to,
um uh, Exxon Mobile was able
to basically reduce, uh,
thousand servers into 30 open power
servers just to put together an idea what
that makes. At the end, um,
just for numbers that's regarding to the
community itself.
Um, the idea is basically to get uh,
or do you have the possibility to get
everybody involved?
That means people that, uh,
write software, people that use
software or people at the end that, uh,
uh, use the whole systems and uh, try to
basically, uh, get those different
interest groups together and have a place
for them in that overall community.
And that's why, um, they created, uh,
different groups, um, to get more
into technical discussions and basically
technical solutions at the end.
And that's basically what we currently
have today.
Um, different different, uh, 15
different work groups available.
Um, there are some that, um, I'm
even involved with some colleagues.
Um?
Um, that's basically we're talking
about real problems and
solutions at the end.
Uh, they re trying to solve them
at different points of the stack.
And that's basically should be the last
light regarding what
is at the end, um, it's still some
something that costs money.
That's why companies need to do to
to spend money to be part of open power.
But if you are coming from academia,
then you are able to spend zero dollars
and still be part of the community.
And there's different levels between
them. Um, so it
needs to be somehow a little
bureaucratic that way, obviously.
Um, but you are able to get involved,
especially if you are coming from
research. Um, I have even
checked today, um uh,
to you mentioned should be involved.
Um, the, uh,
Paderborn University.
I have seen the chart, uh, as well today
as there are already some German
universities joining that, uh uh,
community. Uh, but most of them are still
located in the U.S..
Um, that was all
from my side. Just a brief overview, so
it was not intended to be in that,
uh, also not complete if
you have more questions, uh, just come to
me if you also contacts to
other people, if you want to talk more
details regarding an interface
or any contacts in those groups, um,
but uh, at first you should check or
dot org. Um, that's the website.
I bet you can get more information about
that. And um, I hope that
gave you some inspiration and some
information about what is going on
in the hardware community.
People.
Thank you very much, Matthew.
We do have time for a few questions and
someone already lined up, might one
please? Hi, thanks for your talk.
As a hacker, how can I get a open
power development board of a not like a
big data center like Google or someone?
Um, I think if you have
contacts to universities,
it's pretty positive. Look at something
there.
Um yeah,
that would be my advice.
I'm not a university,
so but I'm sure if you are
an hacking activist,
you should have contacts in that group.
But I think you can even
maybe get some some of the stuff
in there. Are you all the thoughts
coming up yet?
It is already
the old version. No previous version 2.0
and I just don't work out.
Maybe there are some possibilities to get
some older machines available.
The internet woke up and has a question.
Yes.
So you talked about
companies and academia joining
open power.
And one user wants to know, are there
plans from IBM site to offer affordable
systems to consumers so they
can join?
I think that's the at the end.
It's at least an idea for
for companies to to get cheap systems
available, um, for the
end user. So I think it's not the current
target since it's also not the market
IBM is looking into.
So it's more business related issue
at the moment.
Mike, for
Hello?
One question about the
firmware, you said it's 400000
lines of code.
Why is that big and why couldn't you just
reuse Corbould, which already supports
open power the older generations?
That is a specific question.
I think it's just this tech that is
coming out with the machines already,
at least from an IBM site.
And I think the same is coming from
Google. Did you have additional lines of
code written for their stuff
and just released what they
already have?
So it would be question, would you feel
about that the teams might be going
to reuse, as you suspected
Mike to a question regarding
Moore's law. It's never been about
performance. It's been about number of
transistors. So do we have some numbers
for pin power to give them?
Um, I don't have numbers.
You need to look
that up somewhere, I guess.
Um, but basically at the end performance
is that what counts for the customer?
So they look at performance
and that performance is that what you
can?
And Moore's law was this the thing to
improve performance over time?
And now maybe it's not that easy anymore.
That's why you need to trust other means.
Unfortunately, quite a few questions
lining up. Unfortunately, we are out of
time. I'm very sorry for that, but I
think my tell you is still around, so
grab him and ask him in person.
So please give another round of applause
for Matthew. Thank you very much.
The.