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Power Architecture is a broad term to describe similar instruction sets for RISC microprocessors developed and manufactured by such companies as IBM, Freescale, AMCC, Tundra and P.A. Semi. The governing body is Power.org, comprising of over 40 companies and organisations. The "Power Architecture" term should not be confused with the different generations of "POWER Architectures", since the first is a broader term where POWER architectures are subsets alongside PowerPC and Cell.
History Power Architecture began its life at IBM in the late 1980s when they wanted a high performance RISC architecture for their mid range workstations and servers. The result was the "POWER Architecture" with its first implementation in 1990 in the RISC System/6000, later RS/6000, computers. This was the 11 chip RIOS processor, later called POWER1. In 1992, Apple, Motorola and IBM formed the AIM alliance to develop a mass market version of the POWER processor. The result of this was the PowerPC architecture, a modified version of the POWER architecture. The first implementation was the PowerPC 601 in 1993, based heavily on a single chip version of POWER1, found its way into Apple's Power Mac computers as well as RS/6000 systems. IBM expanded their POWER Architecture for their RS/6000 systems which resulted in the eight chip POWER2 processor 1993 and a single chip version called P2SC, "POWER2 Super Chip", 1996. In the early 1990s IBM sought to replace the CISC based AS/400 minicomputers with a RISC architecture. Management wanted them to use PowerPC but it had to be extended. This new architecture was called Amazon or PowerPC AS. RS/6000 developers joined in and added some POWER2 features and it all ended up in the 64-bit processors of the RS64 line in 1997, used in AS/400 and RS/6000 systems. The AIM Alliance kept developing PowerPC in 1995 through 1997 and released the second generation PowerPC processors: The PowerPC 602 for set top boxes and game consoles, the PowerPC 603 geared towards the embedded market and portable computers, the PowerPC 604 towards workstations and PowerPC 620 was a 64-bit high performance processor for servers. The 602 and 620 never found widespread use but the 603, 604 and their successors became very popular in their respective fields. Motorola and IBM also made the "Book E"• extension of PowerPC, used in embedded implementations: Motorola's PowerQUICC processors and IBM's PowerPC 400 family. The last effort of the AIM Alliance was the third generation PowerPC 750 in 1997. Motorola and IBM went their separate ways in developing the PowerPC architecture after that. The "G3" processors found widespread use in both computer and embedded markets and IBM kept evolving the 750 family in the years to come but Motorola chose to focus on the embedded market with PowerPC SoC designs and what they called the forth generation PowerPC, the PowerPC 7400 which incorporated Altivec, a SIMD unit. The "PowerPC G4" came 1999 and was heavily used by Apple in workstations and laptops and by various companies in the telecom market. In 1998 came POWER3 which unified the PowerPC and POWER2 architectures but was only used in IBM's RS/6000 servers. 2000 saw the last implementation of the Amazon architecture, the RS64-IV, used in AS/400 and RS/6000, now renamed eServer iSeries and eServer pSeries respectively. IBM also makes the Gekko processor for use in Nintendo's game console Game Cube. It's based on the PowerPC 750CXe. In 2001 IBM introduced the POWER4 which unified and replaced the Amazon and POWER3 architectures in what was called the PowerPC ISA v.2.00. In 2002 Apple desperately need a new high end PowerPC part and got IBM to make the PowerPC 970. Apple described it as the fifth generation PowerPC or "G5". 970 is derived from POWER4 but lacks some features present in Amazon and POWER3 architectures, but does have an AltiVec unit. The 970 is used by Apple and IBM and some high end embedded applications. Tundra buys the PowerPC 100 family microcontrollers from Motorola in 2003 which spun off its semiconductor division into a new company called Freescale Semiconductor in 2004. Culturecom licenses PowerPC technology from IBM for their V-Dragon processor in 2003. POWER5 from IBM, introduced in 2004, is an evolution from POWER4 and bumps the PowerPC specification to v.2.01, and again to v.2.02• in 2005 with the POWER5+. AMCC buys IBM's 130nm fab, and licenses PowerPC 4xx series from IBM concerning the PowerPC 400 family in 2004.******** * Power.org is founded in 2004 by IBM, 15 other companies join as members the day power.org was created by IBM, as a member they have no veto rights in the decisions processes of what defines the "Power Architecture" this is IBM's sole responsibility, in 2006 Freescale Licenses the 64-bit "Power Architecture" from IBM, soon afterwards IBM grants Freescale equal voting rights in the decision process of the "Power Architecture". As of 1/11/06 only two companies have veto power in the design of the future "Power Architecture specifications". IBM and Freescale.* involved in developing products revolving around the Power Architecture. Its purpose is to develop, enable and promote Power Architecture technology.* In 2005 Apple announced that it's dropping PowerPC in favour of Intel based processors beginning in 2006. 2005 also saw the specifications of the Cell processor,• jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba over a four year period. Its primary use is for Sony's PlayStation 3. Cell uses a single 64 bit PowerPC core, PPE, and adds multiple independent SIMD cores called SPEs. IBM also reveals the Xenon-processor, a tri-core 64 bit PowerPC processor for use in Microsoft's Xbox 360. With the PowerPC based Broadway processor that Nintendo will use for its Wii console, IBM has put PowerPC processors in all three of the major seventh generation game consoles. P. A. Semi licenses PowerPC technology from IBM for use in its upcomming PWRficient processors. Freescale joins Power.org in 2006 and IBM makes the specifications of PowerPC 405 freely available to researchers and academia. Rapport Inc announces Kilocore technology where 1024 8-bit processing elements are strapped to a PowerPC core. Power.org released the Power ISA version 2.03.• in September 2006- All previous PowerPC implementations are rolled into one. This will among other things add VMX, virtualization and variable length encoding (2-byte added to previously 4-byte instructions) to the specification. Power.org is working on a new Power Architecture Platform Reference, PAPR, that will provide the foundation for development of Power Architecture computers based on the Linux operating system. The PAPR spec is scheduled for final release third quarter 2006. The top three and 28 of the top 50 fastest supercomputers in the world, according to the TOP500-list, are based on Power Architecture technology. There are now several companies developing their own processors based on Power Architecture technology including IBM, Freescale, Tundra, AMCC, Culturecom, P. A. Semi, Xilinx, Rapport and Cray. Power ISA v.2.03 The specification for Power ISA v2.03 is based on the former PowerPC ISA v.2.02 in POWER5+ and the Book E extension of the PowerPC specification. It is divided into five parts: Compliant cores: Not compliant cores: Implementations Some examples.. Processors Systems Operating Systems | ||||||||
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