With the name of OpenPower Consortium, several leading companies in the technology sector have created an alliance to develop IBM chips for data centers in the cloud. The coalition includes IBM, Google and Nvidia, as well as Tyan Computer, a Taiwanese company that produces servers, and Israel Mellanox Technologies, which specializes in the design of chips.

Furthermore, IBM has revealed that any company wishing to participate and collaborate in the improvement and development of OpenPower technology be welcome to the list. The hardware and software, previously owned by IBM, will be available for open development and will be licensed to others, IBM confirmed in a statement.

“The founding members of the OpenPOWER Consortium represent the next generation in data-center innovation,” said Steve Mills, senior vice president, and group executive, IBM Software & Systems. “Combining our talents and assets around the POWER architecture can greatly increase the rate of innovation throughout the industry. Developers now have access to an expanded and open set of server technologies for the first time. This type of ‘collaborative development’ model will change the way data center hardware is designed and deployed.”

The Consortium intends to build advanced server, networking, storage, and GPU-acceleration technology aimed at delivering more choice, control and flexibility to developers of next-generation, hyperscale and cloud data centers. Other manufacturers can then integrate the circuits on their chips. It was only in June 2013, Nvidia had a similar announcement made , so now it is also conceivable that IBM will install Nvidia GPUs in power chips, or vice versa.

“We are happy taking part in the OpenPOWER Consortium and its mission to further accelerate the rate of innovation, performance and efficiency for advanced data center solutions,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Open source and community development are key to enabling innovative computer platforms and better serve the scalable and emerging applications in the areas of high-performance, Web 2.0 and cloud computing. Mellanox’s mission is to provide the most efficient interconnect solution for all compute and CPU architectures and deliver the highest return-on-investment to our users.”

The OpenPOWER Consortium also brings together an ecosystem of hardware, system software, and enterprise applications that will provide powerful computing systems based on NVIDIA GPUs and POWER CPUs.

Direct Threat to Intel

The alliance is clearly directed against Intel, which with its x86 architecture–for many years dominated the server market. Market research firm IDC estimates that 98 percent of all servers shipped in 2012 were equipped with x86 processors. IBM in turn has problems for quite some time to get his hardware to the customer. In the most recently completed quarter, sales of power-based UNIX servers over the same period declined by 25 percent.

On the other hand, the operation could also help revive IBM Power Systems division, which fell by 25 percent in the second quarter compared to data recorded in 2012.

IBM wants to license hardware and related software technology, in order to reap more revenue from its investment in the “Power” chips. In particular, IBM is targeting companies who use a lot of resources and access to social networks in droves for servers.

IBM has already demonstrated its “power” technology previously used in other applications. The strategy of the alliance most closely resembles the tactics that applies for ARM chips in smartphones and tablet PCs. The company licenses its technology to a number of chip suppliers competing in features and in price with their own products. Companies that rely on ARM technology now want to enter in the server world and use chips that save energy and space.

The freshness will be the Power8, a future member of the family of chips that IBM intends to present in near future. Attracting customers will not be easy, given that until now web businesses have invested heavily in equipment and software based on Intel or AMD. But an endorsement by Google, largest buyer of x86 servers, it could change the cards on the table.