We hope that you will like the new additions to IDA.

The PPC decompiler is just a new decompiler that works with IDA. We had to solve many technical challenges to make it work (notably, the big endian nature of the PowerPC processor caused many inconveniences). Otherwise, the user experience should be the same as with other decompilers: just press F5 and enjoy the result. PowerPC code is especially wordy in assembler:

As you may have guessed, while working on the PPC decompiler we had to improve many aspects of the PowerPC processor module. Now it has a new register tracking algorithm, better offset handling, more complete relocation support, etc.

The new register tracking algorithm is used for the ARM processor too, greatly improving detection of indirect call targets, switch recognition, and recognition of other common compiler idioms.

We also spent quite long time improving our venerable PC processor module. It has now an improved prolog analysis algorithm; IDA can parse the Unwind structures and apply them to the disassembly; also recognition of SEH structures and idioms has been improved a lot.

Since Intel and AMD continue to add new instructions, we too try to be up to date. All new instructions we are aware of have been added to the PC processor module.

On a completely different level, we modularized IDAPython. Now, instead of one huge idaapi module we have separate modules, each with its purpose: ida_enum, ida_funcs, ida_graph, etc.

Backward-compatibility is of course preserved through the “umbrella” idaapi module: everything should still work as it used to.

IDA 6.95 ships with Qt 5.6.0. The 5.6.x branch is a “Long Term Support” branch, that will be maintained by the Qt developers for the next three years. In addition to being an LTS, Qt 5.6.0 offers better accessibility, hopefully improving some of our users’ workflow (especially on Windows.)