Power.org was an organization to develop and promote Power Architecture technology by establishing its open standards, guidelines, best practices, and certifications.
Power.org was founded in 2004 by IBM and 15 other companies. Freescale (later bought by NXP Semiconductors) joined in 2006 as an honorary founding member and was given similar status as IBM. One year later it announced a landmark technology development deal with IBM. Power.org had over 40 paying members as corporations, governmental, and educational institutions.
In 2013, Power.org was disestablished and replaced by OpenPOWER Foundation, which is responsible for developing and releasing open documentation.
History
Power.org is founded (Dec 2004) Freescale joins (Feb 2006) – Freescale joins Power.org. The brand – (July 2006) Establishing "Power Architecture" as a brand, unifying products based on Power, PowerPC, PowerQUICC and Cell under one common flag. Power ISA v2.03 (Nov 2006) – The unified instruction set for Power Architecture processors, joining 15 years of development on POWER and PowerPC architectures. Power Architecture Platform Reference or PAPR (Nov 2006) – The foundation for development of standard Power Architecture computers running the Linux operating system. Power Architecture Developer Conference (Sept 2007) Released the Common Debug API Specification (Dec 2008) Released the ePAPR specification (Dec 2008) – A specification for embedded systems.
Organization
Power.org consisted of a board of directors which consists of founding members and others. Several committees and subcommittees governed and managed the organization's goals, projects, and responsibilities. Members had no veto rights in the decision processes of what defined the Power ISA, which was IBM's and Freescale's responsibility.
Power.org had a tiered membership model, with four levels: Founder, Sponsor, Participant, Associate and Developer. Developer membership was free of charge. Members included these:
IBM (founder) Freescale (founder, later bought by NXP) Cadence (founder) Synopsys (founder) 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
Universität Mannheim
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Virage Logic
Virtutech
Wind River
Xilinx
XGI Technology
Power Architecture
Power.org introduced and promoted Power Architecture, a collective marketing term for any specification, hardware, and software related to the POWER, PowerPC, and Power ISA architectures.