July 24, 2006 – Power.org, an organization promoting the Power Architecture technology, has unveiled a new list of initiatives to accelerate development of power-efficient devices. The efforts include a new merged instruction set architecture and platform architecture specification, as well as a more unified branding strategy.

The merged instruction set architecture, Power ISA version 2.03, incorporates capabilities of previous versions (e.g., virtualization, variable length encoding, vector processing technology, etc.) and adds access to other as-yet undescribed features. Release date is set for this quarter. The new Power Architecture Platform Reference spec, also to be released this quarter, provides a foundation for rapid development of standard Power Architecture platforms for development using off-the-shelf Linux distributions and applications.

The group also has added five new members: EVE, a hardware-assisted verification provider; Oki Data Americas, Inc., a maker of PC peripheral equipment (printers, faxes, and multifunction products); CodeSourcery, an open source project management and software design consultancy; China’s Ministry of Information Industry Software and Integrated Circuit Promotion Center (CSIP); and Shanghai Jiao Tong U.