[sdiy] The magic of ARM

[rsdio at sounds.wa.com]

On Aug 9, 2013, at 11:31, Lanterman, Aaron wrote:
> On Aug 9, 2013, at 2:25 PM, James Hughes <james at virtualjames.com>  
> wrote:
>> This sort of pressure is what's lead to things like the openPOWER  
>> consortium. IBM realized they needed to be more ARM-like to  
>> compete. There's rumblings that even Intel may start opening up  
>> some of their designs.
>
> Related question: Long term, does the PowerPC architecture have a  
> future?


The XBox 360 (2005) has a 3-core PowerPC Xenon, the PlayStation 3  
(2006) has a PowerPC Cell, the Nintendo Wii (2006) has a PowerPC  
Broadway and the Wii U will have a 3-core PowerPC Espresso. If I had  
time, I could probably find more. It seems to me that PowerPC is  
preferred for gaming consoles. I have no idea why it's not more  
popular for desktops, other than perhaps the difficulty with  
operating systems (Apple could easily resume support for PowerPC if  
they wanted to).

But the real answer is that no architecture has a guaranteed future.  
Such is the nature of human progress.

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting