New consortium formed to develop the PowerPC chip

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 7 Dec 2004 at 11:45

IBM and friends have clubbed together to form Power.org - a joint effort to speed the development of the PowerPC chip and create wider acceptance in emerging economies such as China.

The consortium includes a range of chip design, hardware, software, storage and network specialists such as AMCC, Bull, Cadence Design Systems, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Culturecom, IBM, Jabil Circuit, Novell, Red Hat, Sony Corporation, Shanghai Belling, Synopsys, Thales, Tundra Semiconductor and Wistron.

The initiative will work to open standards in order to appeal to emerging economies that value open access to the technology they purchase as well as the freedom to use that technology to create their own products.

'China is rapidly becoming a key country for the technology industry. With the growth of open standards in both software and hardware, Chinese firms can feel free to embrace and contribute to open technologies while maintaining their own freedom of action and unique differentiation,' said, Roger Li, Chief Investor, President, Infotech Ventures, the designated fund manager of the State Electronic & Information Industry Development Fund by the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry.

Power.org will initially focus on opening up bus architecture so that it is easier to integrate different technologies into chip and motherboard designs and allow vendors to keep costs down.

Currently, the server market is experiencing 'modest growth' according to Gartner. Until that is, you look at the market for cheap x86 systems which is several strides ahead with a growth of 18 per cent for the last quarter (Q3).

And the growth seems to be sustained. As the performance of the hardware and the development of Linux - pretty much becoming the platform of choice for these systems now - continues apace, volume servers are being deployed not just as file and print servers but deeper and deeper into the data centre.

Standardising the PowerPC architecture and building a community around its development will hopefully drive costs down and speed up progress. Not only that, but as x86/Linux volume servers expand their grip, they will increasingly encroach on PowerPC-based servers' own turf. As least the two Linux heavyweights Red Hat and Novell are already signed up.

It is not just servers, though, that the Power.org is interested in. With the likes of Sony on board, the consortium will also look at optimising PowerPC for embedded devices, such as set-top boxes, games consoles and mobile devices.

'Power Architecture will make significant inroads in markets spanning from consumer devices to high end servers, much as Linux has scaled from high-end servers to consumer devices. Enterprise Linux provides customers with choice in their infrastructure by delivering low-cost, flexible and reliable open source solutions for the enterprise. Red Hat will continue to promote standardization and increased scalability in these markets through its Open Source Architecture, a strategy which includes operating systems, connectivity, and infrastructure management,' Deb Woods, vice president, product management, Red Hat.

The obvious empty chair at Power.org of high profile PowerPC users is Apple. However the company had not returned our requests for comment at the time of writing.