Power PC

IBM PowerPC 601.

PowerPC (usually abbreviated PPC) are RISC-type CPUs, developed by IBM, Motorola and Apple.

The processors of this family produced by IBM and Freescale Semiconductor (which was Motorola's semiconductor and microprocessor division), being used mainly in Apple Computer computers or Macintosh computers until 2006 and in various IBM models.

History

The RISC philosophy was introduced by computer scientist John Cocke in the 1970s. In 1980, IBM began the IBM 801 project where the first RISC processor would be derived, the project was led by John Cocke himself. This RISC processor offered a rather bad performance, which forced IBM to undertake the America Project, with which to create the first processor of the Power architecture (low power consumption but powerful processor).

In 1991, IBM realized the potential of its Power design and sought an alliance with Apple and Motorola to drive its creation; then the AIM alliance (Apple, IBM and Motorola, currently Freescale) arose whose objective was to oust the domain Microsoft and Intel that offered systems based on 80386 and 80486.

PowerPC Implementations

The PowerPC has been one of the most extended architectures thanks to its high performance and its technological implementation. This is a small list of PowerPC implementations throughout its history.

1. 601 MPC601 50 and 66 MHz
2. 602 consumer products (databus and multiplex addresses)
3. 603 for laptops
4. 603e
5. 604
6. 604e
7. 620 first 64-bit implementation
8. x704 BiCOMOS PowerPC implementation by Exponential Technologies
9. 750 G3 (1997) 233 MHz and 266 MHz
10. 7400 G4 (1999) 350 MHz
11. 750FX announced by IBM in 2001 and available in 2002 at 1 GHz.
12. 970 G5 (2003) 64-bit implementation derived from IBM Power 4. 1.4 GHz, 1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz, 1.9 GHz, 2.0 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, and 2.7 GHz

• Versions for embedded systems:

1. e200
2. e300
3. e500
4. e600
5. PPC400:401, 403, 405, 440, 450, 460

PowerPC 601

In 1993 the first generation PowerPC appeared with the code name PowerPC 601, which was developed by the alliance Apple, IBM and Motorola. In Austin, it was the place where they developed the processor, and in the design they used the bus interface of the Motorola 88110. The PowerPC 601 was quite successful. PowerPC is honored to have joined 3 fierce competitors, Apple, IBM and Motorola, in its development and demand generation to compete against the Intel/Microsoft duo. The volume of applications is (and was) critical to the success or failure of a microprocessor. The development and production costs are terrifying, and PowerPC achieved several niches, without reaching the initial objective. All Macintosh from 1994 to 2006 incorporated this microphone, as well as the successful Nintendo Wii, the Microsoft Xbox 360 console or a component of the Sony PlayStation 3.

PowerPC 7447

The PowerPC 7447 is a single-core 32-bit processor that was used extensively by Apple in its PowerBook, iBook, and Mac mini lines from late 2003 to late 2005, just before switching to Intel processors. These processors were used at speeds of 1 GHz in the PowerBook 12" DVI up to 1.67 GHz on the 15" and 17" double layer. The latter used a variation called 7447a (without L3 cache). Apple named this processor the G4, like previous versions like the 7455 (models with L3 Cache). What was remarkable about a G4 processor was that it included for the first time the Altivec or Velocity Engine instruction set as advertised by Apple, which was not available in the previous generation of processors known as the G3. The G5 or 750 also included this instruction set but it was 64-bit. The G5 consumed more power than the G4 and got considerably hotter, so it was never used in small or portable machines, and so it coexisted with the 7447.

The differences between the 7447 and the 7455 (its predecessor) is that the former has twice the secondary or L2 cache helping to keep the processor well-fed with instructions and data, and does not have a level 3 or L3 cache.

PowerPC 970

It is also called PowerPC G5 as it was used, in its first version, by the Power Mac G5. It is a 64-bit microprocessor. There is a second version called PowerPC 970FX that slightly improves performance. The latest model of the PPC970, is the PPC970MP (dual core) with 1mb L2 cache, the PPC970GX (single core version of the 970MP) having been cancelled.

This microprocessor is used in some supercomputers.

Xenon

Xenon is the core of Microsoft's Xbox 360 console. It is based on the ISA PowerPC, has three independent and symmetric cores at 3.2 GHz, with 6 threads and 32 KiB of L1 cache. It has a 1024 KB L2 cache at 1.6 GHz and implements a derivation of the VMX extensions, VMX128 (same VMX extensions, but with 128 registers and simultaneous multithreading capability). It provides a bus speed of 5.4 GHz and up to 21.6 GiB/s of bandwidth.

Cell Broadband Engine

In 2001, Sony, Toshiba, and IBM began developing a processor for servers, game consoles, and portable computers. The result was the Cell Broadband Engine. Its core is based on ISA Power, it has 8 coprocessors that allow vector and multimedia operations to be accelerated in parallel.

The first versions of the Cell operate at frequencies of 4.8 GHz (it is worth mentioning that the PlayStation 3 runs at 3.2 GHz and there are 65 nm prototypes that work at 6 GHz).

IBM Broadway

Used as the core of Nintendo's Wii console released in 2006, the Broadway processor is an IBM PowerPC, codenamed "Broadway" (IBM Broadway) with 90 nm SOI CMOS technology running at 729 MHz.

PowerPC NXP

The NXP PowerPC 64-bit multithreaded Power ISA-based microprocessor core from Freescale Semiconductor (now part of NXP). The e6500 example will power the entire range of QorIQ AMP Series processors on a chip (SoC) that share the common naming scheme: " Txxxx ". Hard samples, made on a 28nm process, available early 2012 with full production late 2012.

PowerPC Supported Platforms

This microprocessor is designed based on the IBM POWER architecture with some components taken from the Motorola 68000 microprocessor to give it compatibility with Apple computer architecture.

In it can be executed, at least, the operating systems:

• AIX
• Amenities 4
• Morphos
• BeOS (Versions Ancient. Discontinued)
• FreeBSD
• Linux
• Mac OS (Old Versions. Discontinued)
• Mac OS X (from 10.1 to 10.5.x)
• NetBSD
• OpenBSD
• QNX
• VxWorks
• Windows NT 3.51

GNU/Linux distributions

The following are some of the GNU/Linux distributions that support PowerPC:

• Debian
• Hundreds to version 4 Beta, a stable version for PowerPC has not yet emerged.
• CRUX
• Debian GNU/Linux
• Fedora from Fedora 8.
• Gentoo
• mkLinux, all versions
• openSUSE
• Slackintosh, Slackware-based distribution, latest version 12.1.
• Ubuntu and Kubuntu are officially available for this architecture until version 6.10 and unofficially from 7.04 onwards.
• Yellow Dog Linux (last update in 2012)

Current situation

On June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs confirmed the rumor that had been going around in those days; Apple was switching to Intel. Jobs' excuse was that PowerPC processors suffer from serious temperature problems, and so on. To the astonishment of everyone at WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs pointed out that Mac OS X had a "Double secret life" since it had been compiled for both x86 and PowerPC since its first version.

But this does not mean that the PowerPC architecture is going to be forgotten, since IBM's purpose is to continue producing them despite not having its largest client, Apple^{[citation required]}. The most important game consoles of the moment, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii, were equipped with a PowerPC architecture processor, although they differed in terms of power and composition. Furthermore, many supercomputers are based on PPC microprocessors like the first two machines in Spain: Magerit and MareNostrum.

The PowerPC architecture is also widely used in SoC (System On Chip) systems and embedded systems in general, such as the Mars Rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. Freescale and AMCC are the main manufacturers of this type of CPUs. Some embedded system CPUs have also been used (or are being used) in low power computer motherboards (eg EFIKA 5K2, Sam440ep, AmigaOne X5000).

Computers with PowerPC CPU