Re: IBM PPC750L vs Motorola MPC7410

Peter Dennett writes:

Is there someone on this list that can be so kind as to give
me a technical summary of the differences between the
PPC750L (G3) and Motorola MPC7410 (G4) so far as
LINUX operation.

The biggest difference is that the 7410 has Altivec and the 750
doesn't.  Altivec is an extension to the instruction set that adds 32
128-bit registers plus a set of SIMD-style operations on those
registers.

Beyond that there will be differences in the special-purpose registers
(SPRs) accessible in kernel mode.  I don't think there would be
enormous difference but there would be some.

The kernel should detect which CPU you have and do the right thing
automatically.  Neither chip has an on-chip memory controller or
serial port; both have on-chip L1 I and D cache and on-chip L2 cache
controller and tag RAM (if I recall correctly).  So I don't know why
the kernel would hang when booting the G3.

Paul.


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