It's a new revision of an existing ISA. POWER8 implements Power ISA 2.07, POWER8 is 3.0.
The Freescale part of NXP was formed out of Motorola's semiconductor division - Motorola, in turn, was part of the original AIM Alliance with Apple and IBM back in the early 90s that developed PowerPC. So they've been making PowerPC stuff since the very beginning. I would assume they have a license of some sort from IBM.
The Freescale part of NXP was formed out of Motorola's semiconductor division - Motorola, in turn, was part of the original AIM Alliance with Apple and IBM back in the early 90s that developed PowerPC. So they've been making PowerPC stuff since the very beginning. I would assume they have a license of some sort from IBM.
[Disclaimer: IBMer, opinions my own]