PowerPC 600
Encyclopedia
The PowerPC 600 family was the first family of PowerPC
processors
built. They were designed at the Somerset facility in Austin, Texas
, jointly funded and staffed by engineers from IBM
and Motorola
as a part of the AIM alliance
. Somerset was opened in 1992 and its goal was to make the first PowerPC processor and then keep designing general purpose PowerPC processors for personal computer
s. The first incarnation became the PowerPC 601 in 1993, and the second generation soon followed with the PowerPC 603, PowerPC 604 and the 64-bit PowerPC 620.
The PowerPC 601 was the first generation of microprocessors to support the basic 32-bit
PowerPC
instruction set
. The design effort started in earnest in mid-1991 and the first prototype chips were available in October 1992. The first 601 processors were introduced in an IBM RS/6000
workstation
in October 1993 (alongside its more powerful multichip cousin IBM
POWER2
line of processors) and the first Apple Power Macintosh
es on March 14, 1994. The 601 was the first advanced single-chip implementation of the POWER/PowerPC architecture designed on a crash schedule to establish PowerPC in the marketplace and cement the AIM alliance. In order to achieve an extremely aggressive schedule while including substantially new function (such as substantial performance enhancements, new instructions and importantly POWER/PowerPC's first symmetric multiprocessing
(SMP) implementation) the design leveraged a number of key technologies and project management strategies. The 601 team leveraged much of the basic structure and portions of the IBM RISC Single Chip
(RSC) processor, but also included support for the vast majority of the new PowerPC instructions not in the POWER
instruction set. While nearly every portion of the RSC design was modified, and many design blocks were substantially modified or completely redesigned given the completely different unified I/O
bus structure and SMP/memory coherency support. New PowerPC changes, leveraging the basic RSC structure was very beneficial to reducing the uncertainty in chip area/floorplanning and timing analysis/tuning. Worth noting is that the 601 not only implemented substantial new key functions such as SMP, but it also acted as a bridge between the POWER and the future PowerPC processors to assist IBM and software developers in their transitions to PowerPC. From start of design to tape-out
of the first 601 prototype was just 12 months in order to push hard to establish PowerPC on the market early.
bus architecture to the 601 for the benefit of the alliance and its customers, Motorola management provided not only the 88110 bus architecture specifications, but also a handful of 88110 bus-literate designers to help with the 60x bus logic implementation and verification. Given the Apple system design team was familiar with the I/O bus structure from Motorola's 88110 and this I/O bus implementation was well defined and documented, the 601 team adopted the bus technology to improve time to market. The bus was renamed the 60x bus once implemented on the 601. These Motorola (and a small number of Apple designers) joined over 120 IBM designers in creating the 601.
Using the 88110 bus as the basis for the 60x bus helped schedules in a number of ways. It helped the Apple Power Macintosh team by reducing the amount of redesign of their support ASIC
s and it reduced the amount of time required for the processor designers and architects to propose, document, negotiate, and close a new bus interface (successfully avoiding the "Bus Wars" expected by the 601 management team if the 88110 bus or the previous RSC buses hadn't been adopted).
Worthy to note is that accepting the 88110 bus for the benefit of Apple's efforts and the alliance was at the expense of the first IBM RS/6000 system design team's efforts who had their support ASICs already implemented around the RSC's totally different bus structure.
This 60x bus later became a fairly long lived basic interface for the many variants of the 601, 603, 604, G3
, G4
and Motorola/Freescale PowerQUICC
processors.
and symmetric multiprocessing
. It had four functional units, including a floating point unit
, an integer unit
, a branch unit and a sequencer unit. The processor also included a memory management unit
. The integer pipeline
was four stages long, the branch pipeline two stages long, the memory pipeline five stages long, and the floating-point pipeline six stages long.
First launched in IBM systems in the fall of 1993, it was marketed by IBM as the PPC601 and by Motorola as the MPC601. It operated at speeds ranging from 50 to 80 MHz. It was fabricated using a 0.6 µm CMOS
process with four levels of aluminum interconnect. The die was 121 mm² large and contained 2.8 million transistors. The 601 has a 32 kB unified L1 cache
, a capacity that was considered large at the time for an on-chip cache. Thanks partly to the large cache it was considered a high performance processor in its segment, outperforming the competing Intel Pentium. The PowerPC 601 was used in the first Power Macintosh
computers from Apple, and in a variety of RS/6000
workstations and SMP servers from IBM and Groupe Bull
.
IBM was the sole manufacturer of the 601 and 601+ microprocessors in its Burlington, Vermont
and East Fishkill, New York
production facilities. The 601 used the IBM CMOS-4s process and the 601+ used the IBM CMOS-5x process. An extremely small number of these 601 and 601+ processors were relabeled with Motorola logos and part numbers and distributed through Motorola. These facts are somewhat obscured given there are various pictures of the "Motorola MPC601", particularly one specific case of masterful Motorola marketing where the 601 was named one of Time Magazine
s 1994 "Products of the Year" with a Motorola marking.
An updated version, the PowerPC 601v or PowerPC 601+, operating at 90 to 120 MHz was introduced in 1994. It was fabricated in a newer 0.5 µm CMOS process with four levels of interconnect, resulting in a die measuring 74 mm². The 601+ design was remapped from CMOS-4s to CMOS-5x by an IBM-only team. To avoid time-to-market delays from design tool changes and commonizing fab groundrules, both the 601 and 601+ were designed with IBM EDA tools
on IBM systems and were fabricated in IBM-only facilities.
The PowerPC 603 was the first processor implementing the complete 32-bit PowerPC Architecture
as specified. It was designed to be a low cost, low end processor for portable and embedded
use. One of the main features was power saving functions (doze, nap and sleep mode) that could dramatically reduce power requirements, drawing only 2 mW in sleep mode. The 603 has a four-stage pipeline and five execution units: integer unit, floating point unit, branch prediction unit, load/store unit and a system registry unit. It has separate 8 KB L1 caches for instructions and data and a 32/64 bit 60x memory bus, reaching up to 75 MHz. The 603 core did not have hardware support for SMP
.
The PowerPC 603 had 1.6 million transistors and was fabricated by IBM and Motorola in a 0.5 µm CMOS process with four levels of interconnect. The die was 85 mm² large drawing 3 W at 80 MHz. The 603 architecture is the direct ancestor to the PowerPC 750 architecture, marketed by Apple as the PowerPC "G3".
It was used in low end and portable Macintosh
models but also found widespread use in different embedded appliances. The processor got a somewhat bad reputation in Apple's computers since the 68k emulation software
didn't fit into the relatively small caches causing some degraded performance in older software. This poor performance made it unacceptable as a laptop CPU and was not used in such, delaying the Apple PowerBook 5300
and PowerBook Duo 2300
introduction.
The performance issues of the 603 were addressed in the PowerPC 603e. The L1 cache was enlarged and enhanced to 16 kB four-way set-associative data and instruction caches. The clock speed of the processors was doubled too, reaching 200 MHz. Shrinking the fabrication process to 0.35 µm allowed for speeds of up to 300 MHz. This part is sometimes called PowerPC 603ev. The 603e and 603ev have 2.6 million transistors each and are 98 mm² and 78 mm² large respectively. The 603ev draws a maximum of 6 W at 300 MHz.
The PowerPC 603e was the first mainstream desktop processor to reach 300 MHz. The 603e was also used in accelerator cards from Phase5
for the Amiga
line of computers, with CPUs ranging in speeds from 160 to 240 MHz. The PowerPC 603e is still sold today by IBM and Freescale, and others like Atmel
and Honeywell
who makes the radiation hardened variant RHPPC
. The PowerPC 603e was also the heart of the BeBox
from Be Inc.
The BeBox is notable since it is a multiprocessing
system, something the 603 wasn't designed for. IBM also used PowerPC 603e processors in the ThinkPad 800 series
laptop computers. The 603e processors also power all 66 satellites
in the Iridium satellite phone fleet. The satellites each contain seven Motorola/Freescale PowerPC 603e processors running at roughly 200 MHz each.
processors bear the designation MPC82xx, and come in a variety of configurations reaching 450 MHz.
processors bear the designation MPC83xx, and come in a variety of configurations reaching speeds up to 667 MHz. The e300 is also the core of the MPC5200B SoC processor that is used in the small EFIKA
computer.
The PowerPC 604 was introduced in December 1994 alongside the 603 and was designed as a high-performance chip for workstation
s and entry-level servers and as such had support for symmetric multiprocessing
in hardware. The 604 was used extensively in Apple's high-end systems and was also used in Macintosh clone
s, IBM's low-end RS/6000
servers and workstations, Amiga
accelerator boards, and as an embedded CPU for telecom applications.
The 604 is a superscalar
processor capable of issuing four instructions simultaneously. The 604 has a six stage pipeline and six execution units that can work in parallel, finishing up to six instructions every cycle. Two simple and one complex integer units
, one floating point unit
, one branch processing unit managing out-of-order execution
and one load/store unit. It has separate 16 KB data and instruction L1 caches. The external interface is a 32- or 64-bit 60x bus that operates at clock rates up to 50 MHz.
The PowerPC 604 contains 3.6 million transistors and was fabricated by IBM and Motorola with a 0.5 µm CMOS process with four levels of interconnect. The die measured 12.4 mm by 15.8 mm (196 mm²) and drew 14-17 W at 133 MHz. It operated at speeds between 100 and 180 MHz.
The PowerPC 604e was introduced in July 1996 and added a condition register unit and separate 32 KB data and instruction L1 caches among other changes to its memory subsystem and branch prediction unit, resulting in a 25% performance increase compared to its predecessor. It had 5.1 million transistors and was manufactured by IBM and Motorola on a 0.35 µm CMOS process with five levels of interconnect. The die was 148 mm² or 96 mm² large, manufactured by Motorola and IBM respectively, drawing 16-18 W at 233 MHz. It operated at speeds between 166 and 233 MHz and supported a memory bus up to 66 MHz.
While Apple dropped the 604ev in 1998 in favor for the PowerPC 750, IBM kept using it in entry-level models of its RS/6000
computers for several years.
PowerPC architecture. It was a second generation PowerPC alongside the 603 and 604, but geared towards the high-end workstation and server market. It was powerful on paper and was initially supposed to be launched alongside its brethren but it was delayed until 1997. When it did arrive, the performance was comparably poor and the considerably cheaper 604e surpassed it. The 620 was therefore never produced in large quantities and found very little use. The sole user of PowerPC 620 was Groupe Bull
in its Escala UNIX
machines, but they didn't deliver any large numbers. IBM, which intended to use it in workstations and servers, decided to wait for the even more powerful RS64 and POWER3
64-bit processors instead.
The 620 was produced by Motorola in a 0.5 µm process. It had 6.9 million transistors and the die had an area of 311 mm². It operated at clock rates between 120 and 150 MHz, and drew 30 W at 133 MHz. A later model was built using a 0.35 µm process, enabling it to reach 200 MHz.
The 620 was similar to the 604. It has a five-stage pipeline, same support for symmetric multiprocessing and the same number of execution units; a load/store unit, a branch unit, an FPU, and three integer units. With larger 32 KB instruction and data caches, support for a L2 cache that may have a capacity of 128 MB
, and more powerful branch and load/store units that had more buffers, the 620 was very powerful. The branch history table was also larger and could dispatch more instructions so that the processor can handle out-of-order execution more efficiently than the 604. The floating point unit was also enhanced compared to the 604. With a faster fetch cycle and support for several key instruction in hardware (like sqrt) made it, combined with faster and wider data buses, more efficient than the FPU in the 604.
environments. It was also used in POWER3, RS64 and 601, as well as 604-based RS/6000 systems (with a bridge chip). The bus later evolved into the GX bus of the POWER4
, and later GX+ and GX++ in POWER5
and POWER6
respectively. The GX bus is also used in IBM's z10
and z196
System z mainframes.
3DO
developed the M2 game console
that used two PowerPC 602s, but it was never marketed.
Quantum Effect Devices
(QED) announced a PowerPC 603-compatible processor named "PowerPC 603q" at the Microprocessor Forum. Despite its name, it did not have anything in common with any other 603. It was a from the ground up implementation of the 32-bit PowerPC architecture targeted at the high-end embedded market developed over two years. As such, it was small, simple, energy efficient, but powerful; equaling the more expensive 603e while drawing less power. It had an in-order, five-stage pipeline with a single integer unit, a double precision
floating point unit (FPU) and separate 16 kB instruction and 8 kB data caches. While the integer unit was a brand new design, the FPU was derived from the R4600
to save time. It was 69 mm² small using a 0.5 µm fabrication process and drew just 1.2 W at 120 MHz.
The 603q was designed for Motorola, but they withdrew from the contract before the 603q went into full production. As a result, the 603q was canceled as QED could not continue to market the processor since they lacked a PowerPC license of their own.
's x704
processor that was designed to outgun the 604 by a wide margin. There are hardly any sources confirming any of this though and it might be pure speculation, or a reference to a completely different processor.
", and Motorola even bumped it to the fourth generation PowerPC even though the architectural differences between "G3" and "G4" was small. There are hardly any sources confirming any of this though and it might be pure speculation, or a reference to a completely different processor.
and a special development version of OS/2
.
It was 330 mm² large and manufactured by IBM on a 0.35 µm process. It was pin compatible with Intel's Pentium
processors and comparable in speed. The processor was only produced in prototype examples and the program was killed in part by the fact that Microsoft
would probably never give support for the processor. Engineers working on the PowerPC 615 would later find their way to Transmeta
where they worked on the Crusoe
processor.
and PowerPC
instruction sets. It was later renamed "POWER3
", probably to distinguish it from the more consumer oriented "PowerPC" processors used by Apple
.
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
processors
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
built. They were designed at the Somerset facility in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, jointly funded and staffed by engineers from IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
and Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
as a part of the AIM alliance
AIM alliance
The AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
. Somerset was opened in 1992 and its goal was to make the first PowerPC processor and then keep designing general purpose PowerPC processors for personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s. The first incarnation became the PowerPC 601 in 1993, and the second generation soon followed with the PowerPC 603, PowerPC 604 and the 64-bit PowerPC 620.
Nuclear family
| CPU | Pipeline stages | Misc |
|---|---|---|
| PowerPC 603 | 4 | 5 execution units, branch prediction. No SMP. |
| PowerPC 603q | 5 | In-order |
| PowerPC 604 | 6 | Superscalar, out-of-order execution, 6 execution units. SMP support. |
| PowerPC 620 | 5 | Out-of-order execution- SMP support. |
PowerPC 601
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
instruction set
Instruction set
An instruction set, or instruction set architecture , is the part of the computer architecture related to programming, including the native data types, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external I/O...
. The design effort started in earnest in mid-1991 and the first prototype chips were available in October 1992. The first 601 processors were introduced in an IBM RS/6000
RS/6000
RISC System/6000, or RS/6000 for short, is a family of RISC and UNIX based servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT computer platform in February 1990 and was the first computer line to see the use of IBM's POWER and PowerPC based...
workstation
Workstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
in October 1993 (alongside its more powerful multichip cousin IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
POWER2
POWER2
The POWER2, originally named RIOS2, is a processor designed by IBM that implemented the POWER instruction set architecture. The POWER2 was the successor of the POWER1, debuting in September 1993 within IBM's RS/6000 systems. When introduced, the POWER2 was the fastest microprocessor, surpassing the...
line of processors) and the first Apple Power Macintosh
Power Macintosh
Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, was a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 until August 2006. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100,...
es on March 14, 1994. The 601 was the first advanced single-chip implementation of the POWER/PowerPC architecture designed on a crash schedule to establish PowerPC in the marketplace and cement the AIM alliance. In order to achieve an extremely aggressive schedule while including substantially new function (such as substantial performance enhancements, new instructions and importantly POWER/PowerPC's first symmetric multiprocessing
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
(SMP) implementation) the design leveraged a number of key technologies and project management strategies. The 601 team leveraged much of the basic structure and portions of the IBM RISC Single Chip
RISC Single Chip
The RISC Single Chip, or RSC, is a single-chip microprocessor developed and fabricated by International Business Machines . The RSC was a feature-reduced single-chip implementation of the POWER1, a multi-chip central processing unit which implemented the POWER instruction set architecture...
(RSC) processor, but also included support for the vast majority of the new PowerPC instructions not in the POWER
IBM POWER
POWER is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by IBM. The name is an acronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC....
instruction set. While nearly every portion of the RSC design was modified, and many design blocks were substantially modified or completely redesigned given the completely different unified I/O
I/O
I/O may refer to:* Input/output, a system of communication for information processing systems* Input-output model, an economic model of flow prediction between sectors...
bus structure and SMP/memory coherency support. New PowerPC changes, leveraging the basic RSC structure was very beneficial to reducing the uncertainty in chip area/floorplanning and timing analysis/tuning. Worth noting is that the 601 not only implemented substantial new key functions such as SMP, but it also acted as a bridge between the POWER and the future PowerPC processors to assist IBM and software developers in their transitions to PowerPC. From start of design to tape-out
Tape-out
In electronics design, tape-out or tapeout is the final result of the design cycle for integrated circuits or printed circuit boards, the point at which the artwork for the photomask of a circuit is sent for manufacture....
of the first 601 prototype was just 12 months in order to push hard to establish PowerPC on the market early.
60x bus
In order to help the effort to rapidly incorporate the 8811088110
The MC88110 is a microprocessor developed by Motorola that implemented the 88000 instruction set architecture . The MC88110 was a second-generation implementation of the 88000 ISA, succeeding the MC88100...
bus architecture to the 601 for the benefit of the alliance and its customers, Motorola management provided not only the 88110 bus architecture specifications, but also a handful of 88110 bus-literate designers to help with the 60x bus logic implementation and verification. Given the Apple system design team was familiar with the I/O bus structure from Motorola's 88110 and this I/O bus implementation was well defined and documented, the 601 team adopted the bus technology to improve time to market. The bus was renamed the 60x bus once implemented on the 601. These Motorola (and a small number of Apple designers) joined over 120 IBM designers in creating the 601.
Using the 88110 bus as the basis for the 60x bus helped schedules in a number of ways. It helped the Apple Power Macintosh team by reducing the amount of redesign of their support ASIC
Application-specific integrated circuit
An application-specific integrated circuit is an integrated circuit customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. For example, a chip designed solely to run a cell phone is an ASIC...
s and it reduced the amount of time required for the processor designers and architects to propose, document, negotiate, and close a new bus interface (successfully avoiding the "Bus Wars" expected by the 601 management team if the 88110 bus or the previous RSC buses hadn't been adopted).
Worthy to note is that accepting the 88110 bus for the benefit of Apple's efforts and the alliance was at the expense of the first IBM RS/6000 system design team's efforts who had their support ASICs already implemented around the RSC's totally different bus structure.
This 60x bus later became a fairly long lived basic interface for the many variants of the 601, 603, 604, G3
PowerPC G3
The PowerPC 7xx is a family of third generation 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola . This family is called the PowerPC G3 by its well-known customer Apple Computer...
, G4
PowerPC G4
PowerPC G4 is a designation used by Apple Computer to describe a fourth generation of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors. Apple has applied this name to various processor models from Freescale, a former part of Motorola....
and Motorola/Freescale PowerQUICC
PowerQUICC
PowerQUICC is the name for several Power Architecture based microcontrollers from Freescale Semiconductor. They are built around one or more PowerPC cores and the QUICC Engine which is a separate RISC core specialized in such tasks such as I/O, communications, ATM, security acceleration, networking...
processors.
Design
The chip was designed to suit a wide variety applications and had support for external L2 cacheCPU cache
A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access memory. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the data from the most frequently used main memory locations...
and symmetric multiprocessing
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
. It had four functional units, including a floating point unit
Floating point unit
A floating-point unit is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root...
, an integer unit
Arithmetic logic unit
In computing, an arithmetic logic unit is a digital circuit that performs arithmetic and logical operations.The ALU is a fundamental building block of the central processing unit of a computer, and even the simplest microprocessors contain one for purposes such as maintaining timers...
, a branch unit and a sequencer unit. The processor also included a memory management unit
Memory management unit
A memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to memory requested by the CPU...
. The integer pipeline
Instruction pipeline
An instruction pipeline is a technique used in the design of computers and other digital electronic devices to increase their instruction throughput ....
was four stages long, the branch pipeline two stages long, the memory pipeline five stages long, and the floating-point pipeline six stages long.
First launched in IBM systems in the fall of 1993, it was marketed by IBM as the PPC601 and by Motorola as the MPC601. It operated at speeds ranging from 50 to 80 MHz. It was fabricated using a 0.6 µm CMOS
CMOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM, and other digital logic circuits...
process with four levels of aluminum interconnect. The die was 121 mm² large and contained 2.8 million transistors. The 601 has a 32 kB unified L1 cache
CPU cache
A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access memory. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the data from the most frequently used main memory locations...
, a capacity that was considered large at the time for an on-chip cache. Thanks partly to the large cache it was considered a high performance processor in its segment, outperforming the competing Intel Pentium. The PowerPC 601 was used in the first Power Macintosh
Power Macintosh
Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, was a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 until August 2006. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100,...
computers from Apple, and in a variety of RS/6000
RS/6000
RISC System/6000, or RS/6000 for short, is a family of RISC and UNIX based servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT computer platform in February 1990 and was the first computer line to see the use of IBM's POWER and PowerPC based...
workstations and SMP servers from IBM and Groupe Bull
Groupe Bull
-External links:* * — Friends, co-workers and former employees of Bull and Honeywell* *...
.
IBM was the sole manufacturer of the 601 and 601+ microprocessors in its Burlington, Vermont
Burlington, Vermont
Burlington is the largest city in the U.S. state of Vermont and the shire town of Chittenden County. Burlington lies south of the U.S.-Canadian border and some south of Montreal....
and East Fishkill, New York
East Fishkill, New York
East Fishkill is a town on the southern border of Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 25,589 at the 2000 census. The town name is derived from its formation from Fishkill, NY....
production facilities. The 601 used the IBM CMOS-4s process and the 601+ used the IBM CMOS-5x process. An extremely small number of these 601 and 601+ processors were relabeled with Motorola logos and part numbers and distributed through Motorola. These facts are somewhat obscured given there are various pictures of the "Motorola MPC601", particularly one specific case of masterful Motorola marketing where the 601 was named one of Time Magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
s 1994 "Products of the Year" with a Motorola marking.
PowerPC 601v
Electronic design automation
Electronic design automation is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as printed circuit boards and integrated circuits...
on IBM systems and were fabricated in IBM-only facilities.
- Allen, M.; Becker, M. (February 1993). "Multiprocessing Aspects of the PowerPC 601 Microprocessor". Proceedings of Compcon. pp. 117–126.
- Becker, Michael K. et al. (September 1993). "The PowerPC 601 Microprocessor". IEEE Micro. pp. 54–68.
- Moore, C.R. (February 1993). "The PowerPC 601 Microprocessor". Proceedings of Compcon. pp. 109–116.
- PowerPC 601 Whitepaper
- Ars Technica article
PowerPC 603
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
as specified. It was designed to be a low cost, low end processor for portable and embedded
Embedded system
An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...
use. One of the main features was power saving functions (doze, nap and sleep mode) that could dramatically reduce power requirements, drawing only 2 mW in sleep mode. The 603 has a four-stage pipeline and five execution units: integer unit, floating point unit, branch prediction unit, load/store unit and a system registry unit. It has separate 8 KB L1 caches for instructions and data and a 32/64 bit 60x memory bus, reaching up to 75 MHz. The 603 core did not have hardware support for SMP
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
.
It was used in low end and portable Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
models but also found widespread use in different embedded appliances. The processor got a somewhat bad reputation in Apple's computers since the 68k emulation software
Mac 68K emulator
The Mac 68K emulator was a software emulator built into all versions of the Mac OS for PowerPC. This emulator permitted the running of applications and system code that were originally written for the 680x0 based Macintosh models. The emulator was completely seamless for users, and reasonably...
didn't fit into the relatively small caches causing some degraded performance in older software. This poor performance made it unacceptable as a laptop CPU and was not used in such, delaying the Apple PowerBook 5300
PowerBook 5300
The PowerBook 5300 series was the first generation of PowerBook laptops manufactured by Apple Computer to use the PowerPC processor. Released in August 1995, these PowerBooks were notable for being the first to feature hot-swappable expansion modules for a variety of different units such as ZIP...
and PowerBook Duo 2300
PowerBook Duo
The PowerBook Duo was a line of small subnotebooks manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1992 until 1997 as a more compact companion to the PowerBook line. Improving upon the PowerBook 100's portability , the Duo came in seven different models...
introduction.
PowerPC 603e and 603ev
The PowerPC 603e was the first mainstream desktop processor to reach 300 MHz. The 603e was also used in accelerator cards from Phase5
Phase5
Phase5 Digital Products was a computer hardware manufacturer that made boards for the Amiga computer. Their best known products were accelerator boards which replaced the CPU with a faster model...
for the Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
line of computers, with CPUs ranging in speeds from 160 to 240 MHz. The PowerPC 603e is still sold today by IBM and Freescale, and others like Atmel
Atmel
Atmel Corporation is a manufacturer of semiconductors, founded in 1984. Its focus is on system-level solutions built around flash microcontrollers...
and Honeywell
Honeywell
Honeywell International, Inc. is a major conglomerate company that produces a variety of consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments....
who makes the radiation hardened variant RHPPC
RHPPC
The RHPPC is a radiation hardened processor based on PowerPC 603e technology licensed from Motorola and manufactured by Honeywell. The RHPPC is equivalent to the commercial PowerPC 603e processor with the minor exceptions of the phase locked loop and the processor version register...
. The PowerPC 603e was also the heart of the BeBox
BeBox
The BeBox was a short-lived dual processor personal computer, offered by Be Inc. to run the company's own operating system, BeOS. Notable aspects of the system include its CPU configuration, I/O board with "GeekPort", and "Blinkenlights" on the front bezel....
from Be Inc.
Be Inc.
Be Incorporated was an American computer company founded in 1990, best known for the Be Operating System and BeBox personal computer. Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée with capital from Seymour Cray....
The BeBox is notable since it is a multiprocessing
Multiprocessing
Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor and/or the ability to allocate tasks between them...
system, something the 603 wasn't designed for. IBM also used PowerPC 603e processors in the ThinkPad 800 series
ThinkPad
ThinkPad is line of laptop computers originally sold by IBM but now produced by Lenovo. They are known for their boxy black design, which was modeled after a traditional Japanese lunchbox...
laptop computers. The 603e processors also power all 66 satellites
Iridium (satellite)
Iridium Communications Inc. is a company, based in McLean, VA, United States which operates the Iridium satellite constellation, a system of 66 active satellites used for worldwide voice and data communication from hand-held satellite phones and other transceiver units...
in the Iridium satellite phone fleet. The satellites each contain seven Motorola/Freescale PowerPC 603e processors running at roughly 200 MHz each.
G2
The PowerPC 603e core, renamed G2 by Freescale, is the basis for many embedded PowerQUICC II processors, and as such it keeps on being developed. Freescale's PowerQUICC II SoCSystem-on-a-chip
A system on a chip or system on chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chip substrate...
processors bear the designation MPC82xx, and come in a variety of configurations reaching 450 MHz.
e300
Freescale has enhanced the 603e core, calling it e300, in the PowerQUICC II Pro embedded processors. Larger 32/32 KB L1 caches and other performance enhancing measures were added. Freescale's PowerQUICC II Pro SoCSystem-on-a-chip
A system on a chip or system on chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chip substrate...
processors bear the designation MPC83xx, and come in a variety of configurations reaching speeds up to 667 MHz. The e300 is also the core of the MPC5200B SoC processor that is used in the small EFIKA
EFIKA
Efika are a line of mobile computing Power Architecture and ARM architecture based computers manufactured by Genesi.In Esperanto efika means "efficacious, effective, or efficient".-Efika 5200B:...
computer.
PowerPC 604
Workstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
s and entry-level servers and as such had support for symmetric multiprocessing
Symmetric multiprocessing
In computing, symmetric multiprocessing involves a multiprocessor computer hardware architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory and are controlled by a single OS instance. Most common multiprocessor systems today use an SMP architecture...
in hardware. The 604 was used extensively in Apple's high-end systems and was also used in Macintosh clone
Macintosh clone
A Macintosh clone is a personal computer made by a manufacturer other than Apple, using Macintosh ROMs and system software.-Background:...
s, IBM's low-end RS/6000
RS/6000
RISC System/6000, or RS/6000 for short, is a family of RISC and UNIX based servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT computer platform in February 1990 and was the first computer line to see the use of IBM's POWER and PowerPC based...
servers and workstations, Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
accelerator boards, and as an embedded CPU for telecom applications.
The 604 is a superscalar
Superscalar
A superscalar CPU architecture implements a form of parallelism called instruction level parallelism within a single processor. It therefore allows faster CPU throughput than would otherwise be possible at a given clock rate...
processor capable of issuing four instructions simultaneously. The 604 has a six stage pipeline and six execution units that can work in parallel, finishing up to six instructions every cycle. Two simple and one complex integer units
Arithmetic logic unit
In computing, an arithmetic logic unit is a digital circuit that performs arithmetic and logical operations.The ALU is a fundamental building block of the central processing unit of a computer, and even the simplest microprocessors contain one for purposes such as maintaining timers...
, one floating point unit
Floating point unit
A floating-point unit is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root...
, one branch processing unit managing out-of-order execution
Out-of-order execution
In computer engineering, out-of-order execution is a paradigm used in most high-performance microprocessors to make use of instruction cycles that would otherwise be wasted by a certain type of costly delay...
and one load/store unit. It has separate 16 KB data and instruction L1 caches. The external interface is a 32- or 64-bit 60x bus that operates at clock rates up to 50 MHz.
The PowerPC 604 contains 3.6 million transistors and was fabricated by IBM and Motorola with a 0.5 µm CMOS process with four levels of interconnect. The die measured 12.4 mm by 15.8 mm (196 mm²) and drew 14-17 W at 133 MHz. It operated at speeds between 100 and 180 MHz.
- PowerPC on Apple: An Architectural History, Part I/PowerPC 604
- Gwennap, Linley (18 April 1994). "PPC 604 Powers Past Pentium". Microprocessor Report, Volume 8, Number 5.
- Song, Peter S.; Denman, Marvin; Chang, Joe (October 1994). "The PowerPC 604 RISC Microprocessor". IEEE MicroIEEE MicroIEEE Micro is a broad-based practitioner-oriented magazine of the IEEE Computer Society targeting small system and semiconductor chip professionals, including electronic engineers, designers, architects, developers, process improvement experts, testers, quality engineers, and project managers...
.
PowerPC 604e
PowerPC 604ev "Mach5"
The PowerPC 604ev, 604r or "Mach 5" was introduced in August 1997 and was essentially a 604e fabricated by IBM and Motorola with a newer process, reaching higher speeds with a lower energy consumption. The die was 47 mm² small manufactured on a 0.25 µm CMOS process with five levels of interconnect, and drew 6 W at 250 MHz. It operated at speeds between 250 and 400 MHz and supported a memory bus up to 100 MHz.While Apple dropped the 604ev in 1998 in favor for the PowerPC 750, IBM kept using it in entry-level models of its RS/6000
RS/6000
RISC System/6000, or RS/6000 for short, is a family of RISC and UNIX based servers, workstations and supercomputers made by IBM in the 1990s. The RS/6000 family replaced the IBM RT computer platform in February 1990 and was the first computer line to see the use of IBM's POWER and PowerPC based...
computers for several years.
PowerPC 620
The PowerPC 620 was the first implementation of the entire 64-bit64-bit
64-bit is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s and in RISC-based workstations and servers since the early 1990s...
PowerPC architecture. It was a second generation PowerPC alongside the 603 and 604, but geared towards the high-end workstation and server market. It was powerful on paper and was initially supposed to be launched alongside its brethren but it was delayed until 1997. When it did arrive, the performance was comparably poor and the considerably cheaper 604e surpassed it. The 620 was therefore never produced in large quantities and found very little use. The sole user of PowerPC 620 was Groupe Bull
Groupe Bull
-External links:* * — Friends, co-workers and former employees of Bull and Honeywell* *...
in its Escala UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
machines, but they didn't deliver any large numbers. IBM, which intended to use it in workstations and servers, decided to wait for the even more powerful RS64 and POWER3
POWER3
The POWER3 is a microprocessor, designed and exclusively manufactured by IBM, that implemented the 64-bit version of the PowerPC instruction set architecture , including all of the optional instructions of the ISA such as the POWER2. It was introduced on 5 October 1998, debuting in the RS/6000 43P...
64-bit processors instead.
The 620 was produced by Motorola in a 0.5 µm process. It had 6.9 million transistors and the die had an area of 311 mm². It operated at clock rates between 120 and 150 MHz, and drew 30 W at 133 MHz. A later model was built using a 0.35 µm process, enabling it to reach 200 MHz.
The 620 was similar to the 604. It has a five-stage pipeline, same support for symmetric multiprocessing and the same number of execution units; a load/store unit, a branch unit, an FPU, and three integer units. With larger 32 KB instruction and data caches, support for a L2 cache that may have a capacity of 128 MB
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
, and more powerful branch and load/store units that had more buffers, the 620 was very powerful. The branch history table was also larger and could dispatch more instructions so that the processor can handle out-of-order execution more efficiently than the 604. The floating point unit was also enhanced compared to the 604. With a faster fetch cycle and support for several key instruction in hardware (like sqrt) made it, combined with faster and wider data buses, more efficient than the FPU in the 604.
6XX and GX buses
The system bus was a wider and faster 128-bit memory bus called the 6XX bus. It was designed to be a system bus for multiprocessor systems where processors, caches, memory and I/O was to be connected, assisted by a system control chip. It supports both 32- and 64-bit PowerPC processors, memory addresses larger than 32 bits, and NUMANon-Uniform Memory Access
Non-Uniform Memory Access is a computer memory design used in Multiprocessing, where the memory access time depends on the memory location relative to a processor...
environments. It was also used in POWER3, RS64 and 601, as well as 604-based RS/6000 systems (with a bridge chip). The bus later evolved into the GX bus of the POWER4
POWER4
The POWER4 is a microprocessor developed by International Business Machines that implemented the 64-bit PowerPC and PowerPC AS instruction set architectures. Released in 2001, the POWER4 succeeded the POWER3 and RS64 microprocessors, and was used in RS/6000 and AS/400 computers, ending a separate...
, and later GX+ and GX++ in POWER5
POWER5
The POWER5 is a microprocessor developed and fabricated by IBM. It is an improved version of the highly successful POWER4. The principal improvements are support for simultaneous multithreading and an on-die memory controller...
and POWER6
POWER6
The POWER6 is a microprocessor developed by IBM that implemented the Power ISA v.2.03. When it became available in systems in 2007, it succeeded the POWER5+ as IBM's flagship Power microprocessor...
respectively. The GX bus is also used in IBM's z10
IBM System z10
IBM System z10 is a line of IBM mainframes. The z10 Enterprise Class was announced on February 26, 2008. On October 21, 2008, IBM announced the z10 Business Class , a scaled down version of the z10 EC...
and z196
IBM zEnterprise System
IBM zEnterprise System is the latest line of IBM mainframes, introduced on July 22, 2010. It consists of four components, zEnterprise 196 , zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager...
System z mainframes.
- Article in BYTE
- Contribution to the history of Unix at Bull (Interesting reading concerning the use of PowerPC 620 at Bull. In French)
PowerPC 602
The PowerPC 602 was a stripped down version of PowerPC 603, specially made for game consoles by Motorola and IBM introduced in June 1995. It has smaller L1 caches (4 KB instruction and 4 KB data), a singe-precision floating-point unit and a scaled back branch prediction unit. It was offered at speeds ranging from 50 to 80 MHz, and drew 1.2 W at 66 MHz. It consisted of 1 million transistors and it was 50 mm² large manufactured in a 0.5 µm, CMOS process with four levels of interconnect.3DO
The 3DO Company
The 3DO Company , also known as 3DO , was a video game company...
developed the M2 game console
Panasonic M2
The Panasonic M2 was a video game console design developed by 3DO and then sold to Matsushita . Before it could be released, however, Matsushita cancelled the project in mid 1997, unwilling to compete against fellow Japanese electronics giant Sony's PlayStation due to the failure of the 3DO...
that used two PowerPC 602s, but it was never marketed.
PowerPC 603q
On October 21, 1996, the fabless semiconductor companyFabless semiconductor company
A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication or "fab" of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry...
Quantum Effect Devices
Quantum Effect Devices
Quantum Effect Devices was a company originally named Quantum Effect Design, incorporated in 1991. The three founders, Tom Riordan, Earl Killian and Ray Kunita, were senior managers at MIPS Computer Systems Inc....
(QED) announced a PowerPC 603-compatible processor named "PowerPC 603q" at the Microprocessor Forum. Despite its name, it did not have anything in common with any other 603. It was a from the ground up implementation of the 32-bit PowerPC architecture targeted at the high-end embedded market developed over two years. As such, it was small, simple, energy efficient, but powerful; equaling the more expensive 603e while drawing less power. It had an in-order, five-stage pipeline with a single integer unit, a double precision
Double precision
In computing, double precision is a computer number format that occupies two adjacent storage locations in computer memory. A double-precision number, sometimes simply called a double, may be defined to be an integer, fixed point, or floating point .Modern computers with 32-bit storage locations...
floating point unit (FPU) and separate 16 kB instruction and 8 kB data caches. While the integer unit was a brand new design, the FPU was derived from the R4600
R4600
The R4600, code-named "Orion", is a microprocessor developed by Quantum Effect Design that implemented the MIPS III instruction set architecture . As QED was a design firm that did not fabricate or sell their designs, the R4600 was first licensed to Integrated Device Technology , and later to...
to save time. It was 69 mm² small using a 0.5 µm fabrication process and drew just 1.2 W at 120 MHz.
The 603q was designed for Motorola, but they withdrew from the contract before the 603q went into full production. As a result, the 603q was canceled as QED could not continue to market the processor since they lacked a PowerPC license of their own.
- Quantum Effect Devices (21 October 1996). QED Announces PowerPC Microprocessor Technology Development In Addition To Existing MIPS Microprocessors. (Press release).
- Turley, Jim (18 November 1996). "QED’s PowerPC 603q Heads for Low Cost". Microprocessor Report, pp. 22–23.
PowerPC 613
"PowerPC 613" seems to be a name Motorola had given a third generation PowerPC. It supposedly was renamed "PowerPC 750" in response to Exponential TechnologyExponential Technology
Exponential Technology was a vendor of PowerPC microprocessors. The company was founded by George Taylor and Jim Blomgren in 1993. The company's plan was to use BiCMOS technology to produce very fast processors for the Apple Computer market. Logic used 3-level ECL circuits while RAM structures...
's x704
X704
The x704 is a microprocessor that implements the 32-bit version of the PowerPC instruction set architecture developed by Exponential Technology...
processor that was designed to outgun the 604 by a wide margin. There are hardly any sources confirming any of this though and it might be pure speculation, or a reference to a completely different processor.
PowerPC 614
Similar to PowerPC 613, the "PowerPC 614" might have been a name given by Motorola to a third generation PowerPC, and later renamed by the same reason as 613. It's been suggested that the part was renamed "PowerPC 7400PowerPC G4
PowerPC G4 is a designation used by Apple Computer to describe a fourth generation of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors. Apple has applied this name to various processor models from Freescale, a former part of Motorola....
", and Motorola even bumped it to the fourth generation PowerPC even though the architectural differences between "G3" and "G4" was small. There are hardly any sources confirming any of this though and it might be pure speculation, or a reference to a completely different processor.
PowerPC 615
The "PowerPC 615" is a little known PowerPC processor announced by IBM in 1994. Its main feature was to incorporate an x86 core on die, thus making the processor able to natively process both PowerPC and x86 instructions. An operating system running on PowerPC 615 could either chose to execute 32-bit or 64-bit PowerPC instructions, 32-bit x86 instructions or a mix of three. Mixing instructions would involve a context switch in the CPU with a small overhead. The only operating systems that supported the 615 were MinixMinix
MINIX is a Unix-like computer operating system based on a microkernel architecture created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel....
and a special development version of OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
.
It was 330 mm² large and manufactured by IBM on a 0.35 µm process. It was pin compatible with Intel's Pentium
Pentium
The original Pentium microprocessor was introduced on March 22, 1993. Its microarchitecture, deemed P5, was Intel's fifth-generation and first superscalar x86 microarchitecture. As a direct extension of the 80486 architecture, it included dual integer pipelines, a faster FPU, wider data bus,...
processors and comparable in speed. The processor was only produced in prototype examples and the program was killed in part by the fact that Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
would probably never give support for the processor. Engineers working on the PowerPC 615 would later find their way to Transmeta
Transmeta
Transmeta Corporation was a US-based corporation that licensed low power semiconductor intellectual property. Transmeta originally produced very long instruction word code morphing microprocessors, with a focus on reducing power consumption in electronic devices. It was founded in 1995 by Bob...
where they worked on the Crusoe
Transmeta Crusoe
The Crusoe is a family of x86-compatible microprocessors developed by Transmeta. Crusoe was notable for its method of achieving x86 compatibility. Instead of the instruction set architecture being implemented in hardware, or translated by specialized hardware, the Crusoe runs a software abstraction...
processor.
PowerPC 625
"PowerPC 625" was the early name for the Apache series 64-bit PowerPC processors, designed by IBM based on the "Amazon" PowerPC-AS instruction set. They were later renamed "RS64". The designation "PowerPC 625" was never used for the final processors.PowerPC 630
"PowerPC 630" was the early name for the high end 64-bit PowerPC processor, designed by IBM to unify the POWERIBM POWER
POWER is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by IBM. The name is an acronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC....
and PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
instruction sets. It was later renamed "POWER3
POWER3
The POWER3 is a microprocessor, designed and exclusively manufactured by IBM, that implemented the 64-bit version of the PowerPC instruction set architecture , including all of the optional instructions of the ISA such as the POWER2. It was introduced on 5 October 1998, debuting in the RS/6000 43P...
", probably to distinguish it from the more consumer oriented "PowerPC" processors used by Apple
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
.
PowerPC 641
"PowerPC 641", codename Habanero, is a defunct PowerPC project by IBM in the 1994-96 timeframe. It has been suggested that was the third generation PowerPC based on the 604 processor.http://zmoore.net/CRM%20Resume%20070904.pdfhttp://www.mackido.com/Hardware/G3.htmlSee also
- PowerPCPowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
- PowerPC G3PowerPC G3The PowerPC 7xx is a family of third generation 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola . This family is called the PowerPC G3 by its well-known customer Apple Computer...
- PowerPC G4PowerPC G4PowerPC G4 is a designation used by Apple Computer to describe a fourth generation of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors. Apple has applied this name to various processor models from Freescale, a former part of Motorola....
- PowerPC 970PowerPC 970The PowerPC 970, PowerPC 970FX, PowerPC 970GX, and PowerPC 970MP, are 64-bit Power Architecture processors from IBM introduced in 2002. When used in Apple Inc. machines, they were dubbed the PowerPC G5....
- PowerPC G3
- IBM POWERIBM POWERPOWER is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by IBM. The name is an acronym for Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC....
- Power ArchitecturePower ArchitecturePower Architecture is a broad term to describe similar RISC instruction sets for microprocessors developed and manufactured by such companies as IBM, Freescale, AMCC, Tundra and P.A. Semi...