Brett Davis wrote:

If PowerPC was just another RISC chip this could not have happened.
Being late to the market with a me-too product would not have worked.
PowerPC dominates because of AltiVec and the bitfield extract and
other cool useful instructions that give good performance and good
inner loop code density.

Programmers LIKE PowerPC, whereas MIPS and ARM are tolerated.
(This is a major reason PowerPC dominates, pity the fool manager
that picks MIPS and cant find good programmers to work for him.)

ISA does matter, just not the way you think it does.

Brett - Actually working on ARM code right now.

My general observation of talking to PowerPC developers has been:
1. IBM couldn't have made a more impenetrable assembly language. Seriously
guys, never heard of register prefixes? Apple's variation was so much
nicer.

2. Why are the bits numbered back to front? Way to confuse the hell out of
people.

On the other hand, ARM development has been a rather pleasant experience; to
each his own

- Owen

(Not to say that any ISA is perfect; god knows ARM has its foibles, just
like any other. They're just not as pervasive.)