Hyperion/A-EON introduce us to the AmigaOne X1000. A new beginning?

[MskoDestny]

With a few custom interrupt handlers, anything interrupt driven will be accelerated by the new Xena chip.  The fact that it doesn't have to store its registers while processing those interrupts will make it preferred over other interrupt solutions.

I don't get the impression that it can handle interrupts on the main machine. It can handle changes to its I/O lines in an interrupt like fashion, but since all of its I/O lines are hooked up to the Xorro slot that presumably means that none are hooked up to the rest of the hardware on the board (which makes sense since the CPU is probably a SoC with most of the other harware like the ethernet, USB and PCIe controllers on the same chip). Presumably the connection between the XCore and the CPU is via the XCore's JTAG interface.

As a result, I doubt it will be useful for much without some kind of Xorro card unless you have some processing to offload that will fit in 64KB of RAM.

[yoodoo]

The XCore chip proposed atm is the lower end version, that, and the Xorro slot suggests to me it's meant to be treated like the Clockport on the A1200 or the expansion slot of the A500. The onboard XCore will therefore mostly handle I/O and communication between add on boards and the OS.

But, seeing the price of the xcore chips and the fact that the Xorro slot is in a standard format, suggests that add-on boards could be built pretty cheaply.

Eg imagine an add-on board to run the lights/sound equipment of a small theatre. Because of the nature of XCore, timings are going to be good, and you could scale the whole thing up by simply adding another board.

[jorkany]

But, seeing the price of the xcore chips and the fact that the Xorro slot is in a standard format, suggests that add-on boards could be built pretty cheaply.

Eg imagine an add-on board to run the lights/sound equipment of a small theatre. Because of the nature of XCore, timings are going to be good, and you could scale the whole thing up by simply adding another board.

Or you could just buy something like this for $200 and scale up by plugging additional units into another USB port. On *any* computer.
http://www.dmxsoft.com/details.php?id_pro=LDNANO&cat_pro=28

Things were different in the 1980s, you couldn't just buy anything to add on to your computer. Nowdays you'd struggle to come up with a project that somebody else hasn't already refined and mass produced for use with a bog-standard PC at a fraction of the cost you could build it yourself. Even the X1000 falls into this category, look at all the video cards that support CUDA.

[Boudicca]

I am trying...  -really, really hard- not to say anything negative... I really am (believe me)

But so far (ok, its only been 1 day), I have not found a single reason why this X-chip will be of any benefit for an end user such as myself, I am no hardware hacker or programmer.

Hmmm Not a bad point. Then again, 99% of all "users" have no facility to learn, thats why when Mr Dyson says regarding innovation is "After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology". Yet the current tools required to innovate are exclusive and prevent true discovery or are locked to prevent competitors.

An Amiga was and will be a way for people to learn and innovate.

[billt]

My biggest concern is hardware compatibility.  Those PCIe ports are great but ultimately meaningless if you don't have drivers for more than a mere handful of obscure PCIe expansions.

I've always hated this kind of argument. Where would you like things to begin, have the driver writers working before they have a slot to plug anything into and test? Hans's Radeon drivers should work on whatever chips he already supports in PCI form. (board has PCIe Radeon and PCIe-PCI slot bridge chip) I'll assume that there will be drivers for anything built into the board. And there's a couple old-school PCI-32 slots to use. To me it makes a lot more sense to start with providing PCI-Express slots, then add some patience for driver coders to catch up. And I expect drivers to be provided for stuff on the motherboard, which I do guess to be via a PCI-Express connection.

(My guess is CPU SOC PCIe to what I guess to be an SB600 southbridge, which contains a bridge to PCI32 for those slots, PCI32 to the FPGA, and FPGA to the Xcore, and Xcore to the Xorro, possiblly also FPGA to the Xorro, but that is all just a guess)

[billt]

The XCore chip proposed atm is the lower end version, that, and the Xorro slot suggests to me it's meant to be treated like the Clockport on the A1200 or the expansion slot of the A500. The onboard XCore will therefore mostly handle I/O and communication between add on boards and the OS.

Consider a cheapo PCB to connect a clockport header to the Xorro slot...

[billt]

I guess the intended solution to this is to add more XMOS chips. What I'm not clear on is how this is supposed to happen. You can't just attach a bin and dump a few chips into it, after all. Does XMOS sell a board that plugs into the Xorro slot? I doubt it. PCIe?

Someone will make a Xorro board. I will be suprised if not. What does XMOS want you to use a Xorro board for? What do you want to use it for? There will probably be a number of choices, to provide different kinds of IO at the rear. Ethernet ports? Audio connectors? Midi? Xcore based Minimig port connectors? Joystick? Clock Port? Floppy port?

[Dr_Righteous]

Someone will make a Xorro board. I will be suprised if not. What does XMOS want you to use a Xorro board for? What do you want to use it for? There will probably be a number of choices, to provide different kinds of IO at the rear. Ethernet ports? Audio connectors? Midi? Xcore based Minimig port connectors? Joystick? Clock Port? Floppy port?

Of course they will. I'm sure Jens Schoenfeld is salivating at this very moment.

[Gavilan]

Pardon my total ignorance...but..will this new "Super Amiga" will be backwards compatible? (I mean, capable of playing all Amiga OS 3X software?). Will it be in fomr of some "emulator" built-in or something like that?

[Hans_]

My biggest concern is hardware compatibility.  Those PCIe ports are great but ultimately meaningless if you don't have drivers for more than a mere handful of obscure PCIe expansions.

Those should come once the hardware is out. There will be existing PCI hardware that has PCIe versions; since the registers are in the same place, the existing drivers will cope nicely. As for new hardware, well I've been working on some drivers for a while now. Right now the cards I'm using have a PCI-to-PCIe bridge on them so that they plug into my A1, but I'm looking forward to being able to use PCIe directly. It's going to take a while before these graphics cards are fully used, but I'm making progress.

Hans

[arnljot]

Of course they will. I'm sure Jens Schoenfeld is salivating at this very moment.

Nothing more than what is the case with current OS4 I would suspect.

[Hans_]

Or you could just buy something like this for $200 and scale up by plugging additional units into another USB port. On *any* computer.
http://www.dmxsoft.com/details.php?id_pro=LDNANO&cat_pro=28

The USB port would add extra latency which may or may not matter.

Things were different in the 1980s, you couldn't just buy anything to add on to your computer. Nowdays you'd struggle to come up with a project that somebody else hasn't already refined and mass produced for use with a bog-standard PC at a fraction of the cost you could build it yourself. Even the X1000 falls into this category, look at all the video cards that support CUDA.

Yet, some crazy people still build stuff themselves, just for kicks.

Hans

[motorollin]

Pardon my total ignorance...but..will this new "Super Amiga" will be backwards compatible? (I mean, capable of playing all Amiga OS 3X software?). Will it be in fomr of some "emulator" built-in or something like that?

AFAIK OS4 doesn't provide backwards compatibility in terms of custom chip emulation and transparent execution of classic software. My hope is that the X1000 will include classic Amiga custom chip emulation as part of the Xena chipset or whatever it is, and that this will be supported in software to provide transparent classic support.

--
moto

[arnljot]

OS4 runs 68k system friendly software. Some says MOS does this better. I don't know, but in theory it's supposed to be the same level of compatability.

But anything that tries to tap paula or denise directly will fail.

[cv643d]

An Amiga was and will be a way for people to learn and innovate.

Yes, I can see what you mean back when a color Macintosh cost 9000 dollars and the "toaster" was the reason for existance for the Amiga in the US. Then a kid with a 500 dollar Amiga 500 could do cooler stuff with less dineros and that was shocking and cool.

But honestly for most kids with an A500 here in Sweden, Amiga was just a way to get free games in excess from all your friends in school, then those without life failed to hop on the 486 bandwagon when 1995 came and became addicts of Amiga for the rest of their life

[NovaCoder]

It wont match the price of a SAM... as Hyperion said it, SAM = entry level machine, in otherwords its the lower specced, cheaper way to get an OS4.1 machine.

It looks to me like the SAM will be replaced with a lower-cost version of this new HW....