OS X Awaits PPC 970 as LinuxPPC Boots on Power5


As Apple prepares to reveal its widely-anticipated PowerPC 970 at the WWDC, LinuxPPC.org reveals that LinuxPPC version 2.5.59 is already up and running on IBM's Power5 hardware [attrib. MacBidouille]

The message at LinuxPPC.org, posted by Anton Blanchard, reads:

"The following is one of the original boot logs for Linux on a POWER5 microprocessor. Linux was ported to POWER5 at an IBM Lab in Austin Texas. The port was done with pre-production hardware. As such, we are not showing BogoMIPS or frequency numbers at this time."

The 970 is derived from IBM's Power4 processor, while the Power5 represents the next generation for IBM workstations. The Power6, currently under development, is scheduled for around 2004-2005.

Analysis: Doesn't the fact that Apple has good old Big Blue and a sizeable chunk of the Linux community (some of whom are working on Darwin, of course)sort-of, kind-of on-side make you feel a lot better? Not to mention that POWER processors to the nth Power (Power8, Power10, anyone) means OS X will just go onwards and upwards. It must have felt this way in the early '80s when Moto did 32-bit 68x processors for Apple and IBM/MS/Intel were stuck with that 8/16-bit chip.