> I'm eager to know whether they've developed new Power ISA compliant cores > or if they just licensed existing Power ISA cores (like Applied Micro and LSI did > with IBM's PPC4xx) and built their own SoCs around them.
"IBM today announced that it is broadening its Power architecture licensing program to include for the first time, a multi-use agreement that gives developers access to the entire lineup of Power cores with a single license. Designers can now gain access to a blanket license for unlimited uses of the Power 470, Power 460 and Power 405 cores for a five-year period. [...] IBM also announced a Value added Reseller (VAR) agreement with C*Core [...] to expand market channels for Power architecture in China. C*Core joins a growing list of Power partners around the globe, such as Verisilicon who has extensive System-on-Chip (SoC) design experience with Power 405 and 460 cores and are well positioned to provide integration and turn-key services to deliver multi-core SoC designs as demonstrated by their most recent design for Chinachip featured at the Asia Power Architecture Conference in ShenZhen, China." http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/35319.wss
So it seems the new Chinese Power Architecture SoCs are not based on new cores but on IBM's PPC4xx core family.
