While we await the formal IBM Power11 launch in 2025, IBM engineers are already working on compiler support for “future” post-Power11 processors with the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).
Last week IBM engineers began with a patch series working on “-mcpu=future support for PowerPC“. The GCC compiler already has Power11 support and thus this “future” target is for a post-Power11 processor family, likely to be Power12.
This “future” target for IBM Power processors isn’t a new concept but is routinely used by IBM engineers each generation to begin plumbing next-generation compiler support without initially referring to the CPU target by an explicit name. IBM posted GCC “future” patches in 2019 for what became Power10 and then similarly “PowerPC Future” patches in 2023 for what became Power11. Now in mid-2025 is the next round of IBM Power “future” patches for what is likely going to be Power12. Closer to product launch, IBM will rename “future” to the respective product name.
For now Power’s -mcpu=future tuning is leveraging the same tuning data as Power10 and Power11 processors. The initial four patches also don’t reveal any exciting ISA details of these next-gen IBM Power processors.
This IBM future enablement is now underway for the GNU Compiler Collection with the patches likely to be merged and further tuned ahead of next year’s GCC 16 feature release.
