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POWER (Performance Optimization With Enhanced Risc) is an extremely nice architecture compare to the x86. It's firmware system was so ahead of the BIOS disaster

by leccine 12y ago

POWER (Performance Optimization With Enhanced Risc) is an extremely nice architecture compare to the x86. It's firmware system was so ahead of the BIOS disaster (EFi might change this a bit, yet). I remember loading and booting kernels from NFS because you could load the network card drivers[1]. This is 2006, EFI was not known/used widely. The CPU itself has amazing features too.[2] I guess we are seeing another occurrence of Gresham's law applied to the technical field. "Bad architecture drives out good". In this case bad is cheaper, and this is the only thing we care about after all. 1. Open Firmware allows the system to load platform-independent drivers directly from the PCI card, improving compatibility. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware 2. http://www.spscicomp.org/ScicomP16/presentations/Power7_Performance_Overview.pdf http://www.spscicomp.org/ScicomP16/presentations/Power7_Perf...

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> EFi might change this a bit, yet As far as I can tell the only reason EFI even exists is NIH syndrome. Intel could have just adopted OpenFirmware for x64, and they still should.
- yuhong 12y ago
  http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter4/firmware/ http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter4/firmware/
TwoBit 12y ago
Everything seems like a nice architecture compared to x86. I do love the PowerPC instruction set though. I'm not a hardware guy, but it always seemed like PowerPC chips underperformed others and ran as hot as hell while doing so.
- protomyth 12y ago
  I seem to remember an article that pointed out some of the POWER addressing modes made it hard to optimize so it always would run slower than other chips. I would really love to hear what the story actually is.
Someone 12y ago
You cannot praise POWER for OpenFirmware. OpenFirmware came out of SUN, and allows for the development of CPU-independent drivers. IIRC, SUN needed that because they shipped workstation variants that either had a 68k CPU or a SPARC CPU.

by leccine 12y ago

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

> EFi might change this a bit, yet As far as I can tell the only reason EFI even exists is NIH syndrome. Intel could have just adopted OpenFirmware for x64, and they still should.

yuhong 12y ago
http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter4/firmware/ http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter4/firmware/

TwoBit 12y ago

Everything seems like a nice architecture compared to x86. I do love the PowerPC instruction set though. I'm not a hardware guy, but it always seemed like PowerPC chips underperformed others and ran as hot as hell while doing so.

protomyth 12y ago
I seem to remember an article that pointed out some of the POWER addressing modes made it hard to optimize so it always would run slower than other chips. I would really love to hear what the story actually is.

Someone 12y ago

You cannot praise POWER for OpenFirmware. OpenFirmware came out of SUN, and allows for the development of CPU-independent drivers. IIRC, SUN needed that because they shipped workstation variants that either had a 68k CPU or a SPARC CPU.