[MrRadar]

For those who are not familiar with the author of this blog, he is a PowerPC enthusiast and the maintainer of TenFourFox, a Firefox port to PPC OS X. He's also currently working on a new PPC JIT for (modern) Firefox on Linux (a project for which he is looking for volunteers to assist him[1]) to bring it to speed parity with Chrome on PPC (which already has a PPC JIT).

[1] https://www.talospace.com/2019/03/pitch-into-firefox-jit.htm...

[jchw]

I just picked up a G4 iBook and am grateful for TenFourFox. Combined with uBlock Origin legacy builds, it’s actually usable for some modern sites, which is pretty impressive.

[classichasclass]

Author here. Thanks for the kind word. :)

[MuffinFlavored]

Why the obsession with PPC? Don't you feel you could put your time + effort into something more modern that isn't dying?

[MrRadar]

PPC is far from dead. You can buy brand-new POWER9 workstations with up to 44 cores (with SMT4 for 176 threads) from Raptor Computer Systems. They are also about as open as a modern computer can be with board schematics included with every system and only one component with closed firmware (the BCM5719 network controller, which is currently being reverse-engineered so an open firmware can be developed).

[mritun]

Nonsense. PowerPC in old PowerMac and modern POWER 9 have about as much in common as Pentium Pro and a modern Xeon!

PowerPC is a dead platform, POWER9 is not - but they are not the same!

[classichasclass]

I'm not sure that's an apt comparison. If you were saying that 32-bit PPC is dead, then the answer is probably yes at least in general computing, though there are still lots of 32-bit PowerPC parts in embedded systems. However, 64-bit PowerPC systems have substantially more in common with "big" POWER. The G5, which was clearly positioned as a member of the PowerPC family (PPC970) but descended from the POWER4, would be the classic example.

[nickpsecurity]

PowerPC is dead for the larger market but sticks around in specialty markets. Mainly NXP (formerly Freescale):

https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers...

Also, the separation kernels that met NSA's highest standards of security initially targeted that for cross-selling into aerospace market. They buy a good chunk of PPC for some reason. Example that was among first certified with data on what was expected:

https://www.ghs.com/products/safety_critical/integrity-do-17...

[mromanuk]

Wow, didn’t know that, amazing. What is the main use of those machines?

[classichasclass]

The Talos II I'm typing this reply on is just my regular workstation. I have a dual-4, which is 32 threads, and it runs Fedora. Most things work just fine and it's a very nice daily driver. I'll probably upgrade it to a dual-8 in the near future for even more parallel goodness.

I also have a Blackbird, which does streaming video in the home theatre and is also a test system. It's a single-4, but it can take an 8-core part if desired.

[darkpuma]

With that kind of hardware, is hardware decoding and encoding of media a possibility? A DLNA server with hardware transcoding is something I've been thinking about recently.

[MrRadar]

They are primarily intended for people who need lots of threads for high-end workstation uses (see Phoronix's benchmarks[1]), people who want open computers (whether for security/auditability or ideological reasons), or just people who want something different from the mainstream.

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-t...

[andai]

Found the store! https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html

[georgemcbay]

The same reason some people still use Amigas with 680x0s... rampant nostalgia.

I kinda don't get it on a personal level, but accept that different people are into different stuff and sometimes people get really attached to specific things, and sometimes those things are computer architectures.

[classichasclass]

Why do you say it's dying?

[krackers]

Do you mean webkit on ppc (since I searched but couldn't find a chrome port)

[MrRadar]

There is a community Chromium port to PPC Linux[1]. Modern PPC Linux distros should have it in their repositories. So far Google has not accepted the patches to enable PPC support upstream[2].

[1] https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Porting/Chromium

[2] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...

[dillonmckay]

What is the last supported OS X version for PowerPC processors?

[IntelMiner]

10.5.8 "Leopard"