IBM Power Found In Collaboration

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During a New York media event to officially roll out IBM's next-generation, Power 5 processor, company executives said the key to technology advances in the space will be to broaden access to it.

"The stage is set for innovation by open collaboration," said Nicholas Donofrio, IBM's senior vice president for technology and manufacturing.

While IBM will continue to closely manage the basic instruction set for the RISC-based processing architecture, the company said it will broaden licensing of the processor technology.

The company will also work to "jump-start" what it says will be "a new open community" for development and integration of the Power architecture, and expand manufacturing options to enable chip foundries to manufacture its processors. "We're breaking new ground," Donofrio said. "We're charting new waters."

The Power processor, first introduced in 1990 in IBM's lineup of RS/6000 workstations, has become the company's proprietary, RISC-based architecture.

It acts as the processor for the current lineup of pSeries and iSeries servers, is the platform for Apple Computer systems, and is being implemented by OEMs in a series of embedded solutions.

Rick Kearney, CEO of Mainline Information Systems, a Tallahassee, Fla.-based IBM Premier Business Partner, said the customization emphasis that IBM is placing on the Power architecture will make a difference in winning new customers. Instead of focusing on specific servers, his company can devote its energies to selling solutions. "When we package this stuff, we're no longer going to sell a pSeries or an iSeries or an Intel-based server," Kearney said. "We will be doing that integration."