PowerPC 601 Support Retired In Linux 5.10 While Continuing To Bring Up POWER10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PowerPC 601 Support Retired In Linux 5.10 While Continuing To Bring Up POWER10

The POWER architecture changes have been submitted for the Linux 5.10 kernel. As expected, the PowerPC 601 support is retired as that original 32-bit PowerPC processor from the early 90's...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.10-POWER

[uid313]

The POWER10 processors are based on the Power ISA 3.1 instruction set which was released in May 2020, but how modern is the Power ISA 3.1 instruction set?

Is it comparable to modern, clean instruction sets such as ARMv8 (AArch64) and RISC-V?
And is the Power ISA close to the old POWER from 1990 with legacy baggage is or is it clean?

[rene]

and what should I keep running on my Apple Macintosh 8100/80? Mk "micro kernel" Linux? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMHTKzpqrys

[WolfpackN64]

The POWER10 processors are based on the Power ISA 3.1 instruction set which was released in May 2020, but how modern is the Power ISA 3.1 instruction set?

Is it comparable to modern, clean instruction sets such as ARMv8 (AArch64) and RISC-V?
And is the Power ISA close to the old POWER from 1990 with legacy baggage is or is it clean?

You do know ARM is older then POWER right?

[WizardGed]

The POWER10 processors are based on the Power ISA 3.1 instruction set which was released in May 2020, but how modern is the Power ISA 3.1 instruction set?

Is it comparable to modern, clean instruction sets such as ARMv8 (AArch64) and RISC-V?
And is the Power ISA close to the old POWER from 1990 with legacy baggage is or is it clean?

yes, Freescale (Before it got bought out by NXP) and IBM did a complete overhaul when moving to 3.0 with Power 9, 2.07 is Power 8 and basically on life support. search "Power ISA" in Wikipedia.

[uid313]

You do know ARM is older then POWER right?

Yes, but ARMv8 is nothing like the old ARM. It is still called "ARM" but its only in name, the ARMv8 is very different from ARMv7 and earlier architectures. So while the ARM history is older than POWER the ARMv8 architecture doesn't carry the baggage of history, it is a modern and clean architecture.

yes, Freescale (Before it got bought out by NXP) and IBM did a complete overhaul when moving to 3.0 with Power 9, 2.07 is Power 8 and basically on life support. search "Power ISA" in Wikipedia.

RISC-V is from 2010.
ARMv8 is from 2011.
Power ISA 3.0 is from 2015.
But Power ISA 2.0 is from 2006 and an evolution from the old PowerPC architecture from 1992.

So is Power ISA 3.0 a modern and clean architecture? Is it comparable to RISC-V and ARMv8?

[q66_]

So is Power ISA 3.0 a modern and clean architecture? Is it comparable to RISC-V and ARMv8?

can you name some of that "legacy baggage" that you so presume is there and isn't in ARMv8?

[WolfpackN64]

Yes, but ARMv8 is nothing like the old ARM. It is still called "ARM" but its only in name, the ARMv8 is very different from ARMv7 and earlier architectures. So while the ARM history is older than POWER the ARMv8 architecture doesn't carry the baggage of history, it is a modern and clean architecture.

It's clean, but it's still ARM (and mostly compatible with ARMv7 and ARMv6 software). The POWER ISA is still at it's core PowerPC, but it's significantly different. POWER ISA 3.0 is an evolution from what came before, but still quite different.
So I think you can regard ARMv and POWER ISA updates as being quite similar. Significant updates to the architecture while largely retaining compatibility with the previous versions.

[q66_]

It's clean, but it's still ARM (and mostly compatible with ARMv7 and ARMv6 software). The POWER ISA is still at it's core PowerPC, but it's significantly different. POWER ISA 3.0 is an evolution from what came before, but still quite different.
So I think you can regard ARMv and POWER ISA updates as being quite similar. Significant updates to the architecture while largely retaining compatibility with the previous versions.

well, not quite, armv8 really is basically a new architecture that isn't actually anyhow compatible with armv7 and earlier; most SoCs come with a compatibility mode, but a bunch of the large server stuff doesn't actually have any sort of backwards compatibility at all

meanwhile, modern power chips can still run all the old stuff (assuming you run a big endian operating system; little endian powerpc was never really a thing on linux/bsd/etc., even though it's technically possible on most chips)

that said, newer doesn't automatically mean better, i don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with the power isa as it is, even with backwards compat; it's a fairly predictable risc-like architecture

there is some really nice stuff on risc-v that isn't available on power (like their vector stuff that is quite different from simd) but armv8 doesn't have that either

[uid313]

can you name some of that "legacy baggage" that you so presume is there and isn't in ARMv8?

No, I cannot. But I heard people praise ARMv8 saying how clean it is, how modern it is, how great it is, how effective it is.
And that while ARMv7 and earlier was better than x86 it still wasn't great and had variable-length instruction encodings or something to save space but was not so good. But I don't know about instruction set architectures.

It's clean, but it's still ARM (and mostly compatible with ARMv7 and ARMv6 software). The POWER ISA is still at it's core PowerPC, but it's significantly different. POWER ISA 3.0 is an evolution from what came before, but still quite different.
So I think you can regard ARMv and POWER ISA updates as being quite similar. Significant updates to the architecture while largely retaining compatibility with the previous versions.

I heard that ARMv8 is a different beast than ARMv7 and earlier and not compatible. They kept the name but the architecture is legacy-free and fresh and do not suffer from design decisions of the past.