Living the dreamm~ PowerMac G5

I'm also no expert, but that's my understanding too; G4 adds AltiVec, a proper SMP implementation and a few related instruction extensions, mostly to do with hardware acceleration pipelines. In other words, as far as the instruction set itself goes, AltiVec is the big thing; most of the other changes were to do with how it interfaced with the rest of the hardware.

One interesting finding is that ArchPOWER uses ELFv2 from OpenPOWER Foundation

according to the internet, ELFv2 ABI provides significant performance and efficiency advantages over the ELFv1 ABI on PowerPC64:
No Function Descriptors, Reduced Call Costs, Optimized Parameter Passing, Streamlined Stack Frame, Improved Position-Independent Code (PIC), Optimized Main Modules and Modern Toolchain Support.

I may be wrong but I think Debian PPC64 still uses ELFv1.
Started compiling binaries for PPC32, they're at my repo on github.

Best regards,
Link.

CC_333 said:

The G4 is basically a faster G3 with altivec tacked on, isn't it?

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I've heard that too.

Was going to say the same, but the previous G3 versus G4 discussion was already linked.

Interesting! I had forgotten, but I do vaguely remember reading that thread when it was current.

That said, it's now firmly established that, as far as implementation goes, the G4 is more or less a G3 with a 3x faster bus, AltiVec and various other enhancements and improvements. However, is the G4's instruction set otherwise relatively similar to a G3, such that a binary compiled, without AltiVec, for a G4 could run unmodified on a G3?? The reverse (G3 binary running unmodded on a G4) is certainly true.

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Compiled Aerofoil (glider pro), works fine too

Best regards,
Link.

Yeah, well, brought Altivec and G4, etc., into discussion because I thought would have a problem when compiling 32-bit packages due to platforms that don't have Altivec, but checked "makepkg.conf" file and for powerpc (32-bit) arch in archpower, it doesn't use Altivec as a target, only Linux kernel uses Altivec. So PowerPC packages will work from a PowerPC 604 up to the Nintendo Wii, G3, and G4. The Nintendo Wii U has a special branch called "espresso" since it's based on 750 G3 with SMP but without Altivec.
Posted a new video making some maintenance on G5 and new games running on it.
My plan is to keep pushing this platform on linux, I think it can go further.

Best regards,
Link.