The assault on the chip market is about to begin. A golden kingdom, in which the undisputed ruler has always been called Intel. But now, according to the Wall Street Journal, there is an air of regicide. And the bomber could be IBM.
The historic American hardware manufacturer - whose brand accompanied the birth of PCs - would have already enlisted Google and other companies in the sector to spread an IBM-branded chip on the market.
The alliance between the computer veteran and the new generation, which could be announced as early as Tuesday, will respond to the name of the OpenPower Consortium and will include the chipmaker Nvidia, the Israeli company Mellanox Technologies and the Taiwanese Tyan Computer Corp.
The goal is to undermine the overwhelming power of Intel, which materializes in the x86 chip, present in most server PCs: the IDC research center estimates that in 2012 x86 servers accounted for 98 percent of world sales.
The novelty will be the Power8, a future member of the family of chips that IBM plans to present shortly at a technical conference. Attracting customers won't be easy, since until now web companies have invested heavily in machines and software based on Intel or AMD chips. But an endorsement from Google, a large buyer of x86 servers, could change the tables.
