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PowerPC CPU
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 |