IBM to open source major pieces of HPC software infrastructure

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Last week I wrote a story at HPCwire about the recent changes and upgrades across IBM’s entire HPC portfolio. One of the interesting aspects of this story for me was the degree to which IBM is maintaining a very vibrant and yet diverse product line of HPC products across all segments of the market.

The story was mostly retrospective, summarizing a quarter’s worth of changes over IBM’s products. There was a piece of forward-looking news in there, but I buried it at the end. The news relates to IBM’s extensive HPC software portfolio. Here’s the final paragraph from that story, focusing on the open sourcing of key IBM intellectual property:

IBM logoThe company has decided, in a move that would seem to be a big departure from its usual way of looking at the world, that it should open source much of the software it has developed over the past 20 years for this market. IBM plans to open source applications like LoadLeveler and its high performance math libraries. Detailed plans are expected this summer, but Schultz did reveal that the software repository will be managed by the University of Illinois. Said Shultz: “IBM really feels there is a lot of value in this software, and opening up the IP will benefit the community much more than keeping it closed and putting out twice yearly releases.”

Stay tuned for more announcements on this as the summer goes on.