Ja rikal ze je PPC "nejlepsi" :-) great news ...

[Petr Krenzelok <Petr.Krenzelok@trz.cz>]

Sorry ze to tady flooduju, ale je to na strance newsu a nejsem si jist,
ze to tam bude i treba za par dni - dostal jsem se tam skrze
http://www.osnews.com ze sekce news ....

AltiVec je ta nova tehcnologie a bude umoznovat daleko vice nez MMX nebo
pripadne ekvivalenty:

klasicke procesory pouzivaji pro specialni multimedialni aplikace jistym
zpusobem jiz existujici "integer" a "floating-point" jednotky (viz
sprosty hack ala MMX - no fuj), ale Motorola pridala "vector" jednotku,
ktera samozrejme muze pracovat paralelne s ostatnimi jednotkami, takze
tato nova technologie umozni zpracovavat az 16 x vice dat nez soucasne
PPC systemy.

AltiVec ma taky DSP fce, kdy DSP procesor zvladne 8 modemu, nove PPC
obslouzi 30 28.8 kbps modemu ....


Jeste jednou, sorry za flood,

baj -pekr-

Motorola to unveil new PowerPC design 
     By Jim Davis
     Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM 
     May 6, 1998, 4:00 a.m. PT 

Tomorrow, Motorola will formally unveil new technology for boosting the
performance of PowerPC chips, taking the venerable chip architecture in
new directions.

Motorola will add what is partly an answer to Intel's much-hyped MMX
multimedia instruction set. The "AltiVec" technology will be
incorporated in some commercial PowerPC chips starting in late 1998,
according to the company. 

But the technology also goes far beyond MMX, addressing a range of
markets that MMX doesn't such as networking and telephony.
Interestingly, the chip is being rolled out at Networld+Interop which is
primarily a networking conference.

AltiVec adds fatter pipes and a "data engine" inside the chip for
manipulating large quantities of data. Potential applications include
speech processing and networking routers, which manage Internet traffic.

"This is really a big ray of hope for the PowerPC people. The perception
is that the PowerPC is fading with the Mac, and that their number is up,
but that's not really case," said Jim Turley, senior analyst with
MicroDesign Resources. "They are succeeding, but not in the glamorous,
high profile places people hear about, " he added.

Apple Computer, which took part in the development of the technology, is
expected by analysts to eventually use the new technology in its
Macintosh computers to aid in image and video processing. Apple could
detail its use of the technology as soon as its developer conference
later this month.

Apple could not be reached for comment.

Other chips such as Sun Microsystem's Sparc and Digital's Alpha already
have similar technologies, analysts note.
Intel's MMX technology is perhaps the most widely known because of that
company's marketing efforts.

"AltiVec can gobble a lot more data at a time than any others," Turley
said, comparing its potential favorably with Intel's MMX. "Particularly
crippled is MMX because they grafted [multimedia extensions] onto a
processor never meant for it."

AltiVec is two new technologies, one hardware, the other software. On
the hardware side, it adds a new "execution unit" inside the PowerPC
processor that is built to efficiently process certain kinds of data.
All mainstream processors already come with execution units call
"integer" and "floating point" designed to efficiently process other
kinds of data.

The new "vector unit" operates concurrently with the existing floating
point and integer units found in typical desktop PC processors. 

On the software side, the chip will be able to use a total of 162 new
instructions for manipulating data. This is of critical importance but
with one major catch: Developers must write programs that use the
instructions, and changes need to be made to the operating system to
accommodate the instructions, said Turley. 

In stark technical terms, PowerPC chips with this technology will be
able to process 16 times the number of data "chunks" for each clock
cycle compared to previous designs.

"Think of the chip as having a doorway in and out of the chip that's 32
bits wide, but the hallways are 128 bits wide," Turley offers. "Once
data is moved out of [main memory] and into the chip, they can really
swing lots of data around and do special number crunching, more so than
other chips."

For instance, a single chip with AltiVec technology could run 30
28.8kbps modems in a remote access server (the kind a Internet service
provider uses). This compares to a high-performance digital signal
processor (DSP), which can run 8 modems, says Will Swearingen, product
marketing manager for Motorola.

Motorola said the chip will initially be targeted at high-end networking
and desktop computing applications, but will later find its way into
lower-cost designs. The chip will be produced in sample quantities
during the second half of 1998, with volume production slated for the
first half of 1999.