IBM makes isa of Power architecture for processors open source

IBM is making Power’s instruction set architecture and hardware reference designs open source, the company announced at the OpenPower Summit. The OpenPower Foundation becomes part of the Linux Foundation.

Manufacturers who want to design chips based on the Power architecture can do so royalty-free. As a first result of releasing the source code of the Power-isa, IBM is making available a self-developed softcore that can run on an fpga. Power’s OpenCapi and Open Memory Interface architectures are both becoming available. The release coincides with the OpenPower Foundation joining the Linux Foundation.

IBM founded the OpenPower Foundation six years ago together with Google, Nvidia and Mellanox, among others. The intention was that licensing the Power architecture to third parties would lead to further adoption and development of Power. According to IBM, opening the isa and designing should now lead to further growth.

The move should put Power in a better position not only against Arm and the closed x86 architectures of Intel and AMD, but also against RISC-V, whose isa is already open source.