IBM Power11 CPUs Launching In 2025 - Linux 6.13 Preps KVM Nested Guests For Power11

[brad0]

I wasn't aware that the PowerPC was still being developed. I thought when it was dropped by Apple it went away, but that just goes to show how much I (don't) know

Does anyone know who still uses them? I did a quick internet search and couldn't find much about them.

You must have been living under a rock for 20 years.

IBM, you know the company that actually produces the ISA and the CPUs.

[brad0]

The way Wikipedia characterizes it is that PowerPC came first and POWER was an outgrowth of that.

That's not what it says. The POWER ISA and respective CPUs came first.

[coder]

That's not what it says. The POWER ISA and respective CPUs came first.

Okay, I've read more of the articles on PowerPC and POWER. It seems the PowerPC was the first single-chip POWER implementation, although not IBM's first product based on the ISA. Also, IBM did proceed to continue developing POWER, independent of PowerPC.

I don't think PowerPC really merged with POWER, though. The sense I get is that it basically died off (except for embedded applications), when Apple switched to Intel.

[jindam]

in simple english_ is this open like POWER9?

[darkbasic]

Bullshit. All of the enterprise distros for POWER are Little Endian (Red Hat, Ubuntu, and SuSE).

Modern ones, sure. Until Power 8 Little Endian wasn't even an option.

[deusexmachina]

in simple english_ is this open like POWER9?

Indeed, (actually) blobless with good performance and some ability to use a good GPU and it would last ages for us enthusiasts!

[Vistaus]

I believe PowerPC (Apple/IBM/Motorola) and POWER (IBM) have been merged from an ISA perspective. PowerPC cores are still being developed for embedded applications and POWER CPUs are still being developed and shipped in mainframe-class servers. Maybe a few workstations, not sure. PowerPC is still very widely used - primarily in automotive applications but also networking, storage etc...

I believe POWER and PowerPC share code and folders in the Linux kernel, ie POWER support goes into arch/powerpc.

Don't forget Amiga's. There are still new Amiga PC's and boards that use PowerPC.

[bridgman]

No, IBM has a completely different CPU ISA that they use for their mainframes.

https://chipsandcheese.com/p/telum-i...ication-search

I think POWER are pitched more as cloud/commodity/enterprise server CPUs. A POWER-based server is something you can buy for normal money. Mainframes cost way more.

Yeah, I didn't mean Z-series mainframes but I was having a tough time finding the right word to describe the high end POWER servers. What do you call something big and expensive with 16 CPU sockets running a single OS image and a lot of fault tolerance (albeit less than the Z series) that is twice the size of a refrigerator ?

Historically POWER servers have had more sophisticated memory and I/O subsystems than a typical supermini, although I believe POWER10 has been simplified in that regard so maybe it fits.

Maybe "big iron" rather than "mainframe class"

[coder]

Modern ones, sure. Until Power 8 Little Endian wasn't even an option.

One of the first things I heard about PowerPC was how it was bi-endian (i.e. you could select the endianness, at runtime).

According to this, "OS/2 and Windows NT for PowerPC ran the processor in little-endian mode":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC#Endian_modes

[bridgman]

I don't think PowerPC really merged with POWER, though.

As far as I know the products didn't merge but the instruction sets did. Seems like it happened around 2006 between POWER5 and POWER5+. That seemed like an odd place to pick up a new ISA but from what I can see the changes between 2.02 and 2.03 ISAs were relatively small - basically merging accumulated changes from POWER into the latest PowerPC spec.

It smells like someone asked "so why do we have two separate specs if they are almost the same these days ?", ie the merge is more of an administrative thing than a technical thing. Apparently POWER3 and newer used PowerPC ISA anyways (I didn't know that).

https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Power_ISA

Adding to the confusion it seems there are different capitalization conventions for the original "POWER ISA" and the new "Power ISA" derived from PowerPC.

The sense I get is that it basically died off (except for embedded applications), when Apple switched to Intel.

True, but it was hugely popular in embedded applications and video games by the time Apple stopped using it.