Erik Speckman <especkma@romulus.reed.edu> writes:

In TidBITS #217 Mark Anbinder asserts that, instead of advancing the PowerPC architecture, the MPC 603 brings the PowerPC to low cost and low power applications.

This is only half right. The 603 advances the architecture by implementing separate instruction and data caches. It also implements a separate load/store unit, so that memory operations can execute in parallel with integer, floating point, and branch instructions. The 603 may not be the fastest member of the family but I think it looks more like the future of PowerPC than the 601 does.