As the server world is moving from high end to commodity X86 systems the market share has reduced, and IBM’s POWER, which is a series of high performance microprocessors, that is based on RISC architecture, is facing the brunt of it. Going by the looks of it, it seems like Intel’s Ivy Bridge-EX may overtake IBM’s POWER. IBM’s, soon to be introduced, POWER 8 with its chunky design and thermal envelope is touted to be a performance mean machine. IBM with major improvements to its chip has come up with POWER 8, which is much stronger than the POWER 7+ chips which were engineering feats when they were launched. According to Ashraf Eassa, The Motley Fool, the earnings report for IBM does not look good. The report reveals that the overall systems revenue has declined by 25 percent, and the sales of the POWER systems too have declined. This means that IBM is in a bad phase and seems to be waging a losing battle of architecture against Intel’s X86. The other important thing which points to the fact that IBM is going through a bad patch is that the company is ready to license its POWER 8 micro-architecture to anyone who will use the IP and it has also taken the ARM processor licenses itself for some of its lower-end network routers, switches; and the company must also develop instruction set based IP with regards to POWER for its custom chip clients. The value of Intel’s Ivy Bridge-EX, which uses specialized chips based on its superior PC-cores, is soaring over IBM’s POWER and has also captured the server market. Ivy Bridge-EX’s 15-core chip comes with a super fast memory support, improved cores and cache structure, and will be built on Intel’s 22-nanometer process which enables better performance with closely packed elements. With IBM selling off its System x to Lenovo and POWER getting weak, it boosted Intel’s growth and also increased its architectural skill across the compute continuum; looks like IBM will just have to hold on tight to its software and services to survive.