Inside the Machine

Vector Computing on the PowerPC 970

The G4e’s AltiVec implementation is the strongest part of its design. With four fully pipelined vector processing units, it has plenty of hardware to go around. As a brief recap from the last chapter, here’s a breakdown of the G4e’s four AltiVec units:

• vector permute unit (VPU)

• vector simple integer unit (VSIU)

• vector complex integer unit (VCIU)

• vector floating-point unit (VFPU)

All of this vector execution hardware is tied to a generous register file that consists of thirty-two 128-bit architectural registers and sixteen additional vector rename registers. Furthermore, each of the units is attached to a four-entry vector issue queue that can issue two vector ops per cycle to any of the four vector units.

Note

The ...