13 Facts About PowerPC

PowerPC is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM.

PowerPC was the cornerstone of AIM's PReP and Common Hardware Reference Platform initiatives in the 1990s.

PowerPC is largely based on the earlier IBM POWER architecture, and retains 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.

In 1991, the PowerPC was just one facet of a larger alliance among these three companies.

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.

Related searches

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.

Development of the PowerPC is centered at an Austin, Texas, facility called the Somerset Design Center.

Many PowerPC designs are named and labeled by their apparent technology generation.

At the time the G4 was launched, Motorola categorized all their PowerPC models according to what generation they adhered to, even renaming the older 603e core "G2".

PowerPC is designed along RISC principles and allows for a superscalar implementation.

Accelerator cards based on the first-generation PowerPC chips were created for the Commodore Amiga in anticipation for a move to a possible new Amiga platform designed around the PowerPC.

IBM 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.

PowerPC processors were used in a number of now-discontinued video game consoles:.