OCP expands collaboration with Linux Foundation to establish a framework for creation of joint efforts
San Jose, United States – Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), the nonprofit organisation, announced an expanded collaboration with the Linux Foundation (LF), leveraging hardware-software co-design strategy by establishing a framework for creation of joint-effort shared communities and coordinated deliverables. Adding to the collaboration announced in April 2022 for data centre switching efforts on switch abstraction interface (SAI) at OCP and SONiC at LF, the OCP and LF have established a new effort supported by Microsoft and Google called Caliptra, standardising implementation of silicon embedded hardware root of trust security.
“An important part of the OCP mission, on top of serving our hyperscale operator community, is to make it easy for everyone to consume hyperscale innovations, which end up embedded in OCP recognised products. Understanding that deployable solutions need hardware and software that is integrated into a complete and validated solution, we are pleased to be able to bring together the strengths of the Linux Foundation for collaborative open source software development and the OCP for hardware specifications, and ability to develop supply chains for emerging markets. As part of the expanded collaboration with LF, we are pleased to have new security contributions from Google and Microsoft,” says George Tchaparian, CEO Open Compute Project Foundation.
There are many opportunities to create additional joint-efforts centered on hardware-software co-design and discussions between OCP and LF leadership continue with areas identified for further exploration include: development of integrated solutions using OCP recognised Open Edge Servers and LF Edge, developing standardised APIs for dynamically sharing data centre facility and IT hardware ecological footprint information allowing greener software, additional edge computing use cases, and support for OCP standardised modules, such as open accelerator and security control, in LF software.
“The Linux Foundation is happy to collaborate with the OCP to create communities that participate on both LF and OCP projects with a common goal and harmonised process to deliver market ready solutions combining open hardware and software,” says Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “We also look forward to partnering with the OCP on go-to-market initiatives developing emerging market supply chains in support of our vendor and system integrator members.”
“Independent hardware and software initiatives by different communities and consortiums often require significant integration efforts by the industry. Vendors need to convert and integrate the initiative into solutions with the market need in mind. The net effect is that many innovations never see the light of the day or serve the needs of the broader market. The expanded collaboration between the Open Compute Project and Linux Foundation has the strong potential to accelerate the absorption of open innovations into meaningful products and services”, says Ashish Nadkarni, Group vice president and general manager, worldwide infrastructure at IDC.
Comment on this article below or via Twitter @IoTGN