DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE POWERPC-601 MICROPROCESSOR

The PowerPC 601(TM) microprocessor (601) is the first member of a fami ly of processors that support IBM's PowerPC Architecture(TM). The 601 is a general-purpose processor based on a superscalar design point. As with any development effort, the 601 development program had several different, often conflicting, design goals. The most important require ments were support for the PowerPC Architecture, a short development c ycle, competitive performance and cost, compatibility with existing PO WER applications, and support for multiprocessing. This paper describe s several aspects of the 601 design and discusses some of the design t rade-offs considered in those areas.