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I am trying to assemble a timeline of PowerPC series processors. It is complicated by the fact that there were multiple manufacturers.

So far I have:

IBM POWER
1990 POWER1
1992 RSC
1993 POWER2
1998 POWER3
2001 POWER4
2005 POWER5

IBM Power PC
1993 PowerPC 601 (derived from the RSC or POWER1?)
???? PowerPC 603 (did IBM ever make any?)
1995 PowerPC 604
1996 PowerPC 603e
1997 PowerPC 604e
2001 PowerPC 750 (G3)
???? PowerPC G4
???? PowerPC G5

IBM RS series
1997 RS64
1998 RS64 II
1999 RS64 III
2000 RS64 IV

IBM Other
2000 Gekko (Nintendo Gamecube)
2006 Broadway (Nintendo Wii)
2006 Cell Broadband Engine (Sony Playstation 3, was IBM the manufacturer?)

Motorola PowerPC
1993 PowerPC 601
1994 PowerPC 603
1994 PowerPC 601v
1995 PowerPC 602
???? PowerPC 603e
???? PowerPC 604
???? PowerPC 604e
???? G3 (did they make any?)
???? G4 (did they make any?)

Motorola Other
2005 Xenon (Microsoft XBOX 360)

Can you help fill in the missing dates? Are there any processors missing?

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    Cell was indeed manufactured by IBM. It was actually sold on blades even before its use in the PS3. It was also used in some TVs, media equipment, notebooks, and on add-in cards (a smaller version with only 4 SPUs). There was also an upgraded version.
    – Jörg W Mittag
    May 25 at 9:19
  • @JörgWMittag do you have any dates or reference for that? I know they made a socketed version of Gekko, but don't have details of Cell.
    – user
    May 25 at 10:17
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    There was Xenon as well of course. I'm interested in the relationship between Cell and the other PowerPC processors. Wikipedia implies it is based on G2 parts with extensive modifications, but it's too vague to come to a conclusion.
    – user
    May 25 at 10:19
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    You are missing the Espresso CPU (2012, Nintendo Wii U).
    – idspispopd
    May 25 at 11:45
  • On a broader note, can I ask why you're interested in the release/availability dates of all these different MPUs in your succession of questions of different families of them? They do no harm, just wondering what it's all for :-)
    – TonyM
    May 25 at 21:20

2 Answers 2

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A lot of that information can be found on Wikipedia: G4 was introduced in 1999. Designed by IBM and Motorola, manufactured only by Motorola. PowerPC 970 (only Apple referred to it as 'G5') was introduced in 2002. Follow the links in the "POWER, PowerPC, and Power ISA architectures" boxes of either article to find information on all other PowerPC CPUs.

Other PowerPC CPUs that were used in desktop computers - your question seems to be pretty desktop/server centric, given you're not listing any non-desktop CPUs - would be P.A.Semi's PWRficient, AMCC's PowerPC 440 and 460 and Freescale's QorIQ series (P5020 and P5040). All of those were used in AmigaOne computers.

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Freescale which is now part of NXP, made quite a few PowerPC chips. Look up the Freescale MPCxxxx parts and the QorIQ P-series and T-series parts. To my knowledge T-Series is was the last of the NXP PowerPC parts, as its market has been taken over by ARM cores.

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    Freescale == Motorola
    – Glen Yates
    May 25 at 13:52

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