HCL inks deal with IBM

NEW DELHI: HCL Technologies has entered into an agreement with IBM, which gives it the right to use and sublicense IBM's PowerPC 405 and PowerPC 440 embedded microprocessor cores and certain associated peripheral cores.

HCL will use these newly acquired license rights to establish itself as the first Power Architecture Design Center outside an IBM business line.

HCL said in a statement that over the years, IBM's Power Architecture technology has proven to be the best fit architecture for a variety of applications. The objective of the design center is to expand Power Architecture designs in additional applications including networking, wireless and consumer devices.

HCL has been providing system design solutions including VLSI and hardware designs in vertical industries such as Consumer, Telecom, as well as storage domains. Complementing this capability, HCL will now offer to OEMs a wide range of Power Architecture System-on-Chip (SoC) Solutions, including sub-licensing of the IBM PowerPC 405 and PowerPC 440 embedded microprocessor cores, Open SystemC models, core hardening and integration services, SoC prototyping services, software development platform services and system prototyping services. In addition, HCL intends to provide customers access to high performance peripheral cores with a native CoreConnect interface, the open system bus architecture available from IBM.

"IBM's goal is to make Power Architecture solutions as pervasive and open as possible," said Ron Martino, IBM's director of Power Products, "This strategy applies not only to our architecture, but extends to our ecosystem of alliance associates and our routes to market. We are pleased to be assisting HCL to open this Power Architecture Design Center with HCL."

"This alliance helps HCL further expand its credentials as a premier design house and is in line with our strategy to offer superior customer value and transformational R&D services. We're excited about the opportunity to offer Power Architecture based end to end design solutions to OEMs. The combination of access to the PowerPC 405 and PowerPC 440 embedded microprocessor cores and HCL's design solutions will allow a new technology alternative and with time to market and cost advantages to customers, said Divakar Maddipatla, corporate vice president & head - Semiconductor Practice at HCL.