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ClassicHasClass:

--- Quote from: madscientist159 on December 09, 2019, 05:34:04 pm ---
--- Quote from: MauryG5 on December 09, 2019, 05:07:04 pm ---The most recent X 5000 has the Freescale P5020 or P 5040 but without Altivec and they are based on Power 8 if I remember correctly ...

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POWER7, actually.  They implement Power ISA v2.06 (https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Power_ISA) and are BE only.
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Not to be a (terrible) pedant, but while they do indeed implement (at least most of) the later ISA, the QorIQ e5500 microarchitecture doesn't have much in common with POWER7's. It's essentially a 64-bit e500 without the SPE crap and an FPU borrowed from the e600, itself an evolution of the 744x G4. The lack of AltiVec/VMX is a terrible omission, however, and limits its utility for general purpose computing. It's really an embedded part and meant for that application, and I have said in other places how much of a disservice I think running such CPUs in pricey desktops is to the Amiga community.


--- Quote ---Confusingly the actual product page (https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/power-architecture/qoriq-communication-processors/p-series/qoriq-p5020-and-p5010-64-bit-dual-and-single-core-communications-processors:P5020) refers to a "P5 platform" which I suspect is not POWER5, but I have no idea offhand what it is.  I do know the 4 core and up chips have a mystery management core of some sort, but then again with pre-OpenPOWER stuff the chips weren't exactly open source firmware across the board regardless of vendor.
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P5 just means the Freescale-internal generation; it is not related in any way to IBM POWER generations.

madscientist159:

--- Quote from: ClassicHasClass on December 10, 2019, 10:49:49 pm ---Not to be a (terrible) pedant, but while they do indeed implement (at least most of) the later ISA, the QorIQ e5500 microarchitecture doesn't have much in common with POWER7's. It's essentially a 64-bit e500 without the SPE crap and an FPU borrowed from the e600, itself an evolution of the 744x G4. The lack of AltiVec/VMX is a terrible omission, however, and limits its utility for general purpose computing. It's really an embedded part and meant for that application, and I have said in other places how much of a disservice I think running such CPUs in pricey desktops is to the Amiga community.
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No problem -- thanks for the pedantry here, all I really know about the e5000 parts is that we disqualified them really early on for performance and concerns over the integrated "mystery meat" security core. 8)
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madscientist159:

--- Quote from: ClassicHasClass on December 10, 2019, 10:49:49 pm ---Not to be a (terrible) pedant, but while they do indeed implement (at least most of) the later ISA, the QorIQ e5500 microarchitecture doesn't have much in common with POWER7's. It's essentially a 64-bit e500 without the SPE crap and an FPU borrowed from the e600, itself an evolution of the 744x G4. The lack of AltiVec/VMX is a terrible omission, however, and limits its utility for general purpose computing. It's really an embedded part and meant for that application, and I have said in other places how much of a disservice I think running such CPUs in pricey desktops is to the Amiga community.
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No problem -- thanks for the pedantry here, all I really know about the e5000 parts is that we disqualified them really early on for performance and concerns over the integrated "mystery meat" security core. 8)

MauryG5:
Yes Tim in fact I don't remember the derivation well, I had read a document a long time ago but I don't remember the derivation well.  In fact, I also never liked the lack of altivec on Freescale 5500 cores, altivec was implemented on the 6500 cores, but there was no system based on these cores and now that I remember better they were the e6500 cores that were based on  Power 8. At the time I was interested in the x 5000, when I saw that it was already back as hardware before it even went out and it was too expensive I changed my mind. I'm sorry I can't use Amiga OS 4 on Power 9, there must be  something that only recognizes X5000 hardware from what I know ... Amiga was not open but in my opinion today there is no comparable computer operating system level ... it was unique!  I always cry his death ...!

Raion:

--- Quote from: ClassicHasClass on December 10, 2019, 10:49:49 pm ---
Not to be a (terrible) pedant, but while they do indeed implement (at least most of) the later ISA, the QorIQ e5500 microarchitecture doesn't have much in common with POWER7's. It's essentially a 64-bit e500 without the SPE crap and an FPU borrowed from the e600, itself an evolution of the 744x G4. The lack of AltiVec/VMX is a terrible omission, however, and limits its utility for general purpose computing. It's really an embedded part and meant for that application, and I have said in other places how much of a disservice I think running such CPUs in pricey desktops is to the Amiga community.


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Indeed, I can't agree more. But from everything the amiga community has said; they'd rather pay for a pricy FPGA chip that's more of a novelty than a POWER9 machine like the Talos/Blackbird machines.

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