Synergy between the Arm ecosystem and OCP communities to support the growth of compute infrastructure

The Open Compute Project (OCP) is a collaborative community, focused on designing hardware technology to efficiently support the growing demands on compute infrastructure. The Open Compute Project Foundation provides a structure in which individuals and organizations can share their intellectual property with others and encourage the IT industry to evolve. Arm joined OCP and became a platinum member in 2018.

Around the same time, Arm announced a dedicated infrastructure roadmap and a new brand identity, Arm Neoverse. Arm Neoverse-powered products, from our global ecosystem, will enable the diverse set of high-performance, secure, and scalable solutions required for the infrastructure foundation, in a world of a trillion intelligent devices.

The Arm ecosystem has had tremendous success in the infrastructure market. From cellular base stations to routers and servers, there are more Arm processors shipping into the infrastructure market than any other architecture. With nearly 30 percent-unit share, and growing, we are the infrastructure architecture of choice. Developing products for infrastructure is complex. From high-performance servers to power-efficient edge compute platforms to gateways and WAN routers, meeting a diverse and demanding set of requirements is only possible with a broad ecosystem, which is built on high performance, secure, scalable architectures.

Synergy between Arm and OCP

We see significant synergy between the Arm ecosystem and the OCP community:

• The OCP Security Project creates designs and specifications to enable software security for all IT gear through collaboration with the wider open compute community. The Arm Server Advisory Committee (ServerAC) creates the Server Base Security Guide (SBSG) specification for Arm servers. Both these efforts have common objectives and, as standards are developed by the OCP Security Project, we will ensure that the SBSG specification is aligned.
• The OCP Open System Firmware Project aims to create and deploy, at scale, an open-source hardware platform initialization, and OS load firmware, optimized for web-scale cloud hardware. Arm ServerAC creates the Server Base Boot Requirements (SBBR) specification for Arm servers. We participated in the TianoCore open-source system firmware effort; we also have the Arm Trusted Firmware open-source Secure world software project. As the OCP Open System Firmware Project develops firmware-related standards and source code, Arm will align through our SBBR, TianoCore, and Arm Trusted Firmware projects.
• The OCP Hardware Management Project incorporates a set of existing tools and best practices for remote machine management. The Arm ServerAC creates the Server Base Manageability Guide (SBMG) specification for Arm servers. We participate in the Linux Foundation OpenBMC project as a TSC member and would like to make sure the RunBMC interface works with Arm servers. The Arm ServerAC work will align with the standards that are developed by the OCP Hardware Management Project.
• The OCP Server Project provides standardized server system specifications for scale computing. Arm partners develop many of their systems based on these specifications, for example, Olympus. We are also involved in the Data Center-ready Secure Control Interface (DC-SCI) definitions, to make sure that Arm servers can also use the DC-SCI modules.
• The OCP Telco Project enlists the telecom industry and suppliers who are seeking to use data center infrastructure to deliver IT services. Telco operators are proposing new features for OCP OpenEdge, including work on multiple instruction set architectures. This would enable Arm architecture products, which are powered by Arm ecosystem partners like Ampere, Broadcom, and Marvell, to work with the Telco industry. All of the above work will be presented as a new version of the OCP OpenEdge proposal.
• OCP also has Data Center Facility, Networking, Storage, and Rack and Power projects, where the standards are expected to be usable by the Arm community.

At the OCP Regional Summit in Amsterdam this year, Arm will present the details of the SBBR and the Arm ServerReady program, with a plan to contribute the published SBBR specification to OCP. We will also talk about our SBMG efforts and OpenBMC participation. Finally, we will share what Arm and our partners are planning to contribute to the OCP OpenEdge initiative.

Supporting the server ecosystem for the future

Arm is participating in a wide variety of programs to support Arm infrastructure and the server ecosystem for the future. As a platinum member of OCP, Arm is demonstrating its commitment to support the growing demands on compute infrastructure, to enable Arm and OCP communities to work closely and succeed together.