PowerPC 7xx
Such designations were applied to Mac computers such as the PowerBook G3, the multicolored iMacs, iBooks and several desktops, including both the Beige and Blue and White Power Macintosh G3s.
The low power requirements and small size made the processors ideal for laptops and the name lived out its last days at Apple in the iBook.
The 7xx family had its shortcomings, namely lack of SMP support and SIMD capabilities and a relatively weak FPU.
The 740/750 models had 6.35 million transistors and were initially manufactured by IBM and Motorola in an aluminium based fabrication process.
The design was so successful that it quickly surpassed the PowerPC 604e in integer performance, causing a planned 604 successor to be scrapped.
[3][4] The processor has 10.4 million transistors, is manufactured by BAE Systems using either 250 or 150 nm process and has a die area of 130 mm2.
The RAD750 packaging and logic functions has a price tag in excess of US$200,000 [citation needed]: the high price is mainly due to radiation hardening revisions to the PowerPC 750 architecture and manufacturing, stringent quality control requirements, and extended testing of each processor chip manufactured.
Motorola revised the 740/750 design in 1998 and shrunk die size to 51 mm2 thanks to a newer aluminium based fabrication at 0.22 μm.
[5] It is manufactured using a 0.13 μm copper based fabrication with Low-K dielectric and Silicon on insulator technology.
[6] Orion is using Honeywell International Inc. flight computer originally built for Boeing's 787 jet airliner.
It has an on-die 1 MB L2 cache, a top frequency of 1.1 GHz, and support for bus speeds up to 200 MHz among other enhancements compared to 750FX.
It is manufactured using a 0.13 μm process with copper interconnects, low-K dielectric, and silicon on insulator technology.
It would be the most powerful and featured version to date with up to 4MB of off die L3 cache, a 400Mhz DDR front side bus and the same implementation of AltiVec used in the PowerPC 970.
[7] It was reported to be finished and ready for production in December 2003, but said timing was too late for it to get significant orders seeing Apple's iBook line had switched to G4s in October the same year, and thus it quickly fell off the roadmap.
The 750CL is manufactured using a 90 nm copper based fabrication with Low-K dielectric and Silicon on insulator technology and features 20 million transistors on a 16 mm2 die.
The largely unconfirmed characteristics are a triple core CPU which runs at 1.24 GHz and a 45 nm process.
In particular, IBM has no public plans to produce an ordinary 750-based microprocessor in a process smaller than 90 nm, effectively phasing it out as a commodity chip competitive in such markets as networking equipment.
