New Power Architecture silicon roadmap signals strong growth in existing and new markets

PISCATAWAY, USA: Power.org, the open collaborative organization that enables, develops and promotes standards for Power Architecture technology, has unveiled its new Power Architecture Silicon Roadmap, the heart of the Power Architecture ecosystem, and released data from IMS Research showing that Power Architecture technology remains the worldwide market leader.

“Power Architecture remained the #1 worldwide market share leader in 32-bit MPU and CPU Core Architecture for 2009,” said Tom Hackenberg, Research Manager, Semiconductor Group, IMS Research.

IMS Research is predicting tremendous CAGR over the next five years in a number of key industries where Power Architecture solutions lead in deployment and are recognized as the de facto standard including the communications (enterprise CPE, access and backbone), mobile communications infrastructure, consumer game, and automotive markets.

According to IMS Research, convergence and connectivity will be the driving forces for the next decade and well beyond. Power Architecture technology has the potential to ride this growth to new heights of market leadership as these industries mature. The newly unveiled roadmap illustrates the remarkable leadership Power Architecture silicon solutions have had across applications and previews an accelerated, collaborative growth path based on data from AppliedMicro, Freescale, IBM, LSI, GDA Technologies, IPextreme, Synopsys, Virage Logic and Xilinx. It is the first of its kind to be used by the Power Architecture community for collaboration and innovation.


“The Power Architecture Silicon Roadmap represents a major advancement in technology shown by the development of new cores supporting 64 bit architecture, multicore, virtualization, hypervisor, and energy management serving diverse market segments from embedded, server and hybrid server-embedded based on Power ISA v.2.06,” said Kaveh Massoudian, CTO, Power.org Strategic Alliance at IBM.

Expanding breadth of markets and applications
Consumer – Power Architecture technology is pervasive in household electronics such as game consoles, digital cable boxes, digital video cameras, DVD players/recorders, printers and high-definition televisions.

Automotive and Industrial – Power Architecture controllers are used by the world’s top five automakers and by leading-edge car companies such as BMW and Mercedes. Power Architecture technology enables advanced automotive control and safety systems that respond 100 times faster than the average driver and will be found on board the next-generation of GPS III satellites.

Power Architecture computers have performed under extreme conditions on almost every NASA research spacecraft launched in the past decade, including the Mars Pathfinder, Rover and Phoenix Lander missions, the Deep Impact COMET probe, the STEREO solar explorer, and the probe exploring Mercury.

High-performance computing – Four of the world’s 10 top supercomputers use Power Architecture processors, including the world’s fastest, which has almost 213,000 Power Architecture processors and crunches more data faster than the next three-fastest combined. Power Architecture processors also drive five of the 10 fastest enterprise servers.

Communications – almost every phone call, Web page and e-mail is delivered by Power Architecture systems. More discrete Power Architecture microprocessors are sold into communications systems than all other architectures combined.

In addition, market leaders are aligned in their support for Power Architecture technology as the preferred standard for current and next generation applications.

“The world’s top communications, automotive, industrial and aerospace/defense equipment manufacturers trust Freescale processors based on Power Architecture technology to deliver the performance, energy efficiency and software compatible solutions they need to differentiate and win in highly competitive markets,” said Preet Virk, Director of Strategic Marketing, Networking Processor Division at Freescale Semiconductor.

“Freescale’s ongoing investment in Power Architecture technology continues to pay dividends, resulting in world class technologies such as our well received QorIQ multicore product family and the recently launched 64-bit e5500 core.”

“Power Architecture technology gives us the flexibility we need to deliver market-leading solutions across the full spectrum of price/power/performance targets demanded by the various markets. On one end, Power Architecture enables solutions at less than 1W required by markets such as Smart Meters and Consumer NAS systems. As another example, Power Architecture has also proven ideal for high-performance dual core solutions serving security appliances and multi-function printers at <10W,” said Vinay Ravuri, AppliedMicro’s vice president and general manager of the Processing Products Division.

“Working in a collaborative environment through Power.org ensures that next-generation computing systems will continue to meet or exceed market needs.”“Power Architecture technology is a key element in our strategy to meet the increased performance and lower power demands of next-generation communication networks,” said Tareq Bustami, multicore communication processor product line director, Networking Components Division, LSI. “An example is the LSI Axxia Communication Processor family which is designed to meet those needs.”

“The substantial and sustained growth of Power Architecture technology is driven by the influence of Power.org members, whose commendable work in creating technology standards is making the Power Architecture platform simpler to design-in and easier to use,” noted Nina Wilner, Power.org Technical Committee Chair for Power.org and Software Architect, Strategic Alliance, IBM.

Power.org continues to lead the development of the specification and promote Power Architecture technology, the brand and ecosystem solutions through a rich set of collateral that articulates differentiation and selection and by sponsoring high impacting events.