PowerPC

PowerPC is a 32- and 64-bit RISC instruction set architecture created in the early 1990s by the PowerPC Consortium, a collaboration of IBM, Apple, and Motorola (the AIM alliance). It merged IBM's POWER line with design goals aimed at performance in personal computers and embedded systems. The name PowerPC reflects the lineage from POWER and the PPC designation used by Apple and Motorola for its consumer platforms.

PowerPC processors are designed with multiple endianness options; they support both big-endian and little-endian data formats. The architecture exists in several variants for 32-bit and 64-bit operation, with the 64-bit version often referred to as PowerPC 64 or PPC64. It has been implemented in desktop computers, servers, embedded devices, and game consoles.

Historically, the PowerPC line powered Apple’s Macintosh computers from the mid-1990s until the Intel transition in 2006, including 32-bit and later 64-bit Macs. IBM produced many POWER-based chips for servers, while embedded and consumer devices used PowerPC cores. Nintendo employed PowerPC-based CPUs in its GameCube and Wii consoles, and Sony’s PlayStation 3 uses a PowerPC-based PPE within the Cell Broadband Engine.

Today, the PowerPC ecosystem continues under the broader Power ISA, stewarded by the OpenPOWER Foundation. The foundation and IBM’s POWER design teams maintain and extend the architecture as Power ISA, with modern CPUs such as POWER9 and POWER10 in servers and high-performance systems. PowerPC as a label remains in legacy products and embedded markets, while active development emphasizes the Power ISA and OpenPOWER platforms.