IBM Corp and Motorola Inc will shortly unveil yet another roadmap for the Somerset PowerPC design shop they share, and as expected they’re to renew efforts on designing PowerPC processors for the embedded market. They currently have separate embedded PowerPC design strategies and want to pool resources on development of future parts. They’ll also be expanding their third party and other licensing arrangements. IBM says the new embedded processors will be targeted for use in network devices including hubs and routers. Somerset will continue to crank out 32-bit PowerPC designs for use in desktop systems such as Apple Computer Inc Macs but wouldn’t divulge details of when it’ll design 64-bit desktop parts.
