OpenPOWER opens further [LWN.net]

OpenPOWER opens further

Posted Aug 21, 2019 21:43 UTC (Wed) by tshow (subscriber, #6411)
In reply to: OpenPOWER opens further by ncultra
Parent article: OpenPOWER opens further

I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as to yawn at this, but it is a little hard to tell what the benefits are here if you aren't fabbing chips.

I do wonder if this opens up some interesting possibilities for hardware-assisted emulation of older hardware, particularly game consoles. Several Nintendo consoles, for instance (including the GameCube, the Wii and the WiiU) and the XBox 360 were PPC, and there are years of Mac software that targeted PPC macs.

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OpenPOWER opens further

Posted Aug 21, 2019 22:54 UTC (Wed) by jccleaver (guest, #127418) [Link] (1 responses)

> I do wonder if this opens up some interesting possibilities for hardware-assisted emulation of older hardware, particularly game consoles. Several Nintendo consoles, for instance (including the GameCube, the Wii and the WiiU) and the XBox 360 were PPC, and there are years of Mac software that targeted PPC macs.

And the PS3 (infamously), no?

OpenPOWER opens further

Posted Aug 22, 2019 14:10 UTC (Thu) by tshow (subscriber, #6411) [Link]

> And the PS3 (infamously), no?

Kind of, but Cell was its own unique beast. The main core is PPC, but a lot of the real work happens in the co-processors.