IBM tries ARM-style Licensing of PPC Processors

[ElPolloDiabl]

Licensing will not help Amiga. Unless someone is going to do a large batch of G4's and G5's (Will it now be possible?) there won't be any advantage.

We don't need people throwing more spanners in the works, I say go ARM and stick with that course.

[OlafS3]

Licensing will not help Amiga. Unless someone is going to do a large batch of G4's and G5's (Will it now be possible?) there won't be any advantage.

We don't need people throwing more spanners in the works, I say go ARM and stick with that course.

Why should someone create a big bunch of G4 and G5? For which customers? (Amiga-market is too small to be of any interest)

[vidarh]

Too little, too late to matter on a big enough scale.

Depends on your goals. The PPC market is still larger  than the x86 market in number of units shipped. Something like ~500 million PPC cpu's are shipped a year - comparable to MIPS.

Last I checked x86 was closer to 300 million units.

POWER/PPC is clearly still viable as an architecture. The question is if IBM licensing their high end designs can make it viable for market segments like cell phones, tablets or servers (desktops are "hopeless" as long as Windows is so entrenched) where it isn't really present.

(And if WDC's numbers are right, 6502 cores might outstrip x86 too...)

Of course ARM dwarfs all of them, with an estimated 3 billion cpu's likely to get shipped this year...

[OlafS3]

" The PPC market is still larger  than the x86 market in number of units shipped"

Really?

[psxphill]

" The PPC market is still larger than the x86 market in number of units shipped"
 
Really?

They did alright with the current games console generation as PPC was used by all three. Next year they will likely take a beating.

[OlafS3]

They did alright with the current games console generation as PPC was used by all three. Next year they will likely take a beating.

I "googled" a little. Most reports were older (about up to 2005). Newer reports are only about Xbox using X86 in future and similar (hardly good news). But for "Amiga-community" it does not change much. That "AmigaOS" or "MorphOS" using PPC become competitive again hardly anyone expects. If IBM really drops (to a wide scale) PPC development only would make clear again that PPC is a dead end, a small niche for some geeks at best. To get outside a change in architecture is needed (be it ARM or X86/X64). But most are happy with their exclusive hobby and the situation so finally it is not important.

[spirantho]

The PowerPC embedded market is still quite large, don't forget that  - and the x86 embedded market much less so. So I'm not surprised at all if PPC outsells x86 overall.

[OlafS3]

might be... I have not found numbers

the problem is "Amiga" (all variants) is designed as desktop and not for embedded market (AmigaOS/MorphOS would need desktop processors). So if at all someone invests money in PPC development it will be for embedded devices (where performance is less important). And if I would invest in embedded devices today I would invest in ARM propably. Processor development is risky and expensive and companies tend to invest in "security" and ARM today is the more secure bet.

[vidarh]

" The PPC market is still larger  than the x86 market in number of units shipped"

Really?

Last time I dug up numbers, the PPC market was estimated at ~500 million a year, comparable to MIPS (and far outstripped by ARM - ARM estimates 3 billion cores/year).  

X86 meanwhile were present in ~350-360 million desktops, servers and laptops last year, and embedded usage of x86 is almost a rounding error, so more than ~400 million total is unlikely.

(As an amusing aside, Western Design Centre also still claims "hundreds of millions" of 6502 instruction set cores per year, though a substantial portion of that is likely embedded in custom ASICs)

In terms of *revenue*, though, Intel makes about *7 times* more from their CPUs that Qualcomm (at second place) makes from their CPUs, as a result of a ridiculously higher average revenue per unit.

[vidarh]

They did alright with the current games console generation as PPC was used by all three. Next year they will likely take a beating.

The combined lifetime sales of the current generation games consoles only adds up to 4-5 months worth of PPC sales - losing them won't make much of a dent in terms of units. It will hurt worse in revenue.

[Blizz1220]

Maybe it's just me but the keyword here is not IBM or PowerPC it's NVidia and possibly Google ...

You don't need latest GPU integrated on a PPC SoC to use it in routers ...

Does anyone know how compatible new Power8 is to say G5 ?

[psxphill]

The combined lifetime sales of the current generation games consoles only adds up to 4-5 months worth of PPC sales - losing them won't make much of a dent in terms of units. It will hurt worse in revenue.

I'd like to see evidence of that, my google searches haven't shown that anyone is shipping more powerpc's than sony/Microsoft/Nintendo are right now.
Freescale, LSI and AppliedMicro are moving to Arm, because PowerPC isn't selling. IBM are still using them in their servers, but those are low number of sales with a high revenue

[WolfToTheMoon]

Last time I dug up numbers, the PPC market was estimated at ~500 million a year, comparable to MIPS (and far outstripped by ARM - ARM estimates 3 billion cores/year).  

X86 meanwhile were present in ~350-360 million desktops, servers and laptops last year, and embedded usage of x86 is almost a rounding error, so more than ~400 million total is unlikely.

(As an amusing aside, Western Design Centre also still claims "hundreds of millions" of 6502 instruction set cores per year, though a substantial portion of that is likely embedded in custom ASICs)

In terms of *revenue*, though, Intel makes about *7 times* more from their CPUs that Qualcomm (at second place) makes from their CPUs, as a result of a ridiculously higher average revenue per unit.

x86 outsells PowerPC even in the embedded market. Look it up, if you don't believe me. And the trend now is strongly towards x86 and ARM.

[bloodline]

I'd like to see evidence of that, my google searches haven't shown that anyone is shipping more powerpc's than sony/Microsoft/Nintendo are right now.
Freescale, LSI and AppliedMicro are moving to Arm, because PowerPC isn't selling.

Indeed Freescale are currently producing some great ARM M4 chips!

[_ThEcRoW]

@vidarh

Keep in mind, that the ppc cpus in washingmachines, microwaves o r printers, as well as routers don't count as if it were computers.

[freqmax]

Is PPC more effiient than ARM etc when counting instructions/herts and instructions/watt?