> from the _very_ few docs out there that I could find, it looks like a mix of Cell SPU
> and AltiVec. Some instructions are the same, others -esp the double fp or the decimal
> fp support- have no Altivec equivalents.

Thanks for information. My main question would be if VSX is backwards compatible to VMX/AltiVec by itself or if POWER7 supports both by having both implemented separately. Or similarily put: Does a CPU implementing VSX automatically support VMX/AltiVec, i.e. is VSX a strict superset?