New Hyperion Entertainment Website http://a-eon.com/ - The Mystery Continues

[Zac67]

IIRC Apple switched to Intel because Motorola were unable to make a G5 processor run cool enough to use in a laptop.

The G5 actually used came from IBM...

[tone007]

New Amiga has a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aEnnH6t8Ts

Psh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YInEKdjsT3w

[Karlos]

The G5 actually used came from IBM...

Indeed. Also, the GN name scheme was essentially Apple's label for the processors. Both IBM and Motorola always used model numbers.

[MskoDestny]

IIRC Apple switched to Intel because Motorola were unable to make a G5 processor run cool enough to use in a laptop. This was a serious issue for Apple who were stuck with the increasingly obsolete G4 chips for laptops, they had to do something. Whether Motorola's failure was due to the volume issue you describe is debatable, but I would suggest it was more of an engineering/architecture problem.

The problem was that IBM didn't want to foot the bill to do further work on the PowerPC 970 because their only major customer for the chip was Apple and Apple didn't deal in high enough volume for it to be worth IBM's time unless Apple paid for the R&D.

And the only reason they were getting chips from IBM rather than Motorola/Freescale is that Motorola gave up on making chips for the desktop market for essentially the same reason.

Keeping up with Intel is expensive. Even AMD, who pushes a lot more desktop oriented CPUs than Motorola or IBM ever did for Apple, has a hard time of it. If Intel hadn't fumbled with the P4 they probably still would have been a minor player.

Hopefully the new PPC chip spoken of relating to the X1000 will run cool enough for any potential use in a future laptop configuration.

I'm sure it will. It's almost certainly a chip aimed at the embedded market and those tend to have rather modest TDPs. According to Wikipedia, the AMCC Titan (the most likely contender for the CPU) draws only 2.5W per core at 2GHz (though it's unclear whether that's TDP or average draw). An article from EETimes, suggests the TDP for the whole chip might be around 15W or so. For comparison, the Atom 330 has a TDP of 8W, but that's just a CPU not a SoC.

[AeroMan]

@AeroMan

My understanding is that the XCore chip sits in a sleep state and only wakes up for processing I/O and things that you would normally use interrupts to handle.

The CPU should be much more powerful.

It makes no sense to me to use it just as a LED blinker... I believe they should have some nice idea in mind for it.
I was hoping somebody here had worked with this chip before

[Tension]

This thread has peaked.

[hazydave]

A new board that has the capability of running all the new goodies we  are used to like wireless and hd video yet can run all those old programs we love  would just be awesome.I think it can be done with a 1.5GHz PPC,didn't Apple do so?

Apple's "HD" video has largely been 720p... I don't think they're doing full 1080p AVC decoding on a 1.5GHz PPC, certainly not without serious GPU acceleration of the video decode.

But, if you're dedicated to outdated concepts like the PowerPC, this is probably as good as it gets. At least they have modern interfaces for I/O and memory. But 1.6GHz.. that's like netbook-class computing power, in the PC world (and yeah, the better ones have dual-core CPUs at 1.6GHz). Still, that would make this the first ""Amiga"" sold in years that compares to ANYTHING still being sold in the PC market.

The inclusion of the XMOS chip is pretty mysterious. It's not a huge expense.. you can buy the four-core version at DigiKey for about $20 (they sell at devkit at $99, including demo board and software). But this is a weird chip... four fairly lower powered cores, each of which runs eight threads. They claim 1600MIPS, but that's going to be peak... every thread in use. There's some weired connection matrix, so you can arrange these things in different orders.. maybe interesting for simple audio processing. But overall, less of a CPU than an ARM Cortex A8 (eg, regular smartphone chip), with the FPU and SIMD units taken out. And there's a slot for this? Weird... though I am curious what they intend to do with this that couldn't better be done with another 400MHz of host processor juice.

[Tension]

Ok the thread has definitely peaked now the main man has spoken  

[hazydave]

Ok, speculating in a different direction, the area for the CPU seems to have the standard mountings for some fairly heavy duty cooling, which a high-efficiency CPU probably wouldn't need anyway. So maybe we are barking up the wrong tree all together...

Yeah, I noticed that myself... they have a cooler area much larger than you'd need, FAIKT, for any of the embedded PPCs. The only CPU that wouldn't be very, very silly to drop into there, with a PPC ISA, in 2010, would be a PPC970-series chip. This doesn't compare to today's Core2s... it was on par with the original Opterons when it came out. But it's big, and hot, and was originally designed as a desktop chip.

You can actually buy these from IBM, they have a dual-core version, they start at around 1.6GHz, and yeah, they actually CAN be faster than SOME x86-based Netbook CPUs today.

There are four memory slots. A machine with only a 32-bit address space probably doesn't need that many. A machine with a wider address space (either 64-bit or using some sort of physical address extensions) might do. What sort of PPC processors match that description?

That's a good observation, and I do agree... assuming a modern DDR2-or-so memory interface, there's zero reason to offer more than two DIMM slots on a 32-bit motherboard anymore. So PPC970 fits here, too.

[itix]

@hazydave

If I have understood correctly they wish companies start making Xorro boards just like there used to be Zorro cards in 90s... examples include paula emulation, floppy controller and such.

[Fizza]

The G5 actually used came from IBM...

Thanks, for some reason I thought that, but changed it to Motorola, I should have looked it up rather than going by memory.

[amigadave]

I find it very interesting that this new "Amiga" has strange and mysterious layout and unconventional use of the Xorro chip in addition to the main CPU.  One slot that can be used in any way imaginable?  Also the statements that imply that they want the users and third party companies to figure out what to do with this new Motherboard, not that they have already figured out how it should be used.

I like that it has possibilities for "Thinking Outside The BOX".  Maybe noting will come of it, but just maybe there is an opportunity for something good to be created.  Something different that hasn't even been thought of yet.

[Zac67]

My bet's still on a 8640D (e600) CPU. The Titan might be too fresh to be included in a finished(?) design. The 8640D has the right age and it's spec'ed at 21W on full load (remember the '8 threads to get it up to 20W'?). And it's got dual memory controllers.

[Hans_]

It makes no sense to me to use it just as a LED blinker... I believe they should have some nice idea in mind for it.
I was hoping somebody here had worked with this chip before

What, you don't want a KITT simulator for your PC? :-P

Hans

[MskoDestny]

My bet's still on a 8640D (e600) CPU. The Titan might be too fresh to be included in a finished(?) design. The 8640D has the right age and it's spec'ed at 21W on full load (remember the '8 threads to get it up to 20W'?). And it's got dual memory controllers.

The e600 is only compliant to the PowerPC spec, not Power Architecture 2.04. The e500mc is Power Architecture 2.06 so that would technically meet their description.

It's almost certainly not the PowerPC 970. They claim the CPU they're using has a "very low" TDP and that "you've probably never seen one in the wild". Neither applies to the 970.

The PA6T from PA Semi also fits the description, but who knows how they would get their hands on it now.

[EDanaII]

...though I am curious what they intend to do with this that couldn't better be done with another 400MHz of host processor juice.

They can sell it to the PPC zealots who scream "give me PPC or give me death!"