I was mistaken, but the end result is the same. It's VSX that's POWER7 and higher specific, which is an extension of VMX/Altivec. The reality is actually worse

I was mistaken, but the end result is the same. It's VSX that's POWER7 and higher specific, which is an extension of VMX/Altivec. The reality is actually worse -- Altivec/VMX doesn't work at all in little-endian on the e6500. https://www.nxp.com/files-static/training/doc/ftf/2014/FTF-NET-F0139.pdf https://www.nxp.com/files-static/training/doc/ftf/2014/FTF-N... (search for "big-endian") So an LE distro for the e6500 would have to built with Altivec support disabled. (The powerpc notebook guys mention this in their FAQ, but sort of vaguely says that modern distros require "some functionality" not provided by the e6500 https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/faq/ https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/faq/)