Bringing together silicon and software is what the conversation is about around OpenPOWER. Today’s application architects love the breathing room that open-source software gives them, and IBM thinks all in IT are going to welcome the “opening” of hardware.

John Ashley, senior IBM software developer relations manager at NVIDIA Corp., told David Floyer (@dfloyer), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, that there are still developers who want to do all the dirty work themselves, and for them, IBM still offers the low level tools. But, he said, “For a lot of other developers, they may not be all that interested in being developers; they’re interested in solving some other problem.”

The later type, he said will be happy with some of IBM’s new processors that provide agility at a deep level of the stack. “We get down into the weeds and code that stuff up to be maximally efficient and fast, ” he said.

New potential for deep learning

Ashley said that the new processors are solving part of the deep learning process, and this will enable more use-cases for deep learning to develop.

“It’s not just about deciding whether a picture is a cat or a person,” he said. “There’s a lot of really fundamental science and business problems that are being attacked that way. I think you’re starting to see the fruits of that showing up here.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of OpenPOWER Summit.

Photo by SiliconANGLE