A-EON Technology & Ultra Varisys sign $1.2M agreement for new PowerPC hardware

[vox]

it's not 25%... its more like 500% compared to modern midclass x86.
Also, there is no SIMD so it would be even slower in compared to AVX optimized x86 CPUs that have up-to 256-bit wide vector units.

You forgot to say which are produced in volumes of 100 000 models.  

But please point out any dual core PPC consumer board currently on sale to individuals and not military or sever type. That is the "same class"

[wawrzon]

Why would an x86 board have to be custom?

because it is the standard answer when mentioning x86 port os4 fans mindlessly repeat. someone must have told them that. wonder who.

[som99]

The Wii U could make a fairly ok AmigaOS 4.x/MorphOS machine with 2GB ram and a tricore 1.25 GHz PPC cpu (one core untill/when/if multi-core is supported).

From a price Point I Think more people would try AmigaOS 4.x if they could run it on the Wii U, price/preformance ratio can't be compared to low end entry level AOS4.x hardware and if they dont like it their Children can use the Wii U as a gaming system.

This is just me speculating, I got a sam440ep-flex and I would not say no to buying a Wii U for a faster AOS4.x experience at the price of the Wii U and dual boot with MorphOS would rock as replacement to my mac mini.

[nicholas]

because it is the standard answer when mentioning x86 port os4 fans mindlessly repeat. someone must have told them that. wonder who.

"0h t3h p1r4t3s!"

[yssing]

because it is the standard answer when mentioning x86 port os4 fans mindlessly repeat. someone must have told them that. wonder who.

Going x86, wont magically give us a wide range of hardware to run on, it won't port new software, it won't expand the userbase..

Need proof? Look at Aros, look at any kind of obscure OS for the x86. Those OS's still needs drivers and devoted development.
Switching to x86 will not give us one more bit of software, unless some one ports it.

Need proof that cheap hardware won't expand the userbase, look at morphos.

If you do want free OS and free software, go for linux, I am not holding you back.

I on the other hand, do not mind paying for hardware and software.

[ferrellsl]

Going x86, wont magically give us a wide range of hardware to run on, it won't port new software, it won't expand the userbase..

Need proof? Look at Aros, look at any kind of obscure OS for the x86. Those OS's still needs drivers and devoted development.

Actually switching to x86 WILL give you a wide range of hardware to run on if you're using AROS as an example.  I've been able to get AROS to run on 3 laptops and 4 desktops of various brands without any serious issues.  That's a lot broader selection than we have for OS4 and the performance of AROS puts OS4 to shame as does the price.  Yes, driver development and support isn't very broad on AROS but it's a lot broader than you have for OS4.  Just try finding decent wireless support for OS4 or GPU support beyond older Radeon cards and you'll be disappointed.  AROS already supports several wireless cards without any issues and has decent support for nVidia AND Radeon GPUs.  AROS also has a pretty decent library of software already ported as well.  So pointing out that AROS driver support is weak and a justifiable reason not to try it or migrating to x86 is a pretty weak argument in light of the even worse driver support for OS4.

[wawrzon]

Going x86, wont magically give us a wide range of hardware to run on, it won't port new software, it won't expand the userbase..

nothing more wrong than what you tell.. as usuall..

Need proof? Look at Aros, look at any kind of obscure OS for the x86. Those OS's still needs drivers and devoted development.

aros doesnt even sports the "name", you all os4 fans are so crazy after. if it was "officially" called "amiga os" you likely would hapilly run after it, as for instance hondo admits. and then i bet all these "obscure oses" on x86 are a magnitude bigger in therms of involved users than any amiga ng alternative. see the point? not that you ve not been told it before..

Switching to x86 will not give us one more bit of software, unless some one ports it.

Need proof that cheap hardware won't expand the userbase, look at morphos.

see above..

If you do want free OS and free software, go for linux, I am not holding you back.

you dont need to hold me. linux and aros are at my disposal if i need them.

I on the other hand, do not mind paying for hardware and software.

neither me if it had any value...

lets say id genuinely like to see custom amiga hardware like in the 80/90 enabling one to do the things others couldnt, even if it would cost a little more. ive made this calculation at the time. but id dont buy in custom hareware for the sake of it to be custom. simple, right?

[WolfToTheMoon]

But please point out any dual core PPC consumer board currently on sale to individuals and not military or sever type. That is the "same class"

Here




tens of thusands of these are available, for much less than an X1000 or Cyrus will be. There are also quad core versions.
The funniest part is that this is still the fastest PowerPC desktop and will remain even after P5040 Cyrus :juggler:

[yssing]

My point is still valid, but when aros dominates the scene, then I would have to reconsider. But as you say aros is not the official amiga OS.

[Hattig]

Going x86, wont magically give us a wide range of hardware to run on, it won't port new software, it won't expand the userbase..

It would provide a cheaper platform, even if it was only a single specific motherboard that was supported.

The barrier to entry for people interested in giving AmigaOS4 a try is MASSIVE.  It's for the hardcore users only at the moment. These users are important, it's true, but they're a tiny market.

Would it grow the userbase?  Well, at a reasonable price for an x86-64 (or ARM) version I'm sure it would sell quite a lot to people who are interested in the Amiga still (ex users in the main) but who don't want to put down the better part of a grand or two for the computer to go with it.

But yes, there wouldn't be any x86-64 (or ARM) AmigaOS software to run on it, it would all need to be recompiled, which given the quantity of abandonware on the Amiga would be difficult. Libraries using PowerPC assembler would also need some effort put in to optimise the x86/ARM path over the default C path (if it even exists).

To artificially impose barriers on your market is a terrible business plan, and bespoke custom PowerPC boards that cost 5x as much as an x86 board, and 10x as much as an entire ARM system, are a massive barrier.  No, it wouldn't make AmigaOS rocket up to being a major OS player, but it could double or triple the userbase - possibly even ten to hundred times the users if a Raspberry Pi, or ODROID-XU version was made.

I on the other hand, do not mind paying for hardware and software.

Whoopee for you.

[itix]

My point is still valid, but when aros dominates the scene, then I would have to reconsider.

AROS dominates the x86 scene. MorphOS dominates the PPC scene and AmigaOS dominates 68k scene. Where you see OS4 in this picture, I dont know.

[wawrzon]

My point is still valid, but when aros dominates the scene, then I would have to reconsider.

does it really matter so much, who wins? and do you really think os4 really rules for now?

But as you say aros is not the official amiga OS.

so what? are you a label victim? and if it really matters to you, how official is os4 in fact? what do you base your criteria "officiality" on, and, frankly, isnt it a little philistine and servilistic to think in those cathegories instead to make choices based on own Imagination and free will?

[OlafS3]

My point is still valid, but when aros dominates the scene, then I would have to reconsider. But as you say aros is not the official amiga OS.

I left the camp around 1994/95 and at that time there was no official "AmigaOS" but "Amiga". Today some people are supporting "AmigaOS" because it is the only one with legal "Amiga" in its name and it somehow is based on old code whereas MorphOS and AROS had to rewrite everything. On API level all three "NG" options are very similar, partly even identical (MorphOS and AROS are very similar). AmigaOS seems to go a different route trying to make it as incompatible to the others as possible (my personal impression). I do not care about "official" but what option is offering the best future and there I do not see much hope for "AmigaOS" (with or without Trevor).

[Linde]

Need proof that cheap hardware won't expand the userbase, look at morphos.

I'm sure you have numbers to support this or you wouldn't say something that immediately sounded so counterintuitive. Case in point: I (one person) wouldn't have bought MorphOS if it wasn't available for hardware that I could easily score for less than a hundred euros. That's an expansion of the userbase. Where's the logic in saying that it doesn't expand the userbase, given that I can prove that it has by at least one person?

Anyway, all luck and fun with this new system. I won't say that it's too expensive, because if you have the money to spare, it's just a matter of priorities. I'd personally rather see something with better backwards compatibility (i.e. classic chipset emulation) running on cheap off-the-shelf hardware than any of the current generation of workbench clones. WinUAE is good, but suffers from things that all software emulators running on top of full desktop operating systems suffer from.

[takemehomegrandma]

Current "next gen" (PS3 and Xbox 360) uses PPC. But iirc next "next gen" (PS4 and Xbox one) uses an AMD chip which is not PPC

The PlayStation 4 will launch November 15th, 2013 in the United States and November 29th, 2013 in Europe, Australia, and Latin America. This makes it, what, three weeks from being *current* generation! And it's x86!



The PS3 was released in 2006, when PPC's relevance had already gone away and its future on desktop and laptop had already been sealed as a dead end because of Apples x86 migration. I suppose it takes an Amiga fan to call a 7 year old platform that's practically replaced as "next gen"...

:lol:

[takemehomegrandma]

It looks monsterous expensive, but please point me out to any other dual core PPC board anywhere in the world?

OK, here is twenty of them: :lol:

G4 machines with 2 CPU cores (dual CPU):
   1. Apple Power Macintosh G4 450 DP (Gigabit)
2. Apple Power Macintosh G4 500 DP (Gigabit)
3. Apple Power Macintosh G4 800 DP (Quicksilver)
4. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.0 DP (QS 2002)
5. Apple Power Macintosh G4 867 DP (MDD)
6. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.0 DP (MDD)
7. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.25 DP (MDD)
8. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.25 DP (FW 800)
9. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.42 DP (FW 800)

G5 machines with 2 CPU cores (dual CPU)
   10. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.0 DP (PCI-X)
11. Apple Power Macintosh G5 1.8 DP (PCI-X)
12. Apple Power Macintosh G5 1.8 DP (PCI)
13. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.0 DP (PCI-X 2)
14. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.5 DP (PCI-X)
15. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.0 DP (PCI)
16. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.3 DP (PCI-X)
17. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.7 DP (PCI-X)

G5 machines with 2 CPU cores (single CPU)
   18. Apple Power Macintosh G5 Dual Core (2.0)
19. Apple Power Macintosh G5 Dual Core (2.3)

G5 machines with 4 CPU cores (dual CPU, QUAD CORE)
   20. Apple Power Macintosh G5 "Quad Core" (2.5)



Of course, the last one isn't dual core, it's Quad Core, but anyway... :lol:

Not that it matters much though, since Amiga isn't (per definition, per design) SMP capable. And it will never be. It can't be, it's simply not possible.

The only way you could make it truly SMP capable would be to break Amiga binary compatibility, and this goes completely against the very founding idea of both OS4 and MorphOS.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if MorphOS would do just that at this point in evolution; abandon the Amiga binary compatibility ambitions, and introducing true SMP/multithreading with real memory protection, making MorphOS a real 64-bit platform, and abandon the 31-bit limit on RAM addressing, etc, etc, etc. But if you are breaking the Amiga anyway, it would be mad to remain on the dead PPC architecture, because then it could *easily* (and relatively fast) be ported to real, 2013 level desktop/laptop HW! This is why all these multicore discussion in an Amiga/PPC context is so darn pointless! The day it will have true SMP, then it's nothing that really prevents it from running on x86 or ARM (or on whatever with a pulse)!

And BTW - "Multicore Support" in the sense of PowerUP or a simple way of using a second core as a dumb numbercruncher by special applications written explicitly for this, is not at all the same as real SMP. It's real SMP people want, and this is what people generally mean (it's understood without saying) when talking about "Multicore"...

 

It can only be compared to its relatives, other OS4 systems

Nonsense, it can (and should, of course) be compared to any and all systems it's technically capable of running on! This because the only single reason to why you will have to amortize your "X1000" to 2018 as you said in another thread (I really hope you joked about that, BTW), is because of a political decision made by a single or a few people, thus resulting in a HW route for OS4 that insane in so many ways. That's the only reason, nothing technical about it!

OS4 could very well have been running on G5's and PowerBooks since a long time ago. Instead you are forced to pay $3,000+ for a system with features that nobody needs or wants (all the "X" crap that just sits there like an inflamed appendix) and features you can't use (multicore) that performs *far worse* than any regular 2005 level Mac desktop system.

Comparisons to other systems that OS4 could technically run on (and should have run on, weren't it for stupid decisions) illuminates this problem, and it is the only hope of making them think differently some day.