Anyone who holds even the slightest familiarity with the PC and server hardware market knows that Intel (News - Alert) holds all the cards, somewhat. Indeed, the company has the market share, the revenue and the experience to keep itself top processor manufacturer for years to come. Case in point, even with the PC market in decline, Intel continues to bring in billions in revenue each quarter.

It's gotten to a point that almost no individual company has the resources to take on Intel at its own game — which is why IBM (News - Alert) has enlisted the aid of Google, Nvidia, Mellanox Technologies and Tyan Computer Corporation to bring its chip technology to the forefront of the market. Together, these companies have formed what is being called the OpenPower Consortium.

Apparently, the OpenPower Consortium aims to allow companies to license IBM microprocessor designs, based on its Power technology, which can be found in the company's own server systems. Licensees would be able to incorporate IBM-designed circuitry into their own chips to be used in areas from servers, networking and storage devices and beyond.

While this initiative has strong support and sound reasoning behind it, the fact remains that x86 chips, manufactured by both Intel and AMD (News - Alert), are extremely dominant, making up 98 percent of worldwide server shipments in 2012 and 70 percent of server revenue. As such, IBM has struggled in this area, with revenue from its Power-based systems declining 25 percent in the second quarter of 2012.

Still, by licensing its technologies, IBM can at least get more revenue out of its investments in Power chips, while attracting new users, according to Bradley McCredie, an IBM vice president and fellow. Meanwhile, the company is basing its new efforts on a forthcoming member of the IBM processor family called Power8, which may serve to generate greater buzz. But IBM's greatest asset is likely support from Google (News - Alert), which is currently a huge buyer of x86 servers but may switch over completely to Power architecture, and other companies.

Either way, if IBM can create an attractive, viable alternative in the server market, it may be able to properly challenge Intel.