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80-399: PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing , sometimes abbreviated as PPC ) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple – IBM – Motorola alliance, known as AIM . PowerPC, as an evolving instruction set, has been named Power ISA since 2006, while the old name lives on as

160-513: A Motorola 68040 or 68060 CPU in order to maintain backwards compatibility, as very few apps at the time could run natively on the PPC chips. However, the new machines never materialized, and Commodore subsequently declared bankruptcy. Over a decade later, AmigaOS 4 would be released, which would put the platform permanently on the architecture. OS4 is compatible with those first-generation accelerators, as well as several custom motherboards created for

240-504: A business alliance . Kuehler called Apple President Michael Spindler , who bought into the approach for a design that could challenge the Wintel -based PC. Apple CEO John Sculley was even more enthusiastic. On July 3, 1991, Apple and IBM signed a non-contractual letter of intent , proposing an alliance and outlining its long-term strategic technology goals. Its main goal was creating a single unifying open-standard computing platform for

320-399: A trademark for some implementations of Power Architecture –based processors. Originally intended for personal computers , the architecture is well known for being used by Apple's desktop and laptop lines from 1994 until 2006, and in several videogame consoles including Microsoft's Xbox 360 , Sony's PlayStation 3 , and Nintendo's GameCube , Wii , and Wii U . PowerPC was also used for

400-458: A different endianness. Accesses to the " inverted page table " (a hash table that functions as a TLB with off-chip storage) are always done in big-endian mode. The processor starts in big-endian mode. In little-endian mode, the three lowest-order bits of the effective address are exclusive-ORed with a three bit value selected by the length of the operand. This is enough to appear fully little-endian to normal software. An operating system will see

480-448: A heated telephone conversation between Jobs and Motorola CEO Christopher Galvin resulted in the long-favored Apple being demoted to "just another customer", mainly for PowerPC CPUs. In retaliation, Apple and IBM briefly expelled Motorola from the AIM alliance, and forced Motorola to stop making PowerPC CPUs, leaving IBM to design and produce all future PowerPC chips. Motorola was reinstated into

560-549: A high level of compatibility with it; the architectures have remained close enough that the same programs and operating systems will run on both if some care is taken in preparation; newer chips in the Power series use the Power ISA . The history of RISC began with IBM's 801 research project, on which John Cocke was the lead developer, where he developed the concepts of RISC in 1975–78. 801-based microprocessors were used in

640-493: A joint manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. Motorola would sell the chips to Apple or anyone else. Executives said the negotiations were stop and go, sometimes seeming to founder and then speeding up as impasses were resolved. The main disagreements occurred when one company or the other thought it was giving away too much technology. Executives said that the technological contributions of both sides were evaluated and that money

720-463: A new incarnation of the Amiga platform. IBM also had a full line of PowerPC based desktops built and ready to ship; unfortunately, the operating system that IBM had intended to run on these desktops— Microsoft Windows NT —was not complete by early 1993, when the machines were ready for marketing. Accordingly, and further because IBM had developed animosity toward Microsoft, IBM decided to port OS/2 to

800-480: A new port of OS/2 (with Intel emulation for application compatibility), pending a successful launch of the PowerPC 620. Throughout the mid-1990s, PowerPC processors achieved benchmark test scores that matched or exceeded those of the fastest x86 CPUs. Ultimately, demand for the new architecture on the desktop never truly materialized. Windows, OS/2, and Sun customers, faced with the lack of application software for

880-623: A number of IBM embedded products, eventually becoming the 16-register IBM ROMP processor used in the IBM RT PC . The RT PC was a rapid design implementing the RISC architecture. Between the years of 1982 and 1984, IBM started a project to build the fastest microprocessor on the market; this new 32-bit architecture became referred to as the America Project throughout its development cycle, which lasted for approximately 5–6 years. The result

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960-532: A period of great opportunity. The alliance's hardware is based on the PowerPC processors—the first of which, the PowerPC 601 , is a single-chip version of IBM's POWER1 CPU. Both IBM and Motorola would manufacture PowerPC integrated circuits for this new platform. The computer architecture base is called "PReP" ( PowerPC Reference Platform ), later complemented with OpenFirmware and renamed "CHRP" ( Common Hardware Reference Platform ). IBM used PReP and CHRP for

1040-533: A second source for the microprocessors. This three-way collaboration between Apple, IBM, and Motorola became known as the AIM alliance . In 1991, the PowerPC was just one facet of a larger alliance among these three companies. At the time, most of the personal computer industry was shipping systems based on the Intel 80386 and 80486 chips, which have a complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture, and development of

1120-679: A warped view of the world when it accesses external chips such as video and network hardware. Fixing this warped view requires that the motherboard perform an unconditional 64-bit byte swap on all data entering or leaving the processor. Endianness thus becomes a property of the motherboard. An OS that operates in little-endian mode on a big-endian motherboard must both swap bytes and undo the exclusive-OR when accessing little-endian chips. AltiVec operations, despite being 128-bit, are treated as if they were 64-bit. This allows for compatibility with little-endian motherboards that were designed prior to AltiVec. An interesting side effect of this implementation

1200-455: Is a conjoined Apple and IBM. No other single change in the dynamics of the IT industry could possibly do as much to emasculate Windows. From the 1980s into the 1990s, the computer industry was moving from a model of just individual personal computers toward an interconnected world, where no single company could afford to be vertically isolated anymore. Infinite Loop says "most people at Apple knew

1280-535: Is now handled by Power.org where IBM, Freescale, and AMCC are members. PowerPC, Cell and POWER processors are now jointly marketed as the Power Architecture . Power.org released a unified ISA, combining POWER and PowerPC ISAs into the new Power ISA v.2.03 specification and a new reference platform for servers called PAPR (Power Architecture Platform Reference). Many PowerPC designs are named and labeled by their apparent technology generation. That began with

1360-440: Is probably of Romani origin but commonly believed to be a backronym of "council-housed and violent". Similarly, the distress signal SOS is often believed to be an abbreviation for "save our ship" or "save our souls" but was chosen because it has a simple and unmistakable Morse code representation – three dots, three dashes, and three dots, sent without any pauses between characters. More recent examples include

1440-556: Is that a program can store a 64-bit value (the longest operand format) to memory while in one endian mode, switch modes, and read back the same 64-bit value without seeing a change of byte order. This will not be the case if the motherboard is switched at the same time. Mercury Systems and Matrox ran the PowerPC in little-endian mode. This was done so that PowerPC devices serving as co-processors on PCI boards could share data structures with host computers based on x86 . Both PCI and x86 are little-endian. OS/2 and Windows NT for PowerPC ran

1520-542: Is the POWER instruction set architecture , introduced with the RISC System/6000 in early 1990. The original POWER microprocessor , one of the first superscalar RISC implementations, is a high performance, multi-chip design. IBM soon realized that a single-chip microprocessor was needed in order to scale its RS/6000 line from lower-end to high-end machines. Work began on a one-chip POWER microprocessor, designated

1600-570: Is the PowerPC ( performance computing ) specification. The differences between the earlier POWER instruction set and that of PowerPC is outlined in Appendix E of the manual for PowerPC ISA v.2.02. Since 1991, IBM had a long-standing desire for a unifying operating system that would simultaneously host all existing operating systems as personalities upon one microkernel. From 1991 to 1995, the company designed and aggressively evangelized what would become Workplace OS , primarily targeting PowerPC. When

1680-568: The James Bond franchise. For example, the Amber Alert missing-child program was named after Amber Hagerman , a nine-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in 1996. Officials later publicized the backronym "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response". An example of a backronym as a mnemonic is the Apgar score , used to assess the health of newborn babies. The rating system

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1760-483: The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars and a variety of satellites. It has since become a niche architecture for personal computers, particularly with AmigaOS 4 implementations, but remains popular for embedded systems . PowerPC was the cornerstone of AIM's PReP and Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) initiatives in the 1990s. It is largely based on the earlier IBM POWER architecture , and retains

1840-591: The PCI version of IBM's RS/6000 platform, which was adapted from existing Micro Channel architecture models, and changed only to support the new 60x bus style of the PowerPC. The development of the PowerPC is centered at an Austin, Texas, facility called the Somerset Design Center. The building is named after the site in Arthurian legend where warring forces put aside their swords, and members of

1920-518: The Pentium processor was well underway. The PowerPC chip was one of several joint ventures involving the three alliance members, in their efforts to counter the growing Microsoft-Intel dominance of personal computing. For Motorola, POWER looked like an unbelievable deal. It allowed the company to sell a widely tested and powerful RISC CPU for little design cash on its own part. It also maintained ties with an important customer, Apple, and seemed to offer

2000-653: The "G3", which was an internal project name inside AIM for the development of what would become the PowerPC 750 family . Apple popularized the term "G3" when they introduced Power Mac G3 and PowerBook G3 at an event at 10 November 1997. Motorola and Apple liked the moniker and used the term "G4" for the 7400 family introduced in 1998 and the Power Mac G4 in 1999. At the time the G4 was launched, Motorola categorized all their PowerPC models (former, current and future) according to what generation they adhered to, even renaming

2080-480: The 2nd generation "pure" PowerPC designs. Apple continued work on a new line of Macintosh computers based on the chip, and eventually released them as the 601-based Power Macintosh on March 14, 1994. Accelerator cards based on the first-generation PowerPC chips were created for the Amiga in anticipation for a move to a possible new Amiga platform designed around the PowerPC. The accelerator cards also included either

2160-465: The 401, 403, 405, 440, and 460. In 2004, IBM sold their 4xx product line to Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC). AMCC continues to develop new high performance products, partly based on IBM's technology, along with technology that was developed within AMCC. These products focus on a variety of applications including networking, wireless, storage, printing/imaging and industrial automation. Numerically,

2240-460: The AIM alliance completely, leaving IBM and Apple in the alliance. Freescale continued to help IBM design PowerPC chips until Freescale was acquired and absorbed by NXP Semiconductors in 2015. Apple transitioned entirely to Intel CPUs in 2006, due to eventual disappointment with the direction and performance of PowerPC development as of the G5 model, especially in the fast-growing laptop market. This

2320-541: The Apple and IBM PowerPC desktops). Apple, which also lacked a PowerPC based OS, took a different route. Utilizing the portability platform yielded by the secret Star Trek project , the company ported the essential pieces of their Mac OS operating system to the PowerPC architecture, and further wrote a 68k emulator that could run 68k based applications and the parts of the OS that had not been rewritten. The second generation

2400-571: The Mac OS could not fit in 8 KB and thus slowed the computer drastically. The 603e solved this problem by having a 16 KB L1 cache , which allowed the emulator to run efficiently. In 1993, developers at IBM's Essex Junction, Burlington, Vermont facility started to work on a version of the PowerPC that would support the Intel x86 instruction set directly on the CPU. While this was just one of several concurrent power architecture projects that IBM

2480-470: The Mac and IBM desktop computers into the 21st century with shared technology such as PowerPC chips, PowerOpen Unix, and new operating software from Taligent Inc. and Kaleida Labs Inc. Present and future shock aside, that's a lot to digest. CISC microprocessors , including the mainstream Intel x86 products, were considered an evolutionary dead end, and that because RISC was the future, the next few years were

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2560-512: The PReP systems. The BeBox , designed to run BeOS , uses some PReP hardware but is overall incompatible with the standard. Kaleida Labs closed in 1995. Taligent was absorbed into IBM in 1998. Some CHRP machines shipped in 1997 and 1998 without widespread reception. Relations between Apple and Motorola further deteriorated in 1998 with the return of Steve Jobs to Apple and his contentious termination of Power Macintosh clone licensing. Reportedly,

2640-503: The PowerPC added: Some instructions present in the POWER instruction set were deemed too complex and were removed in the PowerPC architecture. Some removed instructions could be emulated by the operating system if necessary. The removed instructions are: Most PowerPC chips switch endianness via a bit in the MSR ( machine state register ), with a second bit provided to allow the OS to run with

2720-642: The PowerPC architecture. These processors are used in the RS/6000 and IBM AS/400 computer families; the Amazon architecture includes proprietary extensions used by AS/400. The POWER4 and later POWER processors implement the Amazon architecture and replaced the RS64 chips in the RS/6000 and AS/400 families. IBM developed a separate product line called the "4xx" line focused on the embedded market. These designs included

2800-587: The PowerPC in the form of Workplace OS. This new software platform spent three years (1992 to 1995) in development and was canceled with the December 1995 developer release, because of the disappointing launch of the PowerPC 620. For this reason, the IBM PowerPC desktops did not ship, although the reference design (codenamed Sandalbow) based on the PowerPC 601 CPU was released as an RS/6000 model ( Byte ' s April 1994 issue included an extensive article about

2880-619: The PowerPC is mostly found in controllers in cars. For the automotive market, Freescale Semiconductor initially offered many variations called the MPC5xx family such as the MPC555, built on a variation of the 601 core called the 8xx and designed in Israel by MSIL (Motorola Silicon Israel Limited). The 601 core is single issue, meaning it can only issue one instruction in a clock cycle. To this they add various bits of custom hardware, to allow for I/O on

2960-492: The PowerPC to be five years too late to the overall market, "no more than a welcome offering to Apple's own market base", and further hamstrung by the legacy architecture of System 7 . In 1995, IT journalist Don Tennant asked Bill Gates to reflect upon "what trend or development over the past 20 years had really caught him by surprise". Gates responded with what Tennant described as biting, deadpan sarcasm: "Kaleida and Taligent had less impact than we expected." Tennant believed

3040-490: The PowerPC, almost universally ignored the chip. IBM's Workplace OS platform (and thus, OS/2 for PowerPC) was summarily canceled upon its first developers' release in December 1995 due to the simultaneous buggy launch of the PowerPC 620. The PowerPC versions of Solaris and Windows were discontinued after only a brief period on the market. Only on the Macintosh, due to Apple's persistence, did the PowerPC gain traction. To Apple,

3120-498: The RSC ( RISC Single Chip ). In early 1991, IBM realized its design could potentially become a high-volume microprocessor used across the industry. Apple had already realized the limitations and risks of its dependency upon a single CPU vendor at a time when Motorola was falling behind on delivering the 68040 CPU. Furthermore, Apple had conducted its own research and made an experimental quad-core CPU design called Aquarius, which convinced

3200-399: The Somerset Design Center. The building is named after the site in Arthurian legend where warring forces put aside their swords, and members of the three teams that staff the building say the spirit that inspired the name has been a key factor in the project's success thus far. Part of the culture here is not to have an IBM or Motorola or Apple culture, but to have our own. Toward the close of

3280-583: The Vehicle-Management Computer for the F-35 fighter jet. This platform consists of dual PowerPCs made by Freescale in a triple redundant setup. Aeronautical Development Establishment tested a high-performance digital flight control computer, powered by a quadraplex PowerPC-based processor setup on a HAL Tejas Mark 1A in 2024. Operating systems that work on the PowerPC architecture are generally divided into those that are oriented toward

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3360-424: The alliance between IBM and Motorola, both companies had development efforts underway internally. The PowerQUICC line was the result of this work inside Motorola. The 4xx series of embedded processors was underway inside IBM. The IBM embedded processor business grew to nearly US$ 100 million in revenue and attracted hundreds of customers. The development of the PowerPC is centered at an Austin, Texas, facility called

3440-511: The alliance contract, with the expectation that neither would launch any products until the mid-90s. Since 1988, Apple had already created a next-generation operating system, codenamed "Pink"; and Taligent Inc. was incorporated to bring Pink to market as the ultimate crossplatform object-oriented OS and application frameworks. Kaleida was to create an object-oriented, cross-platform multimedia scripting language which would enable developers to create entirely new kinds of applications that would harness

3520-548: The alliance in 1999. The PowerPC is the clearest intended success that came out of the AIM alliance. From 1994 to 2006, Apple used PowerPC chips in almost every Macintosh . PowerPC also has had success in the embedded market, and in video game consoles : GameCube , Wii , Wii U , Xbox 360 , and PlayStation 3 . After being reinstated into the AIM alliance, Motorola helped IBM to design some laptop PowerPC chips with IBM's manufacturing. In 2004, Motorola spun off its Semiconductor production as Freescale Semiconductor , and left

3600-503: The amount of time needed for the processor to empty its instruction pipeline. Microsoft also aided the processor's demise by refusing to support the PowerPC mode. The first 64-bit implementation is the PowerPC 620 , but it appears to have seen little use because Apple didn't want to buy it and because, with its large die area, it was too costly for the embedded market. It was later and slower than promised, and IBM used their own POWER3 design instead, offering no 64-bit "small" version until

3680-549: The backronym "everyone deserves a game above reproach". Many United States Congress bills have backronyms as their names; examples include the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) of 2001, and the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act). Sometimes a backronym is reputed to have been used in

3760-537: The basis of its ongoing future dialog which promised to "change the landscape of computing in the 90s". In 1992, the earth shook: IBM and Apple clasped hands and pronounced themselves allies. From this union sprang Taligent ... developing nothing less than a universal operating system. On October 2, 1991, the historic AIM alliance was officially formed with a contract between Apple CEO John Sculley, IBM Research and Development Chief Jack Kuehler, and IBM Vice President James Cannavino. Kuehler said "Together we announce

3840-478: The brand name Adidas , named after company founder Adolf "Adi" Dassler but falsely believed to be an acronym for "all day I dream about sport". The word Wiki is said to stand for "what I know is", but in fact is derived from the Hawaiian phrase wiki-wiki meaning 'fast'. Yahoo! , sometimes claimed to mean "yet another hierarchical officious oracle", in fact was chosen because Yahoo's founders liked

3920-548: The company would have to enter into ventures with some of its erstwhile enemies, license its technology, or get bought". Furthermore, Microsoft 's monopoly and the Wintel duopoly threatened competition industrywide, and the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) consortium was underway. Phil Hester , a designer of the IBM RS/6000 , convinced IBM's president Jack Kuehler of the necessity of

4000-521: The company's technology leadership that the future of computing was in the RISC methodology. IBM approached Apple with the goal of collaborating on the development of a family of single-chip microprocessors based on the POWER architecture. Soon after, Apple, being one of Motorola's largest customers of desktop-class microprocessors, asked Motorola to join the discussions due to their long relationship, Motorola having had more extensive experience with manufacturing high-volume microprocessors than IBM, and to form

4080-491: The decade, manufacturing issues began plaguing the AIM alliance in much the same way they did Motorola, which consistently pushed back deployments of new processors for Apple and other vendors: first from Motorola in the 1990s with the PowerPC 7xx and 74xx processors, and IBM with the 64-bit PowerPC 970 processor in 2003. In 2004, Motorola exited the chip manufacturing business by spinning off its semiconductor business as an independent company called Freescale Semiconductor . Around

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4160-449: The explanation to be that "Microsoft's worst nightmare is a conjoined Apple and IBM. No other single change in the dynamics of the IT industry could possibly do as much to emasculate Windows." Efforts by Motorola and IBM to popularize PReP and CHRP failed when Apple, IBM, and Taligent all failed to provide a single comprehensive reference operating system for server and personal markets—mainly Taligent's OS or IBM's Workplace OS. Windows NT

4240-537: The first PowerPC products reached the market, they were met with enthusiasm. In addition to Apple, both IBM and the Motorola Computer Group offered systems built around the processors. Microsoft released Windows NT 3.51 for the architecture, which was used in Motorola's PowerPC servers, and Sun Microsystems offered a version of its Solaris OS. IBM ported its AIX Unix . Workplace OS featured

4320-568: The formation of the original word, and amounts to a false etymology or an urban legend . Acronyms were rare in the English language before the 1930s, and most etymologies of common words or phrases that suggest origin from an acronym are false. Examples include posh , an adjective describing stylish items or members of the upper class. A popular story derives the word as an acronym from "port out, starboard home", referring to 19th-century first-class cabins on ocean liners , which were shaded from

4400-405: The general-purpose PowerPC systems, and those oriented toward the embedded PowerPC systems. Companies that have licensed the 64-bit POWER or 32-bit PowerPC from IBM include: PowerPC processors were used in a number of now-discontinued video game consoles : The Power architecture is currently used in the following desktop computers: Backronym A normal acronym is a word derived from

4480-478: The initial letters of the words of a phrase, such as radar from "radio detection and ranging". By contrast, a backronym is "an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word or words, either to create a memorable name or as a fanciful explanation of a word's origin". Many fictional espionage organizations are backronyms, such as SPECTRE (special executive for counterintelligence, terrorism, revenge and extortion) from

4560-740: The late 1990s. Variants of the PowerQUICC include the MPC850, and the MPC823/MPC823e. All variants include a separate RISC microengine called the CPM that offloads communications processing tasks from the central processor and has functions for DMA . The follow-on chip from this family, the MPC8260, has a 603e-based core and a different CPM. Honda also uses PowerPC processors for its ASIMO robot. In 2003, BAE Systems Platform Solutions delivered

4640-560: The late-2002 introduction of the PowerPC 970 . The 970 is a 64-bit processor derived from the POWER4 server processor. To create it, the POWER4 core was modified to be backward-compatible with 32-bit PowerPC processors, and a vector unit (similar to the AltiVec extensions in Motorola's 74xx series) was added. IBM's RS64 processors are a family of chips implementing the "Amazon" variant of

4720-407: The older 603e core "G2". Motorola had a G5 project that never came to fruition, and Apple later used the name when the 970 family launched in 2003, though it was designed and built by IBM. The PowerPC is designed along RISC principles and allows for a superscalar implementation. Versions of the design exist in both 32-bit and 64-bit implementations. Starting with the basic POWER specification,

4800-576: The one chip. In 2004, the next-generation four-digit 55xx devices were launched for the automotive market. These use the newer e200 series of PowerPC cores. Networking is another area where embedded PowerPC processors are found in large numbers. MSIL took the QUICC engine from the MC68302 and made the PowerQUICC MPC860. This was a very famous processor used in many Cisco edge routers in

4880-761: The performance limitations of the chip for future personal computer hardware specifically related to heat generation and energy usage, as well as the inability of IBM to move the 970 processor to the 3 GHz range. The IBM-Freescale alliance was replaced by an open standards body called Power.org. Power.org operates under the governance of the IEEE with IBM continuing to use and evolve the PowerPC processor on game consoles and Freescale Semiconductor focusing solely on embedded devices. IBM continues to develop PowerPC microprocessor cores for use in their application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) offerings. Many high volume applications embed PowerPC cores. The PowerPC specification

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4960-420: The performance of the PowerPC was a bright spot in the face of increased competition from Windows 95 and Windows NT-based PCs. With the cancellation of Workplace OS, the general PowerPC platform (especially AIM's Common Hardware Reference Platform ) was instead seen as a hardware-only compromise to run many operating systems one at a time upon a single unifying vendor-neutral hardware platform. In parallel with

5040-447: The possibility of adding IBM too, which might buy smaller versions from Motorola instead of making its own. At this point Motorola already had its own RISC design in the form of the 88000 , which was doing poorly in the market. Motorola was doing well with its 68000 family and the majority of the funding was focused on this. The 88000 effort was somewhat starved for resources. The 88000 was already in production, however; Data General

5120-598: The power of the platform. IBM provided affinity between its own Workplace OS and Taligent, replacing Taligent's microkernel with the IBM Microkernel and adopting Taligent's CommonPoint application framework into Workplace OS, OS/2, and AIX. It's natural that many people saw Apple's alliance with former adversary IBM Corp. as an ominous portent for the independent future of the Macintosh. The sight of Apple and IBM chief executives gripping and grinning on national television wasn't nearly as confusing as their vow to bring

5200-555: The processor in little-endian mode while Solaris, AIX and Linux ran in big endian. Some of IBM's embedded PowerPC chips use a per-page endianness bit. None of the previous applies to them. The first implementation of the architecture was the PowerPC 601 , released in 1992, based on the RSC, implementing a hybrid of the POWER1 and PowerPC instructions. This allowed the chip to be used by IBM in their existing POWER1-based platforms, although it also meant some slight pain when switching to

5280-579: The same time, IBM exited the 32-bit embedded processor market by selling its line of PowerPC products to Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC) and focusing on 64-bit chip designs, while maintaining its commitment of PowerPC CPUs toward game console makers such as Nintendo 's GameCube , Wii and Wii U , Sony 's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft 's Xbox 360 , of which the latter two both use 64-bit processors. In 2005, Apple announced they would no longer use PowerPC processors in their Apple Macintosh computers, favoring Intel -produced processors instead, citing

5360-604: The second decade of personal computing, and it begins today" and Sculley said this would "launch a renaissance in technological innovation", as they signed the foot-high stack of papers comprising the contract. The New York Times called it "an act that a year ago almost no one in the computer world would have imagined possible". It was so sweeping that it underwent antitrust review by the United States federal government. In 1992, Apple and IBM created two new companies called Taligent and Kaleida Labs as had been declared in

5440-401: The sun on outbound voyages east (e.g. from Britain to India ) and homeward voyages west. The word's actual etymology is unknown, but more likely related to Romani påš xåra ('half-penny') or to Urdu (borrowed from Persian ) safed-pōśh ('white robes'), a term for wealthy people. Another example is the word chav , which is a derogatory term for a working-class youth. This word

5520-519: The three teams that staff the building say the spirit that inspired the name has been a key factor in the project's success thus far. Part of the culture here is not to have an IBM or Motorola or Apple culture, but to have our own. In 1994, Apple delivered its first alliance-based hardware platform, the PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line, on schedule as predicted by the original alliance contract. Infinite Loop considered

5600-568: The whole industry, made of a new hardware design and a next-generation operating system . IBM intended to bring the Macintosh operating system into the enterprise and Apple intended to become a prime customer for the new POWER hardware platform. Considering it to be critically poorly communicated and confusing to the outside world at this point, industry commentators nonetheless saw this partnership as an overall competitive force against Microsoft's monopoly and Intel's and Microsoft's duopoly. IBM and Motorola would have 300 engineers to codevelop chips at

5680-500: The word's meaning of "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth" (taken from Jonathan Swift 's book Gulliver's Travels ). The distress call " pan-pan " is commonly stated to mean "possible assistance needed", whereas it is in fact derived from the French word panne , meaning 'breakdown'. AIM alliance The AIM alliance , also known as the PowerPC alliance , was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple , IBM , and Motorola . Its goal

5760-423: Was "pure" and includes the "low end" PowerPC 603 and "high end" PowerPC 604 . The 603 is notable due to its very low cost and power consumption. This was a deliberate design goal on Motorola's part, who used the 603 project to build the basic core for all future generations of PPC chips. Apple tried to use the 603 in a new laptop design but was unable due to the small 8  KB level 1 cache. The 68000 emulator in

5840-694: Was devised by and named after Virginia Apgar . Ten years after the initial publication, the backronym APGAR was coined in the US as a mnemonic learning aid: appearance, pulse, grimace, activity, and respiration. Another example is the American Contract Bridge League's tools to address cheating in online bridge games. EDGAR was originally named for Edgar Kaplan, whose many contributions to the game included groundbreaking efforts to reduce illegal partnership communication. The new EDGAR tools expected to debut in early 2024 have been launched with

5920-415: Was founded in 2004 by IBM and fifteen partners with intent to develop, enable, and promote Power Architecture technology, such as PowerPC , POWER , and software applications. The OpenPOWER Foundation is a collaboration around Power ISA -based products initiated by IBM and announced as the "OpenPOWER Consortium" on August 6, 2013. It has more than 250 members. In 2019, IBM announced its open-sourcing of

6000-597: Was seen as the end of the AIM alliance as that left IBM as the sole user of PowerPC. Taligent was launched from the original AIM alliance, based originally on Apple's Pink operating system. From Taligent came the CommonPoint application framework and many global contributions to internationalization and compilers, in the form of Java Development Kit 1.1, VisualAge C++, and the International Components for Unicode open source project. Power.org

6080-455: Was shipping 88000 machines and Apple already had 88000 prototype machines running. The 88000 had also achieved a number of embedded design wins in telecom applications. If the new POWER one-chip version could be made bus-compatible at a hardware level with the 88000, that would allow both Apple and Motorola to bring machines to market far faster since they would not have to redesign their board architecture. The result of these various requirements

6160-417: Was the only OS with mainstream consumer recognition that had been ported to PowerPC, but there was virtually no market demand for it on this non-mainstream hardware. Although PowerPC was eventually supported by several Unix variants, Windows NT , and Workplace OS (in the form of OS/2 ), these operating systems generally ran just as well on commodity Intel -based hardware so there was little reason to use

6240-641: Was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the POWER instruction set architecture . It was intended to solve legacy problems, future-proof the industry, and compete with Microsoft 's monopoly and the Wintel duopoly. The alliance yielded the launch of Taligent , Kaleida Labs , the PowerPC CPU family, the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) hardware platform standard, and Apple's Power Macintosh computer line. Microsoft's worst nightmare

6320-411: Was used to balance the terms, in what negotiators referred to as the "cosmic arithmetic." But how much money is being paid, and which company is paying, is closely guarded information. Between the three companies, more than 400 people had been involved to define a more unified corporate culture with less top-down executive decree. They collaborated as peers and future coworkers in creating the alliance and

6400-401: Was working on, this chip began to be known inside IBM and by the media as the PowerPC 615 . Profitability concerns and rumors of performance issues in the switching between the x86 and native PowerPC instruction sets resulted in the project being canceled in 1995 after only a limited number of chips were produced for in-house testing. Aside the rumors, the switching process took only 5 cycles, or

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