SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 02/06/06 -- Power.org, a community of companies driving collaborative innovation around Power Architecture(TM) technology, announced today that Freescale Semiconductor has joined its community of over 41 companies and 10,000 developers.

Working collaboratively with Power.org founding members, Freescale will take a lead role in collaborating on enhancements to a seamless, compatible instruction set architecture designed to accommodate platforms scaling from low-cost, high-volume consumer electronics systems to high-performance enterprise and industrial applications.

"Freescale joins the Power.org movement during a critical time of technological change and after a successful first year of Power.org operations," said Nigel Beck, chairman, Power.org. "The addition of Freescale marks a tipping point for Power.org at a time of great momentum -- with the effect of broadening the Power Architecture technology ecosystem and leveraging the combined expertise of each company."

IBM and Freescale executives joined other Power.org members at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco today to present plans for the creation of the Power Architecture Advisory Council -- committee empowered by IBM and other members of Power.org to steer the future of the Power Architecture instruction set.

"As a founder member of Power.org and a key member of the Power Architecture Advisory Council, Freescale looks forward to making significant contributions to the Power ecosystem and to the continued evolution of the instruction set architecture," said David Perkins, senior vice president and general manager, Freescale Networking and Computing Systems Group. "Collaboration and consensus-building among the diverse members of the Power.org community will help extend the architecture and drive innovation into high-growth consumer electronics markets, such as home networking and entertainment appliances."

Power.org member organizations have expressed positive support of the announcement:

"We are delighted to welcome Freescale as the newest member of the Power.org community," said Pankaj Mayor, group director of business development at Cadence and a member of the Power.org board of directors. "Freescale is a leader in delivering products based on the Power Architecture and their active participation will drive the evolution of architecture and instruction set thus accelerating the proliferation of Power as the preferred open hardware development platform for the electronics industry."

"Freescale Semiconductor is well known for its long history and technology leadership with the Power Architecture technology at its core," said Dan Dobberpuhl, President and CEO, P.A. Semi. "We look forward to Freescale bringing its years of Power Architecture technology expertise to the Power.org community in an effort to communally drive Power Architecture technology-based innovation."

"Power.org enables Rapport to work with both industry giants and startups to influence Power's technical development and market perception," said Debby Hindus, vice president of Rapport Incorporated, whose Kilocore(TM) low-energy processor technology is mobilizing the Power Architecture technology. "Freescale's participation will make Power.org even more valuable to emerging companies like Rapport."

Power Architecture technology offers the broadest, most pervasive coverage of any microprocessor architecture. The architecture powers the three next-generation gaming console platforms. Power microprocessors are driving the world's highest performance supercomputers (1). Power Architecture technology is also a predominant platform for enterprise servers, automotive powertrain and telematics, wireless infrastructure, and enterprise routing and switching.

As the center of technology innovation shifts from the personal computer to intelligent, networked multimedia appliances, Power Architecture technology is poised to offer scalable, cost-effective and power-efficient platform solutions for the future of pervasive computing, communications and consumer electronics.

About Power.org

Power.org is a community of companies driving innovation around Power Architecture technology. Comprised of leaders in the technology field, Power.org is a framework through which its members engage in collaborative innovation on Power Architecture technology, with the mission of optimizing interoperability and accelerating innovation to drive increased adoption of Power Architecture technology around the world. Power.org current has over 40 members, including Cadence Design Systems, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Jabil Circuit, Novell, P.A. Semi, Red Hat, Synopsys, and Thales Computers. For more details on Power.org visit the website www.power.org.

Freescale(TM) and the Freescale logo are trademarks of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. IBM is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.

(1) According to TOP500 list of supercomputers, November 2005, available at top500.org.

Contact:
Kevin Acocella
IBM Corporation
646-598-5551
kma@us.ibm.com