We are trying to evaluate what it would take to go from a T1024 to other processors in the T series. My understanding is anythin in the T2XXX and T4XXX are e6500 cores instead of e5500 cores. We are trying to understand what the migration will take. Are they binary compatible? would our code from the T1024 run assuming it is just using the MMU/straight instructions or are they fundamentally different at that level? Thanks.
The difference between e5500 and e6500 is quite big - multithreading, memory subsystem changes, power management, altivec, branch prediction and etc.
From the software compatibility aspect, the most critical change is related to memory subsystem, MMU and real address size.
For more details, please look e6500 Core Reference Manual, Table 1-3 and attached presentation from FTF-2012.