[PATCH] General CHRP/MPC5K2 Platform and drivers support - to comment

[Becky Bruce]

On Oct 24, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Matt Sealey wrote:

>
> Paul Mackerras wrote:
>> Matt Sealey writes:
>>
>> "PowerPC" is the name of the instruction set architecture, "POWER" is
>> the name of some specific implementations of the PowerPC architecture
>> made by a certain large multinational computer company.  Unless  
>> you're
>> talking about the really really old ISA that was the predecessor of
>> PowerPC, that is. :)
>
> http://www.power.org/news/articles/new_brand/#isa
>
> I'm talking about the one they consolidated from all the different  
> specs
> Freescale, AMCC and IBM had about what makes a PowerPC processor.  
> Since
> POWER is part of it and it's all Power.org now.. they seem to have  
> changed
> the name.
>
> I don't think they have actually added anything new, that wasn't there
> before, just consolidated it. You won't seen an IBM chip with SPE  
> or VLE
> unless they license the gaggle of patents Freescale have on those
> units, maybe.. but there is always a possibility. All new chips are
> being called Power (not POWER).
>

The ISA version 2.03 that you are talking about does, in fact, rename  
it to "Power ISA" (big "P" little "ower") from "PowerPC ISA".  This  
spec is mostly a big glom of all of FSL and IBM's architecure  
documentation, although there were some minor changes made and some  
things were added.  If you read the spec carefully (which, btw, I do  
*not* recommend, as it is about 900 pages of spaghetti  
documentation), you will find things in there that do not exist in  
any implemented processor to date.

Cheers,
B