> that "mamba" chip looks the nicest PowerPC offer in ages

At least the best Applied Micro has to offer after they scrapped the Titan core and accompanied APM83290/Gemini processor (which also sampled and had an evaluation board, btw).

> sans AltiVec, pity

Indeed. That's why I'm looking forward to news from Freescale. They still have 2.5 weeks left ;-)

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7001&forum=3&post_id=76983#76983

> could a development board already exist?

I very much guess so. From the press release linked before:

"The company's Serengeti evaluation platform incorporates a dual core APM86290 running up to 1.5GHz and exposes all interfaces available on the SoC."