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Power macintosh g4
- Thread starter john
- Start date
The PowerPC processors inside the PowerMac G4 were made by IBM.
The PowerPC architecture is a product of the "AIM Alliance" whose members were Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Some generations and variations of PowerPC processors found in Macs were manufactured by both IBM and Motorola, while some were only manufactured by one or the other.
PowerPC G4 (PPC 74xx) processors were only made by Motorola and later its semiconductor spinoff, Freescale. IBM participated in the design process of the G4, but didn't produce them itself. At the time, IBM was manufacturing PowerPC G3 series parts (PPC 740/750) in volume that were used in many Apple models for some time even after the introduction of the G4.
Both IBM and Motorola produced some of the earlier G3 processors used in Macs, but IBM produced most of the later, higher speed G3s as Motorola moved to production of the G4 series.
IBM exclusively manufactured the G5 series processors. (PPC 950)
PPC 601, 603, and 604 series - IBM and Motorola
G3 740/750 233-366MHz - IBM and Motorola
G3 745/755 - Motorola only
G3 750 (with letter suffixes) IBM only
G4 74xx Motorola/Freescale only
G5 950 IBM only
PowerPC G4 (PPC 74xx) processors were only made by Motorola and later its semiconductor spinoff, Freescale. IBM participated in the design process of the G4, but didn't produce them itself. At the time, IBM was manufacturing PowerPC G3 series parts (PPC 740/750) in volume that were used in many Apple models for some time even after the introduction of the G4.
Both IBM and Motorola produced some of the earlier G3 processors used in Macs, but IBM produced most of the later, higher speed G3s as Motorola moved to production of the G4 series.
IBM exclusively manufactured the G5 series processors. (PPC 950)
PPC 601, 603, and 604 series - IBM and Motorola
G3 740/750 233-366MHz - IBM and Motorola
G3 745/755 - Motorola only
G3 750 (with letter suffixes) IBM only
G4 74xx Motorola/Freescale only
G5 950 IBM only
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What time period? Intel and Motorola traded crowns several time as to which made the fastest CPU between them from the mid-1970's up until the late 1990's, and in that period it's *probable* that Intel held it most often, especially if you count Intel CPUs other than the x86 family. (For instance, the Intel i860 and i960 were both very fast CPUs for their era, but mostly only appeared in specialized high-end products.) Even during the golden age of the PowerPC Motorola's products were rarely *that* much better than Intel's in raw compute, and Intel often held the edge in areas like bus performance so... really, it's mostly a wash.
Assuming we count Freescale as "Motorola" the fastest PPC products they ever churned out are probably what NXP (they acquired Freescale a few years ago) calls the "QorlQ P-series", which is a multicore 64 bit design intended for applications like network routers. These CPUs are ill-suited for use in a PC, but if they were employed like that they'd probably perform roughly similarly to a G5 with a similar number of cores. In other words, nothing to write home about.
(NOTE: The Amiga X5000 uses one of these QorlQ cpus, an e5500, and the benchmarks I've seen actually show it losing pitifully to a G5. It may partially be a matter of software optimization, but as it is they appear to have less raw oomph per core than the G4 does at lower clock speeds.)
(NOTE: The Amiga X5000 uses one of these QorlQ cpus, an e5500, and the benchmarks I've seen actually show it losing pitifully to a G5. It may partially be a matter of software optimization, but as it is they appear to have less raw oomph per core than the G4 does at lower clock speeds.)
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Why is it that I'm getting the feeling you're asking us to fill out information for a school assignment?
I think I'm failing to understand what you're asking for here. By definition all Power Architecture CPUs marketed as "PowerPC" are a result of the AIM Alliance, IE, the name specifically means a "POWER ISA" CPU designed and marketed for use in personal computers. (Verses workstations, servers, embedded applications, etc.) Every company making said CPUs licenses the name and certain bundles of intellectual property relating to the instruction set architecture, and in addition to that the various companies churning them out *may or may not* choose to cross-license actual hardware designs from each other. (For example, most of the PowerPC 600 CPU designs were sold by both Motorola and IBM, although each company made their own tweaked versions.) There were PowerPC compliant chips made by completely third-party-to-AIM companies; the most well-known example is P.A. Semi's doomed "PWRficient" CPU.
If the question is simply did Motorola ever make a "PowerPC" CPU completely independent of IBM then the answer is no; the "Power" in PowerPC is derived from IBM's contribution of the "POWER" instruction ISA from their RS/6000 line of high-end UNIX workstations to the project. Prior to AIM Motorola was pushing a RISC design called the 88000 which was basically flopping, but had a bus design better suited to small personal computers than IBM's POWER chips. (I believe at this point POWER will still implemented as a multi-chip cluster.) Thus the PowerPC 601 basically was a slightly dumbed-down POWER1 squeezed behind the 88000's CPU bus.
So, really, if you want to argue that anyone "owns" PowerPC the best argument can be made for IBM, not Motorola. Apple, however, tended to prefer Motorola's chips (largely because they made a big marketing push for Altivec, which was Motorola's idea, and Motorola mostly had a better grasp of how to make the right price/performance tradeoffs for the PC market than IBM) until Motorola/Freescale basically gave up trying to make them any faster. Turning back to IBM for the G5/970 was basically pure desperation, and we all know how that ended.
I think you're confused. Are you interested in PowerPCs or Motorola 68k CPUs? The 68060 was the fastest and last "direct" descendant of 1979's 68000 family. It debuted in 1994 and was roughly comparable to Intel's original Pentium CPU in speed, although its floating point performance was decidedly worse. (The Pentium's FPU was a huge advance over the 80486's, while the 68060's was barely better than the 68040.) It came out too late to make any serious impact; at this point basically every company that had been using the 68000 family had jumped to other architectures because it was clear that Motorola had no interest in continuing to develop the line, unlike Intel with their investment in continually improving x86. But anyway, yeah: the 68060 has *basically nothing* to do with PowerPC, other than PowerPC being the reason it was the end of the 68000 line.(*)
(* Motorola did make a *related* family of CPUs called "ColdFire" that are similar to the 68000 but not directly object-code compatible. You can still buy these, they come in speeds up to a few hundred mhz. However, even the fastest ones aren't that much faster than the 68060, so they're only of interest to the embedded market. The whole line is basically on life support at this point because there's little point in using Coldfire when similar ARM CPUs are available from many other vendors for less money.)
Any Motorola-built G4 CPU will be faster than 100MHz.
The 68k family and the PowerPC family are different chips, with totally different designs and philosophies, and the ONLY thing that links them is that Apple used both. (Other vendors of 68k based computers had plans to go to different RISC designs. Sun went to SPARC, NeXT was going to go to the 88k, a Motorola-built RISC design, SGI went to MIPS, etc. Some other 68k vendors (Atari, Commodore in particular) died before choosing where they'd go after 68k.
I believe there are some faster 68k designs in the ColdFire family, but those aren't really meant for desktop computers, as much as networking equipment, settop boxes, and that kind of thing.
The 68k family and the PowerPC family are different chips, with totally different designs and philosophies, and the ONLY thing that links them is that Apple used both. (Other vendors of 68k based computers had plans to go to different RISC designs. Sun went to SPARC, NeXT was going to go to the 88k, a Motorola-built RISC design, SGI went to MIPS, etc. Some other 68k vendors (Atari, Commodore in particular) died before choosing where they'd go after 68k.
I believe there are some faster 68k designs in the ColdFire family, but those aren't really meant for desktop computers, as much as networking equipment, settop boxes, and that kind of thing.
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