PMC Joins the OpenPOWER Foundation 

PMC-Sierra, Inc. today announced the company has joined the OpenPOWER Foundation, an open development community based on the POWER microprocessor architecture. PMC will work with IBM and other OpenPOWER Foundation members to develop server and storage solutions for next-generation data centers that integrate IBM POWER CPUs and PMC Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and NVM Express (NVMe) products.

PMC 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 hyperscale 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.

PMC intends to sponsor a new I/O workgroup, along with IBM, Emulex, Qlogic and Mellanox. The company also joins the system software, hardware architecture, coherent accelerator architecture (CIAA) and open server development platform workgroups.

“Participating in the I/O workgroup with IBM and integrating our products into the OpenPOWER platform ensures that our customers have access to the latest cloud and big data storage technology,” said Kurt Chan, vice president of storage technology and strategy for PMC’s Enterprise Storage Division. “As a market leader in SAS and NVMe controllers, working with the industry to define new I/O interfaces and being at the forefront of new developments enables PMC to deliver the most advanced products for open architectures.”

“The development model of the OpenPOWER Foundation is based on collaboration and represents a new way of innovating around processor technology,” said Brad McCredie, OpenPOWER president and IBM fellow and vice president. “OpenPOWER Foundation members like PMC will be able to add their own innovations on top of the POWER processor technology to better serve their customers’ needs, as well as create new products to address new markets. PMC’s deep I/O expertise will benefit our collective efforts and further strengthen OpenPOWER’s growing ecosystem.”