PowerPC CPU

IBM PowerPC 601 microprocessor

PowerPC was an extinct branch of IBM's POWER RISC CPU design. Extinction was caused by being slower than 80x86 while running way too hot. Despite claims PPC was a RISC design, it had hundreds of named instructions. And PPC read data bytes backwards (big-endian).

Design of PowerPC virtual memory was convoluted, based on hashing, with "segment registers" to complement page structures. That was so slow Apple provided a system call for Mac programs to disable virtual memory.

This author benchmarked his 3D engine in ~2007. Possible interpretations from this are how a new graphics card can speed old slow systems. PowerPC systems weren't nowhere as fast as Apple hyped.

FPS    FPS    
peak:  norm:  machine:                        OS:            graphics:                      compiler:
4,900  2,500  AMD64 X2 2.2 GHz                Linux x86-64   Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT         g++ 4.1
700    400    Pentium III 450 Mhz             Linux x86-32   Nvidia GeForce 5500 FX AGP 2x  g++ 4.1
450    400    Apple Mac Mini PPC G4 1.33 Ghz  Mac OS X 10.4  ATI Radeon 9200                g++ 4.0