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Ricardus @Ricardus

Wow. It only took 20 years, but PowerPC's are finally going to happen with the new Power9 CPU from IBM.

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@Ricardus What do you mean? PowerPCs have been available for some time.

@vertigo
Unless IBM is changing their product line, Power9 is not PowerPC. It's in their Power series. PowerPC is a separate architecture.
@Ricardus

@klaatu
They're separate but related. The PowerPC uses a subset of instructions from the POWER architecture. The whole platform was created by an alliance of Apple, IBM, and Motorola, hence the name "AIM alliance."

Personally I'd love to see some PowerPC systems again, even as a niche.
@vertigo @Ricardus

@klaatu @ND3JR @Ricardus Mine too, but I still have a soft spot for POWER architecture. It was the first RISC architecture I've ever used, and it has a long and rich history dating all the way back to the System/800 experimental architecture.

@klaatu @vertigo I know, but the name conjurs up imagery of the other architecture which was supposed to tak over the world.

@klaatu @Ricardus Not quite. PowerPC was a subset of POWER, but at the same time, a superset as well, as it evolved independently.

IBM merged the lines with (IIRC) POWER 4. So, anything after POWER3 is also PowerPC compatible.

Hence my confusion. I don't understand the mention of PowerPC in a modern context. POWER8 and POWER9 motherboards have been out for some time. (If you've the cash for them, they're not cheap!)

@vertigo But has anyone other than frustrated Amiga users used it, thinking the Amiga was going to rise fron the ashes and dominate the world?! 🙂

@Ricardus POWER 8 systems have been in use in data centers since about 2014, as I recall, mainly for cloud computing (the POWER 9 motherboards were being designed just as I was quitting Rackspace in 2016). Otherwise, except for newer AS/400 (or, pSeries I guess these days) systems, I can't think of any recent applications other than automotive embedded.