" IBM Creates Chip Ecosystem In China
By Ed Sperling, 12.10.04, 12:20 PM ET
Electronic News
IBM Corp.?is creating an ecosystem of companies around its Power architecture in China, opening up the architecture as a way of selling other products such as middleware that tie into it.
The move is a significant departure for IBM, which has largely focused its Power architecture on servers. But the Asian market is heavily dependent upon embedded chips in consumer devices, where IBM has only a small presence.
"We will be licensing our architecture openly," said Lisa Su, VP of technology development at IBM. She noted the company only plans to charge a nominal royalty for licensing the Power architecture. "The goal is not to make money off the royalties," she added.
The real money, she noted, will come in the form of servers and software such as middleware, which is the basis of IBM's technology business.
IBM's initial ecosystem includes 15 companies. Among the big names in the consumer space are Sony, already an IBM partner, as well as Chartered Semiconductor and AMCC, Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys in the EDA world and a handful of additional companies that will build chip sets to connect to the Power architecture. Please visit
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Enviado: 11/12/2004 12:03