Power Chip Plots Multicore Future

By Doug Barney

There’s a debate today about the future of the PowerPC chip (now called Power Architecture) and how it plays in the world of multicore computing.

The PowerPC chip was invented by Motorola, Apple, and IBM as a follow up to one of my favorite processors, the 68000, which drove Amigas and Macintosh computers — the two best PCs ever in my opinion, and in that order (tell me where I’m wrong at barneymailto:[email protected]).

Apple gave up on the PowerPC and the Amiga has been dead almost as long as Generalissimo Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco. Yes Chevy, both are still dead.

The PowerPC, though, is clinging to life. Now managed by an independent group, the Power Chip is aimed, it seems, largely at the open source world.

The debate, held today at the outfit’s developer conference in Austin, focuses on ways to better exploit multicore, such as attacking a lack of standards, as well as better programming models and multicore extensions to current languages.

http://www.power.org/news/pr/view?item_key=5c308a65244f0b6e9122f0286c3cf5f45bb7f3cf