At their POWER press event today, IBM announced a new Power licensee, new customers, and plans for reconfiguring processors.
- Sony has licensed the Power architecture from IBM
- L-3 Communications, Global Brands Manufacture Group, Memory Experts International, Block/Goldring, Christie Digital, and Princeton University are new customers
- Power5 demo running multiple operating systems in virtual micropartitions
A new "open hardware era":
IBM also will explore the notion of opening up our community and collaboration around Power Architecture. We will look at new governance models that will allow us to involve the community in Power Architecture's future and to help set the stage for further innovation
Also discussed were plans for Power chips that "can physically reconfigure themselves -- adding memory or accelerators, for example -- to optimize performance or power utilization for a specific application."
