developerWorks: Linux on Mac: A POWER Programmer’s Primer

“The POWER architecture describes a family of RISC CPUs that
arose out of a consortium of IBM, Apple, and Motorola. Within this
chip family, higher-end POWER4 chips are used in various IBM
mid-range machines; at a personal computer, workstation, or
workgroup-server level, the PowerPC branch of POWER chips are used
in widely-used consumer machines from Apple Computer. Chips in the
PowerPC family–especially those from Motorola–are also used in
various embedded and specialized systems, including PCs from
smaller manufacturers such as the phoenix-like current incarnation
of Amiga.

“The interrelations among various POWER architecture chips are
similar to those in the x86 world–for the most part, later
generations of chips provide backward compatibility with earlier
ones while also offering new and enhanced capabilities. Within the
PowerPC family branch, five-year-old Apple machines used 601, 603,
and 604 model chips. The current models have phased out the G3 but
continue to use the similar G4, both 32-bit chips, running at
various clock speeds; the recently introduced G5 is a 64-bit IBM
chip that mostly adds some multimedia-specialized instructions to
the POWER4 chip models.

“The bottom line on all these chips, from a Linux developer’s
perspective, is that they all run Linux happily and well. For the
PowerPC branch of the chips, excellent consumer-friendly
distributions are available and offer commercial customer support.
IBM also installs Linux for customers of its high-end POWER4
machines…”

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