From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Message-ID: <16150.4659.856525.824351@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 13:04:19 +1000 From: Paul Mackerras To: "Peter Dennett" Cc: Subject: Re: IBM PPC750L vs Motorola MPC7410 In-Reply-To: <0b8e01c34ba7$41fb8490$8202a8c0@pit> References: <0b8e01c34ba7$41fb8490$8202a8c0@pit> Sender: owner-linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: Peter Dennett writes: > Is there someone on this list that can be so kind as to give > me a technical summary of the differences between the > PPC750L (G3) and Motorola MPC7410 (G4) so far as > LINUX operation. The biggest difference is that the 7410 has Altivec and the 750 doesn't. Altivec is an extension to the instruction set that adds 32 128-bit registers plus a set of SIMD-style operations on those registers. Beyond that there will be differences in the special-purpose registers (SPRs) accessible in kernel mode. I don't think there would be enormous difference but there would be some. The kernel should detect which CPU you have and do the right thing automatically. Neither chip has an on-chip memory controller or serial port; both have on-chip L1 I and D cache and on-chip L2 cache controller and tag RAM (if I recall correctly). So I don't know why the kernel would hang when booting the G3. Paul. ** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/