IBM has decided to offer it's own PowerPC technology for licensing, pretty much like ARM does.
I guess Sony switching from IBM to AMD has cut in their research budget, and they need new income to fund the ongoing development of that platform.
This can be really interesting. The PowerPC architecture (like used in the IBM Blue supercomputers) is very efficient, it's a RISC design with much less transistor count than comparable performance CISC (x86) designs, therefor a lower power draw and lower TDP, while at the same time being a much more powerful design than ARM currently offers. Because the silicon is smaller, with less transistors, it's cheaper to make than x86.
So what does this mean? This means that Samsung or AMD or nVidia or Intel or... Google owned Motorola, that already has experience with the PowerPC platform... can buy a license from IBM, whereby IBM designs a PowerPC 8 based litho for the licensee, and the licensee can then mass produce the silicon for use in their products. It would use less power than even the latest Intel small litho CISC-chips, have comparable or better performance per watt in most applications, and of course, the ubiquitous linux-kernel fully supports the architecture, as it is currently the main platform on PowerPC.
I'm sure AMD can't afford an IBM license, I'm pretty sure Intel has spent too much on investments for the smaller lithos of the near future already to risk it, and I'm sure Samsung and others have going agreements with ARM and fabs that prevent them from investing in the silicon. Now which manufacturer is backed by the largest developer of (non-GNU, but still...) linux distros that is also a market leader in the post-PC market, and has been struggling to be able to make cost effective competitive devices in that market, and has shown that it is shopping for chips, by consecutively releasing x86 and ARM versions of their devices: Motorola! They have the money for an IBM license through Google, they have the fabs, they don't even use the fabs they have efficiently, they have the experience with PowerPC, and used to be the main competitor to Intel in the old Apple v IBM days... and Google has shown an increasing interest in releasing hardware products... and they have a direct interest in efficient high performance computing... and have been taking a strategic position for releasing hardware products under ideal market circumstances, with their fiber project, their AOSP devices, their cast devices, and a fully integrated suite of software and services to link everything together... imagine an android 5 phone with the performance of a Haswell laptop for 400 USD... and Google can be pretty sure that Canonical won't get anywhere on such a platform, if Ubuntu Touch were to take off, which in itself is highly improbable, as Ubuntu for PowerPC has been discontinued by Canonical.
So who would you like to see getting an IBM PowerPC license...
Anyone want to start a kickstarter campaign to fund an IBM license and a fab deal to make PowerPC based devices?