What an insightful thread. I struggle to understand every update, and its possible implications.

What would the chip engineers think if they red this? Perhaps they would be surprised by the interest that their creatures still spark in some people...

Thanks Andreas,

It sometimes reads as if you're the only person following/contributing to these threads, but it makes for intersting reading (to me at least), so please do not stop

> Perhaps they would be surprised by the interest that
> their creatures still spark in some people...

Why "still"?

Addendum:

>> According to Lauterbach, the APM83290 has a PPC450 core

> In contrast to Lauterbach, a new edition of Wikipedia's PPC4xx article
> claims that Titan was designed "using the PowerPC 440 core spec".
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_400#Titan
> Either way, there's still something else mysterious about it: According to Wikipedia,
> PPC440 and PPC460 (and thus I conclude PPC450 as well) comply to Power ISA v2.03+,
> whereas Titan complies to Power ISA v2.04+ (i.e. not to v2.03). Strange.

Another opinion:

"Except for Freescale, most Power licensees base their devices on CPU core designs from IBM. AppliedMicro is the exception. It developed a new CPU of its own (Titan), then halted that effort and started afresh on a new design that may arrive shortly."
http://www.mdronline.com/processor_watch/watch_issue.php?processor_watch_id=664

So maybe Titan wasn't based on any PPC4xx core at all? The more information I read, the more confusing it gets ;-)

Update:

> Another opinion: [...]

Full article is online:
http://www.power.org/resources/downloads/Power_Architecture_MPR_Article_Aug_2010.pdf

Some notes on its contents:

1. Strangely, Applied Micro's APM86xxx processor is omitted from this depiction of the most recent Power Architecture roadmap version (page 3), so that their "Next-gen" "32-bit Commercial Core" seems to lack an accompanying processor.

2. Quote: "Titan, the company's first attempt to design its own CPU, ended up on the scrap heap when design partner Intrinsity was acquired by Apple [...]. Much of that work has been rolled into a new AppliedMicro design, however." (page 4)

That really sounds like basically a shrinked Titan without Fast14.

3. Quote: "Revision 2.04 [...] was only implemented by PA Semiconductor (which has since been acquired by Apple) and in AppliedMicro's Titan (which has since been canceled), so it never saw the light of day." (page 2)

Huh? PA6T "never saw the light of day"? Don't think so.

4. Quote: "e5500 [...] is expected to run at 2.2GHz when it debuts in the QorIQ P5 series in 4Q10" (page 3)

According to Freescale's QorIQ P5020/5010 product page:

"...initially offered at 2.0GHz..."

5. Quote: "Freescale's high-end QorIQ P5 will clock at a "mere" 2.2GHz--about 50% slower than Intel's Core i7." (page 2)

2.2 GHz being 50% slower means 100% equating 4.4 GHz. I doubt that by the time the QorIQ P5 is released the Core i7 will clock anywhere near that level. Current Core i7 is at 3.3 GHz maximum. 2.2 GHz is only 34% slower than 3.3 GHz.

6. Quote: "Xilinx [...] has announced its intention to work with ARM but not any details of the upcoming chips themselves." (page 4)

Seems they missed something:

http://press.xilinx.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=212763&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1418796
http://www.xilinx.com/technology/roadmap/processing-platform.htm

Interesting read. Are you already investigatinc that scary ARM Cortex A-15? Announced at up to four cores at a couple gigahertz, with all those clever tricks: NEON and DSP extensions, VFPv3 floating point, native Java, virtuzlization...

> Are you already investigatinc that scary ARM Cortex A-15?

I wonder what will hit the market first: A 2.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A15 based processor or Freescale's 4+ GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 based i.MX63 processor? ;-)

Quote:


Titan was a new design from scratch, it was designed by Intrinsity for AMCC.
Intrinsity said this at a talk I went to.

> Titan was a new design from scratch, it was designed by
> Intrinsity for AMCC. Intrinsity said this at a talk I went to.

Thanks. I know that "position" (or rather: factual information, seeing it comes from the designers themselves). It's just that I'm curious about statements which imply otherwise:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6268&forum=11&post_id=72235#72235
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6268&forum=11&post_id=75943#75943

Addendum:

>> Titan was a new design from scratch, it was designed by
>> Intrinsity for AMCC. Intrinsity said this at a talk I went to.

> Thanks. I know that "position" (or rather: factual information, seeing
> it comes from the designers themselves). It's just that I'm curious
> about statements which imply otherwise

...like those, subsuming the Titan core based APM83xxx/Gemini under PPC4xx:

ftp://94.230.212.16/bdigdb/config/powerpc/ppc4xx/apm83xxx/
http://www.abatron.ch/products/debugger-support/gnu-support.html
http://www.abatron.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/products/pdf/bdiacc.pdf (page 34)

ARM has the full buzz now: MS joining in with Windows. MS is said to present Windows (no WinCe) for ARM next CES.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-21/microsoft-is-said-to-announce-version-of-windows-for-arm-chips-at-ces-show.html

NVidia announced some interesting new developments at the CES. They will develop an ARM cpu for the desktop/Servrer market ("Denver") with the help of ARM. Windows 8 will support ARM, MS Office on ARM has been shown already. Sounds like ARM may really take off in the general computing domain during the coming years.
Dunno about endianess options of these coming processors, but if they offer a big endian mode, maybe it will be worthwhile to think whether MorphOS eventually should go the ARM route once the ppc macs are done...

I saw that myself Zylesea, but I hesitated to post anything as Nvidia has released almost no technical information. They did state they wanted to compete with X86 in desktops and servers and that there would be a version of Windows 8 for ARM.
As it will incorporate an Nvidia GPU, its less interesting from a MprphOS perspective, but its heartening to see some competition against X86 again.

> ARM cpu for the desktop/Servrer market ("Denver")

Especially the server market likely requires a 64-bit ISA. To date ARM Ltd. haven't officially announced plans to go 64-bit. But there are rumours:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9197298/Arm_readies_processing_cores_for_64_bit_computing
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210884/ARM-64-bit-CPU-coming-soon--says-report

Those could be connected to nVidia's recent "Denver" announcement. I'm sure that nVidia has more detailed information on ARM's internal developments than what is publically known.

Quote:

why ?

Quote:

Thus far, the development team has not supported Nvidia GPUs (and have, in fact, favored rival ATI's components).
As porting to a completely different CPU family would already be a major undertaking, the additional work involved in creating Nvidia video drivers only compounds the work required.

Addendum:

> true little-endian is supported at least by MPC8xx/e200, e300, e500, PPC4xx
> and PA6T/PWRficient.

Apparently, POWER7/7+ and POWER8 can be added to this list.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-ppc/2013-08/msg00047.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2013/09/msg00050.html

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Tempted.

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