1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:08,320
so ibm sponsored us down to ibm think 2019 and i'm here walking around in this

2
00:00:06,160 --> 00:00:13,759
veritable sea of next generation technology like they've got everything

3
00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:16,400
here from cloud computing to ai to

4
00:00:13,759 --> 00:00:20,560
quantum computing both from ibm and its partners and then i spot this out of the

5
00:00:18,720 --> 00:00:24,640
corner of my eye now this might not look unusual at all we've

6
00:00:23,039 --> 00:00:28,400
got what like a motherboard and like a workstation or

7
00:00:26,960 --> 00:00:33,520
something but what you're looking at here contains

8
00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:38,559
tech that at this time is simply not available from the CPU companies that

9
00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:45,280
most consumers would think of pci express gen 4 yeah right here so these

10
00:00:42,079 --> 00:00:48,559
systems are running cpus based on ibm's

11
00:00:45,280 --> 00:00:50,800
power 9 architecture and what's really

12
00:00:48,559 --> 00:00:57,280
cool is that the hardware for them basically all of it even

13
00:00:52,800 --> 00:00:59,520
even this motherboard is open source

14
00:00:57,280 --> 00:01:06,969
what on earth does that mean let me let me explain that

15
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:20,240
so ibm's power architecture is nothing new in fact if you bought a mac back in

16
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:20,240
the early 2000s you've used it before

17
00:01:21,600 --> 00:01:29,680
but over the last 10 to 15 years it's gotten some big upgrades and the power 9

18
00:01:26,880 --> 00:01:34,640
processors in our demo rig here are the same ones in everything from high

19
00:01:32,400 --> 00:01:40,560
performance network storage appliances to literal super computers but what

20
00:01:37,680 --> 00:01:46,159
makes them open source well the cpus themselves are not

21
00:01:43,520 --> 00:01:51,520
although ibm actually does allow even CPU hardware technology to be licensed

22
00:01:48,720 --> 00:01:56,240
but it's the ecosystem around them that is that's where the open openpower

23
00:01:53,600 --> 00:02:01,200
foundation comes in so now instead of only being able to get a power9 solution

24
00:01:58,320 --> 00:02:04,399
from ibm directly you can get one from half a dozen or so different

25
00:02:02,479 --> 00:02:10,959
manufacturers and what we're looking at here are examples of ones that are open

26
00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:13,200
in every way so this motherboard i could

27
00:02:10,959 --> 00:02:18,560
just assuming that i had the means i could just download the schematics and

28
00:02:15,760 --> 00:02:22,160
build one myself it's crazy even down to the firmware so it's got these two BIOS

29
00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:25,520
chips with actually this really cool solution so you can actually flip this

30
00:02:23,920 --> 00:02:28,800
little dip switch and write protect them so that they can't become corrupted or

31
00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:32,879
infected in any way and i i could just i could build the

32
00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:38,000
whole thing and it would be ready to rock and then i could just run standard

33
00:02:34,879 --> 00:02:40,319
software on it like Linux or freebsd

34
00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:45,760
so this system right here is running regular old Linux and other

35
00:02:43,599 --> 00:02:51,760
than the fact that it's power9 instead of x86 is every bit as normal like

36
00:02:49,440 --> 00:02:57,280
workstation or tower server as you could expect so you got a couple CPU sockets

37
00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:59,120
for up to a total of 44 cores you got 16

38
00:02:57,280 --> 00:03:03,120
memory slots they run quad channel memory i mean the thing that's

39
00:03:00,720 --> 00:03:06,319
exceptional about it is how sort of unexceptional it is it just looks like a

40
00:03:04,879 --> 00:03:11,200
normal motherboard you've even got just like a standard Radeon pro workstation

41
00:03:09,040 --> 00:03:16,239
graphics card in here x5 sound card of all things some pci express slots i mean

42
00:03:13,519 --> 00:03:21,280
they're gen 4 that's cool but like yeah us usb header it's just a normal

43
00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:26,000
freaking thing like can i just like run video games on this thing hyperx gaming

44
00:03:23,440 --> 00:03:29,360
keyboard and mouse on here nice i like it keeping it classy right enterprise

45
00:03:28,239 --> 00:03:34,000
show this is what like a quake arena style oh

46
00:03:32,480 --> 00:03:39,200
my god this mouse is so sensitive is this a shotgun oh god this is the rail

47
00:03:36,319 --> 00:03:44,239
gun again oh oh balls there you go you're done this is like the least

48
00:03:41,120 --> 00:03:45,440
appropriate possible use of a system

49
00:03:44,239 --> 00:03:49,760
like this i love it team using development

50
00:03:47,599 --> 00:03:54,799
workstation for gaming that's my team one more one more

51
00:03:51,519 --> 00:03:56,640
oh no i finally i died

52
00:03:54,799 --> 00:04:01,200
okay so that's probably enough of me playing games on the very serious tool

53
00:03:58,959 --> 00:04:06,560
actually let's talk about why all of this so the openness of openpower has

54
00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:11,040
some key advantages from a performance standpoint it's allowed faster ecosystem

55
00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:16,639
development so they're already shipping not just pci express gen4 which is about

56
00:04:14,159 --> 00:04:20,959
twice as fast as the third gen bus that everyone else is using right now but

57
00:04:18,400 --> 00:04:27,360
they also have support for opencapi which is twice as fast as PCIe gen4

58
00:04:24,160 --> 00:04:31,440
and the ability to run up to three tesla

59
00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:34,720
v100 gpus off of a single CPU

60
00:04:31,440 --> 00:04:37,680
using envylink which is not only faster

61
00:04:34,720 --> 00:04:43,360
again than opencapi but it also allows for full data coherency between the cpus

62
00:04:41,199 --> 00:04:48,240
and the up to six gpus that you can handle in a dual CPU system so that

63
00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:52,960
means that they don't have to wait around to share information between them

64
00:04:50,960 --> 00:04:59,040
speeding up computationally intensive workloads like in particular ai then

65
00:04:56,560 --> 00:05:03,520
there's the security side of things with spectre and meltdown to some extent but

66
00:05:01,680 --> 00:05:08,400
more with some of the recent concerns about the management engine on some

67
00:05:05,680 --> 00:05:12,160
processors there's a huge part of the open source community or just the

68
00:05:10,320 --> 00:05:16,720
computing community in general that wants more openness when it comes to

69
00:05:14,400 --> 00:05:21,840
hardware a high performance chip that has no binary blobs on it and you can

70
00:05:19,199 --> 00:05:25,919
build everything from source and that is exactly what we're looking at here so

71
00:05:23,840 --> 00:05:30,000
power9 processors are available in a wide variety of configurations with

72
00:05:27,759 --> 00:05:34,880
anywhere from as few as four to as many as 22 processing cores but there are a

73
00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:41,280
few things that they all have in common quad channel ddr4

74
00:05:36,880 --> 00:05:43,360
44 pci express gen 4 lanes per CPU and a

75
00:05:41,280 --> 00:05:48,000
ton of optimization for massively parallel workloads so you might be

76
00:05:45,280 --> 00:05:52,560
familiar with technologies that use smt to allow a single CPU core to work on

77
00:05:50,639 --> 00:05:57,759
more than one thread at a time well rather than two threads power nine can

78
00:05:54,880 --> 00:06:01,720
handle four threads per CPU so a fully loaded 44 core rig like this one can

79
00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:08,720
handle 176 threads now then obviously most

80
00:06:05,520 --> 00:06:11,680
people aren't just running out and

81
00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:17,120
buying one of these and one of these and diying a tower for the receptionist in

82
00:06:14,240 --> 00:06:21,919
their office with it or whatever so the question that this raises then is

83
00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:25,840
why have a low cost board like this or even relatively speaking a low cost

84
00:06:24,319 --> 00:06:30,319
board like this one well systems like this are mostly geared

85
00:06:28,080 --> 00:06:34,560
towards developers so that they have an affordable way to test their code at

86
00:06:33,360 --> 00:06:39,039
their desk with that said though that's not necessarily because it has to be that

87
00:06:37,759 --> 00:06:43,199
way forever with the right software

88
00:06:41,039 --> 00:06:48,319
either of these could be adapted for more conventional you know consumer or

89
00:06:46,080 --> 00:06:51,759
professional use it's just that that's not the focus right now so they're

90
00:06:50,000 --> 00:06:58,560
mainly there for the developers who are writing code for the bigger systems like

91
00:06:54,479 --> 00:07:00,800
ibm's ac 922 this crazy powerful ai

92
00:06:58,560 --> 00:07:05,039
optimized server platform that's been used in the lawrence livermore and oak

93
00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:08,880
ridge national Labs which by the way contain the number two and number one

94
00:07:07,360 --> 00:07:12,479
respectively most powerful supercomputers in the world right now

95
00:07:10,960 --> 00:07:16,800
here's another one this is something ibm's calling power ai vision and this

96
00:07:15,039 --> 00:07:21,039
is like a new program without a ton of adoption yet but there's some amazing

97
00:07:18,800 --> 00:07:25,599
real world applications so they did some stuff with frontier development Labs

98
00:07:22,960 --> 00:07:30,960
that involved space weather specifically tracking solar flares recognizing that a

99
00:07:28,880 --> 00:07:36,080
hundred years ago there was one that fried all of the basic electronics on

100
00:07:33,759 --> 00:07:38,680
earth at the time and they figured wow if that were to happen today that would

101
00:07:37,599 --> 00:07:42,880
be like a multi-trillion dollar event like

102
00:07:40,720 --> 00:07:46,720
civilization as we know it threatening so they're trying to use deep learning

103
00:07:44,720 --> 00:07:51,280
and machine learning to put together historical and predictive data so that

104
00:07:49,199 --> 00:07:55,360
we could prepare for that pretty freaking cool and important right

105
00:07:53,680 --> 00:07:59,680
i mean i guess that's kind of the theme overall of the show here and all that's

106
00:07:57,520 --> 00:08:05,759
left now is to thank ibm for sponsoring this and thank you guys for watching our

107
00:08:02,639 --> 00:08:07,280
video from here down at ibm think 2019.

108
00:08:05,759 --> 00:08:11,919
if you guys disliked this video well you know where that button is but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or

109
00:08:10,479 --> 00:08:16,479
maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured

110
00:08:13,840 --> 00:08:20,479
only if you have very deep pockets like down to your shins

111
00:08:18,240 --> 00:08:23,120
at the link in the video description and uh while you're down there there's our

112
00:08:21,759 --> 00:08:28,800
merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which

113
00:08:25,520 --> 00:08:28,800
is definitely worth a join

114
00:08:30,879 --> 00:08:35,159
finest this is a dead one right