A-EON Technology CVBA and Varisys Ltd Announce Partnership

[SysAdmin]

London, 17th June 2010
 
 
A-EON Technology CVBA and Varisys Ltd., are pleased to announce their partnership in the development of the AmigaOne X1000 hardware platform for AmigaOS. Varisys Ltd were identified as the ideal hardware partner for the ambitious project to create a new, genuinely modern computer system to run AmigaOS4.x in late 2008, even before the formal creation of A-EON Technology. In early 2009, Varisys Ltd began work on developing a new PowerPC based motherboard, codenamed Nemo, which would form the heart of the new AmigaOne X1000 computer. After months of design and testing, Varisys delivered the first Nemo prototypes in late 2009 and have now completed a Revision 2 design, which will be supplied to beta testers under the recently announced Extended Beta Test Program.
 
A-EON Technology director Trevor Dickinson said "We are very pleased to reveal Varisys as our AmigaOne X1000 hardware partner. They have a proven track record for delivering high quality products on time and to budget. Their extensive experience with PowerPC and parallel processing solutions makes them our ideal technical partners, and with their help we can revitalise the AmigaOne platform". Varisys Managing Director Paul Gentle said "We are equally pleased to be working with A-EON Technology and we believe our previous background and experience will prove vital in helping to make the AmigaOne X1000 a success" Adam Barnes, Varisys co-founder, added. "The Nemo motherboard design introduced some new and interesting technical challenges but we are extremely pleased with the results. Revision 2 of the Nemo board has recently been completed and will form a solid foundation for the A1-X1000 and beyond".
 
Visitors to the VCF Exhibition at Bletchley Park on Saturday, June the 19th, will be able to meet some of the Varisys team on the joint A-EON Technology / Hyperion Entertainment stand.
 
Further information via the linked PDF below.
 
http://dev.amigans.net/a-eon/NewsRelease-20100618.pdf
 
 
About Varisys Ltd. Varisys is a producer of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) products and provider of bespoke hardware design and manufacturing services for industrial and embedded computing applications. The High Wycombe, UK, based company was founded in 2000 by Paul Gentle and Adam Barnes, and since then has earned a reputation for delivering high-quality products with a specialisation in PowerPC and FPGA hardware. Varisys have customers in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, military applications and telecommunications, and are perhaps best known for their development of the PowerPC G4 motherboard used in the immensely popular WholeHog III lighting control console.
 
For more information, see the Varisys website.
 
About A-EON Technology CVBA
A-EON Technology is a technology start-up based in Belgium. Founded in 2009 by Trevor Dickinson, Anthony Moorley and Ben Hermans, A-EON works in very close cooperation with Hyperion Entertainment CVBA, the developers of the AmigaOS Operating System, to produce modern computer systems for AmigaOS.
 
About the AmigaOne X1000 The AmigaOne X1000 is a new high-end AmigaOS hardware platform scheduled for release during the summer of 2010. By providing the AmigaOS platform with a high power dual-processor CPU, modern interface standards, high-end graphics and Xcore technology, the X1000 will launch a new era of modern Amiga computing.
For further information, email contact@a-eon.com

[the_leander]

high power dual-processor CPU

That's great and all, but since when does AOS, in any form support multiple CPUs? Last I checked to do so would break a great many things.

[Karlos]

Varisys are also known for producing PA Semi processor boards.

I speculated that the CPU for the X1000 would be a PASemi PA6T (or similar) when it was first announced, but it seemed unlikely given that PASemi were pretty much bought out by apple.

The plot thickens :lol:

[Pyromania]

Varisys are also known for producing PA Semi processor boards.

I speculated that the CPU for the X1000 would be a PASemi PA6T (or similar) when it was first announced, but it seemed unlikely given that PASemi were pretty much bought out by apple.

The plot thickens :lol:

http://www.mil-embedded.com/products/search/fm/id/?34789

It's Military Spec, Doomy is going to poo himself.

[the_leander]

:lol: @ the doomy reference.

How would the PA6T compare against the end of the line "G4" as found in Quicksilver Macs and the final Powerbooks?

[Karlos]

That's great and all, but since when does AOS, in any form support multiple CPUs? Last I checked to do so would break a great many things.

There's two ways of looking at this. One the one hand, you've got a non SMT based OS and a dual core CPU. Not an effective combination. However, just one of the cores in a 2GHz class PA Semi is already significantly faster than any existing G4 box upon which OS4 runs and still included niceties like Altivec. Overall, then, you are still getting a faster system, just not one you are making full use of.

Now, as for SMT, in it's purest form with total backwards compatibility with 3.x, I don't imagine it happening. If no better solution is possible, it may be that a "hybrid" form, where threads created by legacy applications are confined to one core, but those of well-behaved "native" applications are not, is doable.

[Karlos]

:lol: @ the doomy reference.

How would the PA6T compare against the end of the line "G4" as found in Quicksilver Macs and the final Powerbooks?

Pretty well, I would imagine. The PA6T was supposed to be more like the "G5", only without having to install a petrol powered generator and industrial cooling to run the thing.

http://www.systerra.de/documents/PA_Semi_PA6T_1682M_PB_694.pdf

[the_leander]

There's two ways of looking at this. One the one hand, you've got a non SMT based OS and a dual core CPU. Not an effective combination. However, just one of the cores in a 2GHz class PA Semi is already significantly faster than any existing G4 box upon which OS4 runs and still included niceties like Altivec. Overall, then, you are still getting a faster system, just not one you are making full use of.

Are there any comparisons between the various PPCs? I'd be curious to see how the PA6t, G4 and Titan cpus stood.

Now, as for SMT, in it's purest form with total backwards compatibility with 3.x, I don't imagine it happening. If no better solution is possible, it may be that a "hybrid" form, where threads created by legacy applications are confined to one core, but those of well-behaved "native" applications are not, is doable.

Sounds almost like running a VM.

[the_leander]

Pretty well, I would imagine. The PA6T is supposed to be more like the "G5", only without having to install a petrol powered generator and industrial cooling to run the thing.

Interesting.

And the cooling system on the dual dual core Mac towers was only that over-engineered so as to provide as quiet a cooling solution as possible. A more regular system could have been employed but it'd have been louder. IIRC the heat output from a G5 was in the same league as an Athlon64 of the same vintage.

[Karlos]

Are there any comparisons between the various PPCs? I'd be curious to see how the PA6t, G4 and Titan cpus stood.

I'm sure google will bring up something.

-edit-
Off the top of my head, the last "G4" processors used in apple machines were the 7448 Apollo 8 variant. Now I don't think Apple ever used them directly as these are Freescale parts but 3rd party vendors have released upgrades for G4 boxes using them. A quick search reveals that these:

Are fabbed at 90nm process, copper interconnect
Single core, 32-bit
Have altivec
Run up to 2GHz with 200MHz FSB
TDP of ~18W @ 1.7GHz
1MB L2 cache

The PA6T:

Are fabbed at 65nm process
Dual core, 32/64-bit
Have altivec
Run beyond 2GHz (haven't found a direct source for the ceiling, but 2.5GHz is quoted a lot).
TDP of ~7W @ 2GHz
Upto 8MB L2 cache (configurations from 512K upwards) with "MOESI" cache coherency (see AMD64 docs for more on that).
Virtualisation/Hypervisor features
Dual integrated DDR2 memory controllers at ~1066MHz


What was interesting about the X1000 motherboard was the presence of 2 pairs of DDR slots, the arrangement of which would seem to lend itself to the dual DDR2 configuration of the above PA6T specs.

One thing that doesn't stack up is the instruction set architecture version. AFAIK, the PA6T adheres to the v2.04, but the documented info on the X1000 suggests a v2.05 conforming processor is used. It could be there is a newer revision of the PA6T kicking around.

It might explain some of the cloak and dagger antics over the CPU.

-/edit-

Sounds almost like running a VM.

Well, not really, that's a level beyond even. Many SMT capable OS allow a process to set an affinity for a given core, meaning that that process will run on that core and will never be rescheduled to run on another during it's lifetime.

Such behaviour may be one way of keeping legacy processes together. Anyway, that's pure speculation on my part as I was having a think about how I might tackle the problem.

[persia]

An Apple (PA Semi) chip.  Who's an Apple fanboy now?

[XDelusion]

But I want to discuss MorphOS (joking).

Seriously though, things are looking on the up and up for OS4.x, though I won't be able to afford it, I'm eager for the X1000 to come out so those that can afford it can share their experiences.

[Karlos]

An Apple (PA Semi) chip.  Who's an Apple fanboy now?

The PA6T was designed by PA Semi before apple bought them out. PA Semi were a fabless company and never actually manufactured any parts. The post-buyout PA Semi designers went on to design the processor for the iPad, which by all accounts is an ARM derivative.

So, the connection between the PA6T and Apple is what, exactly? That's right. Sweet FA.

[ferrellsl]

Yawn......another vapourware anncouncement.

[jorkany]

Are we sure this is the right company?
Varisys hasn't been around for 15 years.