Re: altivec

[David DeHaven <daved@trestle.com>]

>Motorola or IBM will be happy to sell you a "non-apple non-MacOS PPC"
>machine for Linux, it's just nobody wants to pay the price. :)  A startup
>with a very low overhead could probably provide a reasonably priced mobo
>with an MPC107 and MPC750@400+mhz.  They would want to then sell them to a
>system manufacturer which already has volume discount commodity parts in
>their facility to build a consumer priced machine.  Selling 1-2 boards to
>each homebrew person isn't a business plan that will attract any
>investment, a decent volume distribution deal is needed.  Hrm, I wonder
>what the licensing cost of OF is or would it be better to do an open
>implementation of the standard...

The problem is, there's not enough demand right now to drive a non-PPC 
Linux box market. It's one of those things where we all sit around and 
say "Gosh, that would be cool if all of Intels plants just blew up 
suddenly and PowerPC would dominate the world!!!" It just aint gonna 
happen, at least not in the near future. (very much like the story of 
BeOS...)

As for OF, last I heard IBM will gladly license you to use and modify 
their OF implementation to your own needs. In the short term, it's 
cheaper and easier than trying to brew something up yourself.

-DrD-

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