PowerPC G4

PowerPC G4 is the name for the RISC processors PowerPC 74xx Motorola.

The name alludes to the fourth generation G4 ( engl. "Generation Four" ) of PowerPC chips, which were manufactured by Motorola. The design of the processors has been designed in close collaboration between Apple, IBM and Motorola ( AIM alliance ), but IBM was developing away. One of the reasons for this were different views, such as the AltiVec SIMD unit should be integrated into the chip.

The G4 processors were before production ceased in late 2005, built mainly by the American computer manufacturer Apple, among others, in the model series Power Mac and PowerBook. G4 is therefore also the colloquial name for the various Power Mac G4 models. Motorola spun the semiconductor region 2004 completely in the subsidiary of Freescale Semiconductor.

The successor to the G4 series, the G5 processors, in turn, developed and produced by IBM. Freescale itself has the series has not yet been developed, but puts the emphasis of progress in the embedded space, where, for example, other external interfaces are routed to the chip, about the MPC8641D. At the same time the name of the processor line was changed to e600, some of which are fully compatible with the G4 processors used by Apple.

Technology

G4 processors contain a 128 -bit vector unit ( SIMD ) method with the name " AltiVec ". This unit is comparable to the SSE technology of IA32 processors. This allows up to four floating point numbers are processed simultaneously, or up to 16 bytes. It was also enhances the multiprocessor capability. The members of the predecessor model G3 are indeed capable of coupling multiple processors, but with strong power constraints. G4, therefore, a fast chip -to-chip connection has been received with in the architecture. The processor is said to have 33 million transistors.

Series processors

  • Motorola PowerPC 7400 - Basic Model
  • Motorola PowerPC 7410 - basic model for mobile applications with increased processor and bus speed
  • Motorola PowerPC 7440 - PowerPC 7450 for mobile use without L3 cache and a lower core voltage
  • Motorola PowerPC 7450 - unofficially referred to as G4 , with increased processor and bus speed

The previously fastest models of 7448 with 1 MB L2 cache at max. 1.7 GHz (more suitable for cooling) and the 7457 with max. 2 MB of L3 cache and 1.33GHz.

Trivia

The Power Mac G4 from 1999 counted too fast to be exported to China are not allowed. Since its computing power just fell into the then -defined area of supercomputers, he was subject to U.S. export restrictions.

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