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IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

theregister.co.uk

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Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#4

Post by spatulon »

tommi wrote: post #2

"With its embedded Power chip business under assault from makers of ARM and x86 processors" I didn't know Power chip business still existed.

I work in automotive software, and PowerPC CPUs (albeit from Freescale and STMicroelectronics, not IBM) are more popular than ever. It's a very common choice for powertrain ECUs.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#5

Post by gngeal »

tommi wrote: post #2

"With its embedded Power chip business under assault from makers of ARM and x86 processors" I didn't know Power chip business still existed.

Of course it still exists. They're doing this now because they don't want to be steamrolled by the raging success that is the OpenSPARC project.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#7

Post by astrodust »

chokolad wrote: post #3

Strong feeling of deja vu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platf...

There was even a version of Windows NT 4.0 for that. It was great. Then Motorola decided they had no clue what they were doing with computers, IBM gave up and shut the whole thing down.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#8

Post by supergauntlet »

joenathan wrote: post #6
tommi wrote: post #2

"With its embedded Power chip business under assault from makers of ARM and x86 processors" I didn't know Power chip business still existed.

The Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, and the PS3 all use Power PC chips.

Right, but the Xbox One and PS4 are x86. PowerPC isn't nearly as dominant in the console market as it once was.

Re: IBM opens up Power chips, ARM-style, to take on Chipzilla

#9

Post by Millennium »

tommi wrote: post #2

"With its embedded Power chip business under assault from makers of ARM and x86 processors" I didn't know Power chip business still existed.

All three of the PS3/XBox360/Wii generation consoles used POWER-derived chips: very different chips, of course, but POWER all the same. The Wii U uses a POWER chip too.

POWER stalled in the performance/watt category around the time of the Power Mac G5: unfortunate, since this was around the time that performance/watt was starting to be considered a real thing. That hurt the architecture's standing terribly. But it's still around.

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