IBM Expands Power Licensing As Leading Developers Eye New Applications

ARMONK, N.Y. - September 1, 2011: IBM today announced that it is broadening its Power architecture licensing program to include for the first time, a multi-use agreement that gives developers access to the entire lineup of Power cores with a single license. Designers can now gain access to a blanket license for unlimited uses of the Power 470, Power 460 and Power 405 cores for a five-year period.

IBM also announced today a new “no-barriers” license for the Power 405 core which drops the standard access fee.

IBM also said it would work with Synopsys to make Power a staple architecture in university research and teaching for engineers. IBM is making the synthesizable version of the Power® 405 core available to qualified Synopsys University Program members at no charge. The expanded program is intended to foster innovation using the Power 405 core for new applications around embedded intelligent systems. 

IBM also announced a Value added Reseller (VAR) agreement with C*Core, China’s leading designer of embedded-processor solutions, to expand market channels for Power architecture in China.  C*Core joins a growing list of Power partners around the globe, such as Verisilicon who has extensive System-on-Chip (SoC) design experience with Power 405 and 460 cores and are well positioned to provide integration and turn-key services to deliver multi-core SoC designs as demonstrated by their most recent design for Chinachip featured at the Asia Power Architecture Conference in ShenZhen, China. 

Simpler access to Power technology will allow designers to more easily create embedded solutions on a powerful, well established microprocessor architecture that is currently at the heart of range of applications, from supercomputing and games to networking and storage. The Power Architecture is designed to allow use of the Power core for a variety of products across the rapidly growing smart-compute application landscape including embedded intelligence for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and intelligent infrastructure for handling the vast amounts of data generated from billions of connected devices. 

“As the world becomes increasingly digitized and connected, the role of embedded processors is expected to grow,” said Elmer Corbin, director, IBM Microelectronics. “IBM continues to innovate with its Power architecture, targeting new applications that will drive a wide variety of solutions for a smarter connected planet as well as enabling applications in high growth economies, as demonstrated by our work with partners such as C*Core and Verisilicon.” 

Power cores are based on the same technology found in IBM POWER-7 based computers, such as Watson, the question-answering system that won the Jeopardy! game show, and IBM’s Blue Gene line of supercomputers. 

Dozens of companies worldwide develop technology and products for the Power architecture, through an alliance known as Power.org. For more information on Power.org go to: https://www.power.org/home. 

For more information on IBM custom Power processors go to: http://www-03.ibm.com/technology/processors/index.html.