PowerPC 601 Microprocessor Features
Major features of the 601 and 601v are as follows:
• High-performance, superscalar microprocessor
— As many as three instructions in execution per clock (one to each of the three execution units)
— Single clock cycle execution for most instructions
— Pipelined FPU for all single-precision and most double-precision operations
• Three independent execution units and two register files
• High instruction and data throughput
— Zero-cycle branch capability
— Programmable static branch prediction on unresolved conditional branches
— Instruction unit capable of fetching eight instructions per clock from the cache
— An eight-entry instruction queue that provides lookahead capability
— Interlocked pipelines with feed-forwarding that control data dependencies in hardware
— Unified 32-Kbyte cache—eight-way set-associative, physically addressed; LRU replacement algorithm