IBM Tweaking Its Chip Tactics, But Powering On

IBM (IBM) has often marched to a different drummer in computer chips. But Big Blue will take a step closer to conventional wisdom next year.

No, IBM is not moving away from developing electronic brains for its own servers, as most computer makers have. While some IBM servers do use the ubiquitous x86 chips designed by Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), IBM continues to extend the internally-developed Power line of microprocessors for other systems as well as chips for IBM mainframes.

Yet IBM is taking a page out of rivals’ playbook with a chip called Power7 that is due in the first half of next year–not that the product doesn’t include some novel design concepts, too.

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