We are excited to announce a major upgrade to our OpenPOWER cluster, which will greatly benefit our open source projects. In collaboration with IBM, we have successfully integrated POWER10 capabilities into our current OpenPOWER cluster, powered by OpenStack using KVM on PowerVM. This enhancement represents a significant step forward in our commitment to providing cutting-edge resources to the open-source community supporting the POWER ecosystem.

A Leap in Computing Power: POWER10

POWER10, IBM’s latest processor architecture, is designed to deliver a significant leap in performance, efficiency, and security. It represents a new era of computing, addressing the ever-growing demands of modern applications. By introducing POWER10, we ensure that our projects have access to state-of-the-art technology, facilitating improved performance and innovation on the POWER platform.

A Shift from OPAL to PowerVM

One notable change with the POWER10 architecture is the removal of the capability to boot bare metal systems using the OPAL firmware, which previously provided native support for KVM. A recently released POWER10 firmware reintroduces the ability to run KVM, now leveraging the PowerVM hypervisor instead of OPAL. Users should see no real differences when using VMs except in a few rare cases such as no capability of using nested virtualization currently.

Seamless Integration with OpenStack

Our integration of POWER10 into our existing OpenStack environment was a critical requirement which was the primary reason we were delayed on introducing POWER10. We worked closely with IBM to beta test this new KVM enabled firmware along with upstream Linux Kernel patches, ensuring that the transition was smooth and that the new capabilities could be easily accessed by our projects. This effort underscores our commitment to staying at the forefront of technological advancements and providing robust, reliable resources to our users.

Continued Support for POWER8 and POWER9

In addition to the new POWER10 capabilities, we will continue to offer support for POWER8 and POWER9 platforms for the foreseeable future. This ensures a comprehensive range of options for our projects, allowing them to choose the most suitable architecture for their specific needs. Our goal is to provide a versatile and powerful platform for the open-source community to thrive.

Getting access to POWER10

To get access to POWER10, please fill out this form. If you already have access to our POWER8 or POWER9 systems, feel free to fill this form out again.

Thank you to IBM for making this possible!