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IBM has announced a raft of products and partnerships intended to help push its Power microprocessor beyond servers and into an array of corporate and consumer devices.

IBM is observing a sea change in chip design: The industry is approaching the limits of the gains it can wring out of hardware advances, executives say. Future chip improvements will need to come from better integration of chips with the systems they run, in IBM's view.

"Integration eclipses gigahertz, going forward," says Bernie Meyerson, who heads IBM's semiconductor development. "You can't make things smaller forever. What happens when the individual layers in your transistor get down to the dimensions of what they're made out of, which is, roughly, atoms?"

Partners Paraded

IBM plans to address that challenge with two approaches that have been a foundation of its corporate strategy since Sam Palmisano took control as IBM's chief executive. First, it will abide by its "on-demand" mantra and focus on a flexible, holistic approach to chip design, treating software and other system components as key to technical advancements, says Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM vice president of technology and strategy. Second, it will work closely with outside partners.

Toward that end, IBM has announced new licensing and manufacturing options and plans to build a community of development partners around its Power architecture. Sony, which has licensed the Power technology for use in future consumer electronics, will work with IBM to customize the chips it uses.

IBM had a selection of partners and customers on hand at its announcement to endorse the development strategy.

"It's not about an architecture, it's about the combination" of chips with other hardware and software products, says Alex Pinchev, Red Hat's executive vice president of sales. IBM's Power chips and Red Hat's Linux operating system have combined to drive improvements in system virtualization and manageability, he says.

Representatives of Hong Kong-based Culturecom Holdings note that their company's forthcoming native-Chinese processing technology has been under joint development with IBM since 2001.

"The ability to process in Chinese directly, without any translation software, will bring the cost for computing down tremendously," says Henry Chang Manayan, Culturecom's executive director.

Power5 Previewed

IBM also previewed at the event its Power 5 processor, due out in the second half of this year. In April, the company plans to release blade servers based on the Power architecture.

According to one analyst attending the event, IBM's development strategy differs significantly from those of its chipmaking rivals, including Intel and Sun Microsystems.

"IBM is creating a computing ecosystem that can be pushed up or down. I can't really think of anyone else who is doing that," says Charles King, research director of infrastructure hardware for Sageza Group. "Intel has taken a very different approach of creating specific processors for specific markets."

King says that he expects IBM's strategy to be successful and that he sees the Power architecture as an emerging industry standard. He also noted that IBM's plans to open its development process gives the company access to a broader talent pool than is available to more-proprietary designers.

"You get smart people to help you, and you see where that leads," King says.