Performance monitoring on the PowerPC 604 microprocessor

Performance monitors (PM) have been traditionally viewed as hardware luxuries only available to large/multichip processors. This perception is quickly changing thanks to the incorporation of monitoring instrumentation in most of the current high-volume microprocessors used in PCs and workstations. The PowerPC 604 uP has raised the standard of excellence in this area. It provides a wealth of very advanced features for analyzing system hardware, software, and symmetric multiprocessor systems. These capabilities are becoming indispensable as more function is moved from the system boards to the microprocessors. Furthermore, the PowerPC 604 is enhancing the effort of porting software between various architectures. Software vendors to system architects are currently taking advantage of these PowerPC 604 performance monitor capabilities with great success. Some of these companies include IBM, Apple, Motorola, Groupe Bull, and Microsoft among others.