A highly recommended paper describing how the issue between Reduced Instruction Set Computers and Complex Instruction Set Computers is actually one of instruction sets, and thus all the talk of the "convergence" of RISC and CISC is false. RISC is characterized by large general purpose register sets (one of which generally reads as zero), a load/store architecture, few addressing modes, 3 operand instruction formats, and uniform instruction length for simpler decoding. It also tackles the relative performance issue, higlighting the role of issues other than instruction set in determining the final numbers.
Assembler Language Reference (IBM)
The main definitive reference of the PowerPC instruction set. Fairly hard going.
PowerPC Microprocessor Family: The Programmer's Reference Guide (IBM, PDF)
As it says, a reference work. Mainly useful for details of instruction encodings.
IBM PowerPC 750CX/750CXe RISC Microprocessor User's Manual (IBM, PDF)
This is a great resource... it covers everything the above 2 references do, and more besides. It does have a has a slight drawback in that, being specific to the G3+, it reports things which may not be true in general for the PowerPCs. For example, the 64-bit instruction froms are reported as being "invalid", since the G3+ is a 32-bit chip. But I like it.
PowerPC Architecture (MacTech)
A reasonable but small tutorial. [Part 2]
Balance of Power: Introducing PowerPC Assembly Language (Apple)
A cool but ultimately too short tutorial.
A Beginners Guide to PowerPC Assembly Language (Lightsoft)
A tutorial mainly aimed at Macintosh programming and so spends quite a while covering the Mac OS API, but the early chapters are well suited to beginners ("what is an address?", "what does 'hexadecimal' mean?" etc). (Written by the makers of "Fantasm", the coolest assembler for Mac OS.)
Optimization Strategies for Mac OS: PowerPC Assembly (Apple)
A few little hints on optimization. Not a lot to go on though.
PowerPC Numerics (Apple)
Lots of stuff on floating-point on the PowerPC. A bit Mac OS-centric though.
The PowerPC Native Environment (Apple)
Details on the 68k compatibilty system used in the Mac OS, also some info on the Mac OS PowerPC ABI.
Looks to have some fairly useful stuff on AltiVec, but I haven't had time to really go over it yet.
Last modified: 2001-06-29 by nphillips.