> maybe Freescale rediscovers Altivec one day.

I fear that won't happen. Regarding Power Architecture it's all about VSX today:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6196&forum=11&start=140#74094
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltiVec#VSX

But I don't know enough about VSX to make a proper comparison to AltiVec/VMX. Feanor?