The Open Computing Foundation It is not a brand that we hear much about in the news, however, it has benefited from two technologies that could change the way we understand hardware in the medium and long term. Especially in a world where configurable chips like FPGAs are starting to become important in future designs and where their communication with software is important. What are these contributions and what do they consist of?
Although they seem to be very separate worlds at first glance, in the end our computer is nothing more than an integrated system between hardware and software and there is a point where this integration makes both worlds influence each other in terms of design. As is the case with virtualization and security capabilities in processors and virtualization in operating systems. In other words, as software gets closer to hardware, there must be more of a relationship between the two parties.
The operating system is the software of a computer that has the greatest contact with the processor and the rest of the components. What other applications do is make calls to the system and therefore they make requests to the operating system, which is the one that manages access to resources. At the same time, they are responsible for creating a reliable and therefore secure environment. To prevent malicious applications from gaining access to users’ confidential information.
The new strategy of the Open Compute Project Foundation
The Open Compute Project Foundation should apply the benefits of open source in the design of new hardware, i.e. the designs are not owned by any specific brand and can be freely modified by third parties. Which is based on OCP’s collaboration with both Microsoft and Intel, on the one hand, as well as the Linux Foundation.
In the case of Intel and Microsoft, they donated sound design called SIOV, Scalable I/O Virtualization, a key component in the use made by virtual machines on our PC. His task? It is responsible for managing access to storage and devices. With the ability to manage in its most advanced versions up to hundreds or even thousands of different virtual machines. Thus, it not only affects conventional computers, but also servers and even large data centers. Thus, the contribution to the Open Compute Foundation will affect the design of new chipsets.
If we talk about the contribution to the Linux Foundationthe collaboration is with the SONIC Project
How does this benefit us?
The fact that Intel and Microsoft donated their SIOV technology may seem insignificant at first glance. However, one of the reasons why the so-called FPGAs have gained importance in recent years is not to simulate existing processors, but to create complex interconnection systems and above all to emulate so-called intelligent network controllers.
For now, this only affects the world of servers and data centers, but it won’t be long before our PC’s motherboard chipset is not only a peripheral hub, but also includes a Embedded FPGA as long as it can be configured for different types of devices, instead of having several different chipsets available in the market. In this way, chipsets that are not used for creating motherboards can be reused.