Sam460ex available with AmigaOS 4.1

[AmigaNG]

Excellent News!

Stops the trolls from saying they are holding it back for x1000 release. But i guess they already moved on to now moaning about how dare they release it before its ready. You can never please the trolls.

Simple answer to that, as a more end user not a beta tester I will simple wait until all drivers are finished for it, and would still like to hold out to see more news on x1000 price and availability, but its nice to have the option to buy it now.

[Piru]

can you explain to me how that will make your email download faster?  Surfing?  How does your favorite text editor benefit from SIMD?

AltiVec can be used to accelerate many things: For instance OWB uses altivec to accelerate video decoding. z.library (shared zlib) has AltiVec acceration that is used by ALL applications using the library to decode gzip data (including png.library and thus PNG datatype). jfif.library has AltiVec acceleration (jpeg datatype uses jfif.library). Raggae multimedia multimedia framework uses AltiVec. Some low level graphics operations such as alpha blending and scaling and 3D are AltiVec accelerated as well. PowerSDL uses AltiVec when available. AHI software volume control (Mac HW) is AltiVec accelerated. Since these operations are in the OS itself it doesn't matter if the application supports AltiVec or not: All applications benefit automagically.

Various applications themselves use AltiVec too, such as Ambient, mplayer and ShowGirls.

It doesn't. SIMD has niche use.

Whatever rocks you boat. I prefer to have my system significantly faster, though.

[ChaosLord]

AltiVec can be used to accelerate many things: For instance OWB uses altivec to accelerate video decoding. z.library (shared zlib) has AltiVec acceration that is used by ALL applications using the library to decode gzip data (including png.library and thus PNG datatype). jfif.library has AltiVec acceleration (jpeg datatype uses jfif.library). Raggae multimedia multimedia framework uses AltiVec. Some low level graphics operations such as alpha blending and scaling and 3D are AltiVec accelerated as well. PowerSDL uses AltiVec when available. AHI software volume control (Mac HW) is AltiVec accelerated. Since these operations are in the OS itself it doesn't matter if the application supports AltiVec or not: All applications benefit automagically.

Various applications themselves use AltiVec too, such as Ambient, mplayer and ShowGirls.

That all sounds rocking awesome!

I didn't realize altivec could be used to speed up compression/decompression. (?)

Has anyone ever published any timing tests of z.library and png.library using / not using altivec?

I assume it only provides a small speed boost in those cases? <=10% ?

[ChaosLord]

 If Altivec was the be-all-end-all of application performance, don't you think all chips would have it...

Doesn't GameCube, Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 have Altivec?

Numerically that is effectively "all".

[MaximvsPayne]

cool shit, i want one! but first ive got some questions. is there a working sata-card, maybe with usb on the card out there that works with the pci-e 1x slot on the sam460? if this would be the case i could use my pci soundblaster for sound. and ive got an radeon3850 here from one of my old peecees, will it work with the radeonhd drivers? i couldnt find any infos about 3850 compatibility - only for 3650, 4650 etc. and ive got 2 1gb ddr2 800 rams that i would trade for 1 2gb ddr2 so-dimm, anyone interested? ive already got my acube a-stickers from alinea and transformed every keyboard here into "amiga-keyboards", they are waiting for some nice new amigaos systems!

CHEERS ACUBE

[MaximvsPayne]

ive forgot one question. will i get an amigaos4.1 box with the sam board or will it only be an burned or whatever boxless media? i like big boxes on the shelves, this one would take place near my old os3.5 box and the little os3.9 jewelcase. BIG BOXES BIG BOXES BIG BOXES - this way anyone who will visit my home can see, what a big ultragigaturboNERD I AM. i like it this way.

cheers acube

[krashan]

I didn't realize altivec could be used to speed up compression/decompression.

Another area of AltiVec application is cryptography.

For some real numbers you can read my scientific papers on AltiVec accelerations of audio filtering (results of this research are implemented in Reggae classes), see items 6. 7. and 8. DigiFilter is a live demo of this technology.

[MaximvsPayne]

oh damn, ive seen now that the sam460 HAS usb2 ports on board. so i need an pci-e 1x sata card only, no combo-card. ill keep fingers crossed for usb2 support in update 4.1.3. and hyperion, please integrate some kind of kingcon into os4.1, a working scroll-back function is absolutely necessary. tabs would also be nice.

[zylesea]

Let's see some real-world benchmarks before denouncing the SAM460...  The G5 Macs only got up to DDR2-533, iirc.  If this board can support DDR2-800 and higher, then real-world benchmarks will get interesting...

Well, high clocks are not sufficient when either the design or the cpu is weak. Except for the video bus the Sam 460 gets outperformed by a 167 MHz FSB Mac mini in regard of mem access: http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&sortname=&sortorder=&sortdays=&viewmode=flat&order=1&start=40

I repeat the values for RAM access here:

Sam 460:
READ32: 311 MB/Sec
READ64: 310 MB/Sec
WRITE32: 521 MB/Sec
WRITE64: 521 MB/Sec
WRITE: 1251 MB/Sec (Tricky)
 
Mac mini G4/1500
READ32: 387 MB/Sec
READ64: 403 MB/Sec
WRITE32: 771 MB/Sec
WRITE64: 771 MB/Sec
WRITE: 809 MB/Sec (Tricky)

[utri007]

It is great that Piru is so interested Amiga Os4. Judging from interest, he is going to buy Sam460ex as soon the drivers are ready

[Piru]

It is great that Piru is so interested Amiga Os4. Judging from interest, he is going to buy Sam460ex as soon the drivers are ready

I already have 2 Mac mini G4s, one PowerBook G4 and one PowerMac G5. I paid less than 900 € for them, so no I really am not that interested in Sam 460.

Those questions are still valid IMO.

[jj]

When we getting  drivers for the wireless and bluetooth in the MacMini

[takemehomegrandma]

The board is running at 1.15 Ghz and allows all Amigans to use modern graphic cards thanks to its PCI express slot.

But not at modern speeds, and the OS doesn't support any of the modern features.

Oh, and: "Notes: the SATA2 port and the PCI-e 1x slot are mutually exclusive, only one of them can be used at a time"

Other features include: 7 USB ports and Gigabit ethernet.

Is that USB2 or USB1.1? Oh, I forgot, in OS4 that doesn't matter...

The board is available at a suggested price of 749,00 EUR (including AmigaOS 4.1).
Price excludes local taxes and shipping costs.

At Amigakit it's €920, for just the board and the OS. Nothing else, no memory, no HDD, no *nothing*. So for a usable computer you'd definitely be going "north of" €1,000 with shipping costs on top of that...

The version of AmigaOS 4 that will be shipped with the Sam460ex is still to be considered beta.

Isn't it always?

Currently RadeonHD driver supports the following chipsets with full 2D hardware acceleration and DDC

So only partial GFX support then. No 3D. And you can't use it together with SATA HDD's/CD-ROM's/DVD's anyway, so...

The audio driver will be released on OS4depot as soon as it is ready.

So no Audio then.

The driver for the onboard SATA port is still experimental. It is not loaded by the kicklayout file

So no SATA then.

And no USB2.

How about the Gigabit Ethernet, is that supported?

So for "only" €1,000 you get "all this" in a system that's probably still outperformed by a Pegasos 2 in many areas. Ouch!

Well, at least they put a Lattice XP2 FPGA on the thing. In previous versions of their Sam's, the FPGA's has proven to be such useful for... well, uhm... yeah... Well, maybe if they rebrand the chip "XENA Light" and the optional 80 I/O pins expansion connector "XORRO Light" the magic will happen? Because XENA and XORRO is what makes boards true Amigas, everyone knows that! :p

Well, Good Luck with this one, Acube! If you are designing a board from scratch anyway, I can't for my life understand why you don't base it around a MPC8610 or MPC8640 or similar. Then you would have got yourself a sellable product. But no, you continue to make desktop designs around strange AMCC processors that's not really meant for desktop usage. "Notes: the SATA2 port and the PCI-e 1x slot are mutually exclusive, only one of them can be used at a time", I mean, come on!

[m3x]

So only partial GFX support then. No 3D. And you can't use it together with SATA HDD's/CD-ROM's/DVD's anyway, so...

You are wrong here

There are 3 slots on the board, not two:

- 16x PCIE slot to be used with the GFX card
- PCI slot for SATA / SATA2 or Catweasel or Audio, etc
- 1x PCIE slot which is mutually exclusive with the onboard SATA2

How about the Gigabit Ethernet, is that supported?

Yes

"Notes: the SATA2 port and the PCI-e 1x slot are mutually exclusive, only one of them can be used at a time", I mean, come on!

Again, see above...

[m3x]

ive forgot one question. will i get an amigaos4.1 box with the sam board or will it only be an burned or whatever boxless media? i like big boxes on the shelves, this one would take place near my old os3.5 box and the little os3.9 jewelcase. BIG BOXES BIG BOXES BIG BOXES - this way anyone who will visit my home can see, what a big ultragigaturboNERD I AM. i like it this way.

cheers acube

You'll receive a box with printed manuals and install CD, like the one on this page:

http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=software&pid=1

[takemehomegrandma]

You are wrong here

There are 3 slots on the board, not two

OK then, thanks for correcting me, and sorry for any confusion that part of my post may have caused.

Besides that, nothing else changes though.