Mellanox, ARM, Huawei, IBM, Qualcomm Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, and Xilinx, Inc. have joined forces to bring a high-performance open acceleration framework to data centres.

The companies are collaborating on the specification for the new Cache Coherent Interconnect for Accelerators (CCIX). For the first time in the industry, a single interconnect technology specification will ensure that processors using different instruction set architectures (ISA) can coherently share data with accelerators and enable efficient heterogeneous computing – significantly improving compute efficiency for servers running data centre workloads.

Accelerating applications in the data centre has become a requirement due to power and space constraints. Applications such as big data analytics, search, machine learning, NFV, wireless 4G/ 5G, in-memory database processing, video analytics, and network processing, benefit from acceleration engines that need to move data seamlessly among the various system components.

CCIX will allow these components to access and process data irrespective of where it resides, without the need for complex programming environments. This will enable both off-load and bump-in-the-wire inline application acceleration while leveraging existing server ecosystems and form factors, thereby lowering software barriers and improving total cost of ownership (TCO) of accelerated systems.

"CCIX enables greater performance and connectivity capabilities over existing interconnects, and actually paves the road to the next generation CPU – Accelerator – network standard interface," says Gilad Shainer, vice president of Marketing at Mellanox. "With an anticipated broad eco-system support of the CCIX standard, data centres will now be able to optimise their data usage, thereby achieving world-leading applications efficiency and scale."

Anton Jacobsz, MD of Networks Unlimited, a value-added distributor of converged technology-, data centre-, networking-, and security technology solutions, who distributes Mellanox products across 20 African countries, adds that this is a big step forward for the continent. "The rapid increase in data in the region has resulted in the requirement for open architecture to support this trend. Delivering higher performance and value to our data centre customers by increasing the overall performance and efficiency of their data centre platforms will now be a significant reality thanks to the development of CCIX's straightforward, heterogeneous software."

For more information on CCIX visit http://www.ccixconsortium.com