Re: Apple Job Posting and Good News for LinuxPPC developers

[Guy Sotomayor <ggs@shiresoft.com>]

> 
> Gabriel> Do 64 bit PPC processors that can be bought as chips (not in a system)
> 
> Gabriel> exist (i.e., can you buy a Power3 in a BGA package and the chipset
> that
> Gabriel> goes with) ? 
> 
>      I doubt it.  The Power3 comes from the server organization and is
> intended for their use.  IBM, however, does understand customer demand:
> if there was "enough" market interest, I am sure that it would find a way
> to sell it.  The Power3 processor price is nowhere near a PPC750 or G4 and
> does not include AltiVec.
> 
Actually I think the 64bit PPCs are called PowerPC II.  They're reasonably
nice chips last time I looked.  They are expensive to put together in a
system (ie 8MB L2, 128bit data bus, etc).  Also the 6xx bus is a split
transaction bus, so the bus controllers are a bit more complex too.  I
also think that all the data paths are ECC'd with parity on addresses. 
For a good example on what type of systems are built using these things,
look at the S70 Advanced server.


TTFN - Guy



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