> That would be something indeed.

http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1474744

I can only congratulate Freescale on this exceedingly sensible decision.

More detail:

"Freescale [...] will incorporate its AltiVec vector processing technology into its multicore QorIQ microprocessor family later this year [...]. [...] Freescale will announce specific QorIQ microprocessor products announcements with AltiVec technology within the next few months"
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/index/display/article-display/6971313341/articles/military-aerospace-electronics/online-news-2/2010/9/altivec-floating-point.html


Edit:

Another nice article:

"new demands from multiple 4G users are now enabling wireless basestations to utilize SIMD. To meet the need, Freescale Semiconductor Inc. is upgrading its venerable AltiVec vector processing unit for its QorIQ family of Power Architecture-based communications processors. "Customers using QorIQ to deal with all the data being processed by 4G basestations are probably telling Freescale that the Altivec SIMD processor could be very useful at performing the same processing task [single-instruction] on multiple users [multiple-data]," said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group (Mountain View, Calif.) [...] Freescale already sells legacy AltiVec processors to industry, military and aerospace customers performing traditional tasks such as image processing, pattern recognition and forward kinematics to position robotic arms as well as for emerging applications such as smart analytics on multiple surveillance cameras. But by adding AltiVec to its leading edge QorIQ processors, Freescale hopes to expand further its penetration of the basestation processor market. "We have taken a proven technology, enhanced it, and moved it to the multicore QorIQ family of processors," said Glenn Beck, marketing manager for aerospace, defense and single board computing within Freescale's Networking Processor Division. "We see a broad spectrum of applications that are now needing vector-caliber performance, ranging from networking and telecom to the classic ones in aerospace and defense." [...] With an AltiVec inside each QorIQ core, an additional eight parallel floating-point and integer processing units execute vector algorithms using 180 instructions."
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4208818/Vector-processing-accelerates-QorIQ2

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf on 2010/9/28 19:16 ]