IBM tries ARM-style Licensing of PPC Processors

[minator]

AFAIK this isn't about PPC.  PPCs have been licensable for years.

This is about POWER processors.  These have never been openly licensed.
These are high end server processors, not embedded chips (though they probably are used in some very specialist IBM embedded stuff).

IBM has been pushing POWER prices down recently to compete with Intel.
Intel are going to get a lot of competition soon from ARM so Intel will want to push upwards into high end systems.  This is where IBM live and they're fighting back.

[minator]

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

That would be quite a disappointment given that there were nearly 2.4 billion shipped in the last quarter alone!

[Blizz1220]

AFAIK this isn't about PPC.  PPCs have been licensable for years.

This is about POWER processors.  These have never been openly licensed.
These are high end server processors, not embedded chips (though they probably are used in some very specialist IBM embedded stuff).

IBM has been pushing POWER prices down recently to compete with Intel.
Intel are going to get a lot of competition soon from ARM so Intel will want to push upwards into high end systems.  This is where IBM live and they're fighting back.

So the compatibility to PowerPC doesn't exist at all ?

And how is backwards compatibility to Power6,5 and 4 generation ?

The thing that gets me confused about this is that I remember that an one time Power merged with PowerPC (can't really say I understood what that means) and the thing that really makes no sense to me is how is PPC Linux compatible to these Power workstations if they are completely different things ?

[AJCopland]

So the compatibility to PowerPC doesn't exist at all ?

No they're compatible, POWER is generally a superset of PowerPC nowadays. This wasn't always quite the case but it has been for at least the last few iterations.

Overall I think this could be interesting, I don't think it'll drive POWER based CPUs into your desktop PC or smartphone on any real scale though. More competition across the top end for servers etc might shake things up a bit.

Everyone wondering about the design losses from the consoles needs to remember that they can just switch back again for the next generation too. Doesn't really bother or affect developers all that much, we adapt

[psxphill]

So the compatibility to PowerPC doesn't exist at all ?

PowerPC has big compatibility problems itself, so POWER is as pretty much compatible as they get.
 
You wouldn't be using the same Linux distro on a PowerPC and POWER processor anyway.

[Blizz1220]

No they're compatible, POWER is generally a superset of PowerPC nowadays. This wasn't always quite the case but it has been for at least the last few iterations.

Hmmmm ... So G5 and PA Semis are Power4 generation (or Power5?) ...

So if somebody was to make a PowerPC CPU out of coming Power8 how
compatible would that be to Mac G5 processor ?

Are we talking difference between 68k and Coldfire or the difference between 68k and PPC or even worst ?  :huh:

[Blizz1220]

You wouldn't be using the same Linux distro on a PowerPC and POWER processor anyway.

Now I get it ...

[psxphill]

Hmmmm ... So G5 and PA Semis are Power4 generation (or Power5?) ...
 
So if somebody was to make a PowerPC CPU out of coming Power8 how
compatible would that be to Mac G5 processor ?
 
Are we talking difference between 68k and Coldfire or the difference between 68k and PPC or even worst ? :huh:

The G5 is based on POWER4 with Altivec.
The PA6T is Power ISA v.2.04, POWER6 is Power ISA v.2.03.
 
 
It's more like the difference between a Cyrix 486 and a Pentium 2.

[James2002]

There more to story. I found out that IBM sold their repair part that my cousin worked for. I believe they just trying to survive.

[Blizz1220]

The G5 is based on POWER4 with Altivec.
The PA6T is Power ISA v.2.04, POWER6 is Power ISA v.2.03.
 
 
It's more like the difference between a Cyrix 486 and a Pentium 2.

PA6T is a G5 derivative and G5 is Power4 derivative that much I do know ...

PA6T was made to be used by Apple in laptops because G5 had cooling problems but they are otherwise almost identical ...

[yssing]

Who cares if Arm outsells PowerPC and any other.

The main thing here, has to be the alliance between IBM, nVidia and Google

[Blizz1220]

There more to story. I found out that IBM sold their repair part that my cousin worked for. I believe they just trying to survive.

Just noticed you post ...

Well no wonder they're going down after all the mistakes they made , I still can't figure out what are they doing with Power now except servers :insane:

They invented x86 and then they got cloned by far east companies and then they invented PPC and they didn't even try to make it cheaper by third party manufacturing and they lost that chance too ...

If NVidia has something to do with Power8 it means consoles (game market) , if Google wants something to do with this it means Tablets and Netbooks (Internet market) ...

Question I'm dying to get an answer to by somebody who knows a lot more of CPUs than me is will Power8 generation allow for easy migration of Morphos (and AOS 4 ) to the newly created gizmos (assuming that IBM makes them , I though they were doing Cell now) such as Power8 based game consoles , laptops and other hypothetical things ?

[freqmax]

Is PPC line processors more power efficient than ARM?

[nicholas]

@Blizz

IBM did not invent x86, Intel did.

Google and nvidia are interested in Power architecture for servers.

[freqmax]

It may be a good thing that IBM and other giants screwed up their own business or we may have been stuck with yet another grey de facto monopoly.

[vidarh]

That would be quite a disappointment given that there were nearly 2.4 billion shipped in the last quarter alone!

2.4 billion *cores* quite possibly. Because just to make this extra confusing, ARM receives royalty per core and so the number of cores often gets thrown around rather than number of CPUs. Last year they were reported to have received royalties for something like 7.9 billion cores total for the year, shipped in the region of 2.5-3 billion CPUs.