INDUSTRY

At a members' conference in Shanghai, China today, Power.org -- an organization dedicated to accelerating collaborative innovation on Power Architecture technology -- said that new membership and product development by member companies had exceeded first year expectations. Organization officials credited the growth to the collaborative innovation approach Power.org fosters among members, in addition to advances made in Power Architecture technology itself. The Shanghai conference was attended by Power.org members and numerous technology and manufacturing companies from throughout Asia and the Middle East. New members announced today, included: -- CipherOptics -- a leading provider of data security solutions. Organizations worldwide including Fortune 10 companies, top-tier international financial institutions, healthcare providers and government agencies, rely on CipherOptics to secure their data communications. CipherOptics solutions provide security through granular access control and encryption, plus superior data integrity. -- CriticalBlue -- a provider of design solutions for accelerating software in embedded microprocessor applications. Working directly from the executable code of the main processor, the revolutionary Cascade solution synthesizes an optimized and programmable coprocessor to execute key software functions which are offloaded from the main processor. CriticalBlue therefore offers system and semiconductor design companies with flexible, automated embedded system design solutions that can meet the increasing performance, area, power, and cost demands of embedded software processing across a wide range of application sectors. -- Genesi -- Genesi is a leading provider of PowerPC computing products. Genesi's OpenFirmware (IEEE1275) compliant PegasosPPC family is designed to bring PowerPC technology, flexibility, and efficiency to the desktop, home entertainment, netcom, low-end server and pervasive customer segments at an affordable price. -- Mentor Graphics -- a technology leader in electronic design automation (EDA), providing software and hardware design solutions that can enable companies to develop advanced electronic products faster and more cost- effectively. The company offers innovative products and solutions to help engineers overcome the design challenges they face in the increasingly complex worlds of chip and board design. -- Silicon Application Corporation -- Taiwan-based SAC Group is a services provider in the semiconductor supply chain. With business operations in Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, SAC serves as both distributor for semiconductor suppliers as well as a provider of technical support, design-in, total solutions and storage services to its clients. -- Tehuti Networks -- a fabless semiconductor company with offices in Israel and the United States that develops solutions-on-a-chip (SoC) for accelerating TCP/IP processing. The solutions can improve processing performance and provide significant cost benefits to original equipment manufacturers and IT users. -- Terra Soft Solutions -- Since inception in 1999, Terra Soft has maintained a singular focus on Power Architecture technology and the Linux OS, providing turn-key integrated solutions for home, office, and mission critical environments. With an expertise in high performance computing, Terra Soft maintains clients in the Departments of Energy and Defense, and working relationships with IBM, Freescale, Mercury, Momentum, and Curtiss Wright for systems bring-up, seamless code migration from host to target, and collaborative customer support. -- Virtutech -- a leading provider of full system simulation technology for the development and testing of software for advanced electronic systems. Virtutech's technology provides the foundation to move software development from being based around unwieldy and often non-existent hardware to being based on a programmer-friendly simulation environment running on every programmer's desktop. "What started only months ago as a consortium of companies driving innovation on Power Architecture technology, has become a fully functioning standards body, supporting openness and collaborative innovation around new products and systems," said Nigel Beck, chairman, Power.org. "The rapid growth of the Power.org movement provides a glimpse at the possibilities that exist when breakthrough technology is made truly open and accessible to all." Power.org Members Advance Technology Architecture Across Industry Cadence Design Systems today announced the availability of a comprehensive set of services for SoC designers embedding Power Architecture technology, including a new custom-synthesized design approach. Developed in close collaboration with Power.org members, the custom-synthesized approach advances PowerPC portability in customer segments such as consumer and networking. Also today, new Power.org member Genesi announced its intention to develop a dual PowerPC 970MP based platform to be designated as the "Open Server Workstation" directed at the numerous PowerPC development communities that have been fostered around Genesi's successful Open Desktop Workstation. The Open Desktop Workstation was recently reviewed and awarded a 5/5 by Linux User and Developer Magazine. Technical Committees Formed; Lay Foundation for Power Collaboration Power.org also announced today the formation of five technical subcommittees to enhance development opportunities around Power Architecture technology. The subcommittees include: -- Power Architecture Platform Requirements -- High Volume Server Reference Platform -- Storage SMB Reference Platform -- SoC Design Hierarchy -- Bus Architecture New Power Cores Enable Unparalleled System/Device Development Opportunity Addressing growing opportunity in the area of system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology, IBM today announced new low-power and high-performance Power Architecture-based microprocessor cores to serve as the engine behind next generation processor technology. The new cores foster unparalleled access to the flexible Power Architecture instruction set architecture that can scale from consumer to supercomputer applications. The PowerPC 405 and PowerPC 440 embedded processor cores are being offered in 90nm technology for a range of consumer, communications and embedded computing applications. -- Low-Power PowerPC 405 Core -- Ideally suited for low-power applications such as consumer and wireless communications, this core is now available from IBM for licensing and ASIC designs. The PowerPC 405 provides a target speed of up to 600 MHz (with 400 MHz worst-case target) with 1.52 DMIPS/MHz. -- High-Performance PowerPC 440 Core -- An excellent high-performance solution for a wide range of applications -- including embedded computing, wired communications and storage, -- this core is targeted to be available in December 2005 for licensing and ASIC designs, along with a compatible floating point core and an L2 cache controller. The PowerPC 440 provides a target speed of up to 1 GHz (with 667 MHz worst-case target) with 2.0 DMIPS/MHz. The floating point core provides 2.0 MFLOPS/MHz for both single-and double-precision operations. Power Evaluation Kit Made Available to Development Community Announced today and made available for a free download at its Web site, the Power Evaluation Kit is an integrated SoC evaluation kit designed to enable software development and performance analysis for consumer applications based on Power Architecture technology. IBM has made the system-level design tools available to enable SoC designers to make informed decisions early in the design process, potentially speeding the delivery of products to market. The kit can help designers quickly evaluate the cross-domain effects of design trade-offs on performance, power, timing, and die size, reducing the time associated with traditional design techniques. The first version of this kit is an SoC analysis framework which includes the IBM ChipBench System Level Design (SLD) performance analysis solution along with a set of SystemC transaction-level architecture models. Power Architecture microprocessors are the heartbeat of products ranging from video gaming systems and telematics to supercomputers. For more information, visit its Web site.