The companies intend to work on two areas: developing bus technology, as well as other initiatives for the high-volume server sector. IBM's POWER architecture is featured in is servers; derivatives of the technology are used to create the more common embedded PowerPC line.

The consortium includes AMCC, Bull, Cadence Design Systems, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Culturecom, IBM, Jabil Circuit, Novell, Red Hat, Sony Corporation, Shanghai Belling, Synopsys, Thales, Tundra Semiconductor and Wistron.

Developing a common set of specifications and sharing them among members will speed the time-to-market process as well as making sure the developed technology is compatible and interoperable. Members said this is especially important in China, possibly the most imporant emerging market in the world today.

"We have repeatedly seen how open standards increase customer choice in the marketplace and tear down barriers to integration," Rod Adkins, vice president of development for IBM's Systems & Technology Group, in Armonk, N.Y., said in a statement. "By bringing open standards to Power Architecture technology with Power.org, we anticipate acceleration of the rate of change in the hardware world that standards like Java technology and Linux have enabled in the software world."