Power.org
| Company type | Consortium |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer technology |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Defunct | 2013 |
| Fate | Replaced by the OpenPOWER Foundation |
Area served | International |
Key people | IBM, Freescale (founding members) |
| Products | POWER Architecture technology standards, guidelines, certification programs |
Power.org functioned as an international computer industry consortium from 2004 until 2013, later replaced by the OpenPOWER Foundation. Its primary mission was to advance and support POWER Architecture technology by establishing open standards, guidelines, best practices, and certification programs.
The organization was initiated in 2004 by IBM alongside 15 additional companies. In 2006, Freescale (which was subsequently acquired by NXP Semiconductors) joined as an honorary founding member with a status equivalent to IBM. A significant technology collaboration agreement with IBM was announced in 2007. At its peak, Power.org comprised over 40 paying members spanning corporations, government bodies, and academic institutions.
History
Power.org came into existence in December 2004, with Freescale joining the consortium in February 2006. By mid-2006, the Power Architecture brand had consolidated products based on Power, PowerPC, PowerQUICC, and Cell technologies. The release of Power ISA v2.03 in November 2006 unified the instruction set architecture for POWER processors, integrating fifteen years of advancements from POWER and PowerPC designs. That same month marked the introduction of the Power Architecture Platform Reference, serving as a baseline for developing standardized Power Architecture systems running on Linux.
The Power Architecture Developer Conference was held in September 2007. Subsequently, in December 2008, the organization published the Common Debug API Specification along with the ePAPR standard tailored for embedded platforms.
Power.org used "Power Architecture" as a collective marketing label that encompassed specifications, hardware components, and software pertaining to the POWER, PowerPC, and Power ISA families.
In 2013, Power.org was formally disbanded and replaced by the OpenPOWER Consortium (currently known as the OpenPOWER Foundation), which continues to provide open documentation and development for POWER technology.
Organization
The governance of Power.org consisted of a board featuring founding members and other stakeholders, supported by multiple committees responsible for managing objectives and initiatives. Although members participated actively, control over defining the Power ISA remained exclusively with IBM and Freescale; no member possessed veto authority over these specifications. The organization utilized a hierarchical membership structure composed of five tiers: Founder, Sponsor, Participant, Associate, and Developer—the latter being complimentary. Prominent members included:
- IBM (founding member)
- Freescale (founding member; later integrated into NXP)
- Cadence (founding member)
- Synopsys (founding member)
- Airbus
- AMCC
- Barcelona Supercomputing Center
- Broadcom
- Bull
- Chartered
- Curtiss-Wright
- Denali
- ENEA
- Ericsson
- Genesi
- Green Hills Software
- HCL Technologies
- Kyocera
- Lauterbach
- LynuxWorks
- Mentor Graphics
- Mercury Computer Systems
- National Instruments
- OKI
- P.A. Semi
- Rapport
- Sony
- Terra Soft
- Thales Group
- Tundra Semiconductor
- University of Mannheim
- University of Tennessee, Knoxville
- Virage Logic
- Virtutech
- Wind River
- Xilinx
- XGI Technology