By John Blyler
Power Architecture member IBM talks about scalability, multicore, multithreading, and software challenges in today’s electronics market.

Designing electronic systems has never been easy. Processors—the critical component of any electronics—continue to grow in complexity. The move toward multicore extends those inherent design complexities to the hardware-interconnect and software-development domains.

Two main processor architectures have dominated the electronics industry since the earliest days of the computer era—namely, RISC and CISC. Today’s world demands that each architecture type must address a wide range of computing environments ranging from simple embedded computers to PC, hybrid-server, full-server, and even high-end mainframe systems. This article focuses on the way in which the RISC community—under the banner of the Power.Org group—is meeting the demands of today’s computing needs. The term “Power” in Power.Org stands for “Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer).” This is how the group is meeting challenges in multicore design, hardware acceleration, virtualization, software, and embedded systems.

Chip Design magazine recently sat down with the leading members of the Power Architecture organization—IBM, Freescale, and Applied Micro—to find the answers. In Part 1 of this series, IBM’s Kaveh Massoudian, CTO, Power.org Strategic Alliance at IBM, shares his insights.

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