OPMA 与 IPMI的区别与联系

In the past, platform hardware manageability in servers was treated as a premium, OEM-specific
value-added feature. As the marketplace matures, hardware management is evolving into
becoming a standards-based, “must have” feature found on the vast majority of enterprise class
servers. Today, the BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) firmware and IPMI (Intelligent
Platform Management Interface) command interfaces to the host and remote systems are clearly
defined and widely accepted.
Despite the advances made in standardizing manageability firmware and software interfaces,
manageability hardware subsystems are still proprietary and are often soldered to the baseboard. 
Because of this practice, manageability hardware subsystems:
• are reinvented for many server platforms, often times even within a given server
motherboard/system manufacturer’s product lines. 
• may be inefficient to develop due to lack of re-use across designs, thus adding significantly to
time to market, system development costs and risk.
• may not provide the proper flexibility of cost/benefit trade-offs for the server customer.

• may not provide a customer driven, cost-effective upgrade path for servers as manageability
requirements change.
• do not enable the building of an efficient, competition-based infrastructure ecosystem for
hardware manageability.
To address these issues, AMD has developed the OPMA specification.

As server volumes rise, server prices fall.  All areas of server design must be more closely
scrutinized for efficiency that drives cost savings while retaining or increasing customer value,
features, and flexibility.  The IPMI specification made good strides in standardizing the external
command interfaces to the management subsystem.  OPMA extends the standardization concept to
the management subsystem hardware interconnect and associated system architecture.  The
combination of a standardized external command interface with standardized, modular
management subsystem architecture (OPMA) forms the basis of efficient, cost effective
management subsystems.  OPMA is primarily oriented at standardizing hardware interfaces. 
OPMA does not preclude the use of external command interfaces other than IPMI.