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Author Topic: Will OS4 have SMP after all  (Read 31746 times)

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Offline Terminills

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #29 on: July 24, 2013, 02:52:39 AM »
Quote from: eliyahu;741894
tim,

to go off-topic a bit, you planning on making it to amiwest this year along with dammy? at somepoint next month i should start a thread on here so folks interested in coming can talk about it.

-- eliyahu

Depends on my schedule.  I'm hoping everything that needs to be finished before amiwest is done.   If it is I will be there.
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edited by mod: this has been addressed
 

Offline Terminills

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #30 on: July 24, 2013, 02:53:31 AM »
Quote from: nicholas;741897
Maybe it's Umilator v2 related? ;)

I heard Bernd will be there this year.


Oh that would be great news. ;)
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Offline nicholas

Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #31 on: July 24, 2013, 07:29:35 PM »
Quote from: Terminills;741911
Oh that would be great news. ;)


Yeah, I can't wait to see the public reaction to the Amithlon killer! Bye bye OS4 and MorphOS! ;)
“Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.” - Imam Ayatollah Sayyed  Ruhollah Khomeini
 

Offline Blizz1220Topic starter

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #32 on: July 24, 2013, 07:52:03 PM »
Quote from: nicholas;742053
Yeah, I can't wait to see the public reaction to the Amithlon killer! Bye bye OS4 and MorphOS! ;)

We have ways of making you talk ... :):hammer: :rtfm: :roflmao:
 

Offline minator

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #33 on: July 24, 2013, 08:42:43 PM »
Quote from: spirantho;741778
My understanding is that AmigaOS is basically not great friends with SMP, because of the way that it works.

Simply put the existing Amiga OS design is incompatible with the whole idea of SMP.

The Amiga uses a single address space for everything including the OS.  There is also no real memory protection for apps or the OS.  Apps have direct access to the OS internals.

If you have more than one app running simultaneously on different processors both can write to the internals of the OS at the same time.  When this happens the OS will very rapidly crash due to data corruption.

Quote
For this reason, Hyperion are aiming at getting multi-processor support in without SMP - which is quite possible.

There is probably a way to hack on some form of multi-processing using OS proxies but this is going to slow things down.  Alternatively you could use an AMP systems that gives you a series of psuedo-independent OS instances (i.e. one copy of the system per processor).

Quote
Would people notice the difference between this and SMP? Probably not, especially on an OS as efficient as AmigaOS.

This matters a great deal.  
Many apps these days originated on Linux or other OSs.  If these apps can make use of multiple processors they can run faster.  These applications are designed for an SMP system, running them on a non SMP-system will get you no speedup because they won't be able to use the other processors.  You will have to rewrite any such applications for that to work.

Furthermore any existing Amiga apps will not be able to take advantage of the other processors either.  You will have to rewrite them to use the other processors as well.  This is no trivial rewrite, it will involve splitting the application into parts and somehow getting them parts to communicate and share data.  This is notoriously complicated.

...and I haven't even mentioned Amdahl's law.


The answer to this is very simple.  The MorphOS guys had it figured out years ago - you need design and build a new OS.  Unfortunately, it's a massive amount of work and will take many years to complete.


Quote
So, don't ask about SMP - ask about multi-processing, as SMP is just one type of multi-processing.

No, do.  It's quite important.
 

Offline wawrzon

Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #34 on: July 24, 2013, 09:30:16 PM »
Quote from: ssolie;741884
I call myself the AmigaOS Development Team Lead for AmigaOS.

I'm not going to play these games. When it's done I'll tell you more.


i see a room for improvements in that title. for instance "his truly enlightened" or so.;)
 

Offline wawrzon

Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #35 on: July 24, 2013, 09:34:19 PM »
Quote
I heard Bernd will be there this year.
bernd meyer? is he cooking something too? thats news, also i thought spilling the beans is disencouraged.
 

Offline nicholas

Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #36 on: July 24, 2013, 09:38:05 PM »
Quote from: wawrzon;742067
bernd meyer? is he cooking something too? thats news, also i thought spilling the beans is disencouraged.

Well it might be Harald Frank.  I'm not sure.
“Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.” - Imam Ayatollah Sayyed  Ruhollah Khomeini
 

Offline nicholas

Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #37 on: July 24, 2013, 09:39:12 PM »
Quote from: Blizz1220;742054
We have ways of making you talk ... :):hammer: :rtfm: :roflmao:

I stopped taking drugs 10yrs ago but any truth serum you give me wouldn't have any effect. Neither would violence. ;)
“Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.” - Imam Ayatollah Sayyed  Ruhollah Khomeini
 

Offline Blizz1220Topic starter

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #38 on: July 24, 2013, 09:52:37 PM »
Quote from: nicholas;742070
I stopped taking drugs 10yrs ago but any truth serum you give me wouldn't have any effect. Neither would violence. ;)

Damn you :lol:

I really wish I knew what Bernd has to show but I guess
I can wait a little bit more :)
 

Offline nicholas

Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #39 on: July 24, 2013, 10:07:00 PM »
Quote from: Blizz1220;742073
Damn you :lol:

I really wish I knew what Bernd has to show but I guess
I can wait a little bit more :)

It might not be Bernd. It could be Harald, or it could be MOS-Team or even der Frieden zwillinge. ;)

£1m into my offshore Jersey savings account might let me tell you though. ;)
“Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.” - Imam Ayatollah Sayyed  Ruhollah Khomeini
 

Offline Blizz1220Topic starter

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #40 on: July 24, 2013, 10:18:20 PM »
Quote from: nicholas;742074
It might not be Bernd. It could be Harald, or it could be MOS-Team or even der Frieden zwillinge. ;)

£1m into my offshore Jersey savings account might let me tell you though. ;)

Oh well it was worth a try :D
 

Offline takemehomegrandma

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #41 on: July 25, 2013, 11:04:33 AM »
Quote from: minator;742058
Quote from: spirantho;741778
My understanding is that AmigaOS is basically not great friends with SMP, because of the way that it works.
Simply put the existing Amiga OS design is incompatible with the whole idea of SMP.

The Amiga uses a single address space for everything including the OS.  There is also no real memory protection for apps or the OS.  Apps have direct access to the OS internals.

If you have more than one app running simultaneously on different processors both can write to the internals of the OS at the same time.  When this happens the OS will very rapidly crash due to data corruption.


Yes, per design, per definition of "Amiga", there can't be SMP. Everyone knows this, it's a mystery why the opposite is still being claimed by some. It's not a matter of tweaking the API with a few function calls, it can not happen!

SMP in Amiga is like throwing up a stone in the air and expect it to stay there, hovering.

A stone won't fly. At least it won't hover!

And it doesn't matter if you play word-games, trying to change definitions, etc...

   "I never liked calling the feature "Hovering Stone" and I prefer to call it "Stone-in-Air". My reason is that you always get some egghead piping up and tossing definitions around. In my opinion, users don't care if it is "Hovering Stone" or "Airborne stone falling towards the ground" or WXYZ or whatever else as long as all the $3,000+ "AirStone-X1000" they paid for is spending time in the air at some point."

...an "Airborne stone falling towards the ground" may be one definition of "stone-in-air", but it's very far from "hovering"!
MorphOS is Amiga done right! :)
 

Offline takemehomegrandma

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #42 on: July 25, 2013, 11:05:14 AM »
Quote from: minator;742058
Quote from: spirantho;741778
For this reason, Hyperion are aiming at getting multi-processor support in without SMP - which is quite possible.

There is probably a way to hack on some form of multi-processing using OS proxies but this is going to slow things down.  Alternatively you could use an AMP systems that gives you a series of psuedo-independent OS instances (i.e. one copy of the system per processor).


Yes it should be possible to add on some ASMP/AMP solution, it has been done before. PowerUP was a kind of AMP flavor, although quite special and unique since it used CPU's from different architecture. But the concept could still serve as an illustration of how such an implementation could look like from an OS/API/Application point of view.

But creating an API to use the second CPU/Core as a number-crunching co-processor, or indeed using it to run a "psuedo-independent OS instance", is fundamentally different from SMP, and SMP is what people generally is talking about when talking about multi-processing, SMP is simply put the de-facto definition of multi-processing today!

MorphOS also runs on a few dual-CPU systems, this isn't something unique for OS4, and the subject of whether it would be possible to implement some AMP solution to utilize the second CPU somehow has been up for discussion a few times. Would indeed be possible, probably not very difficult either. Question is rather whether the MorphOS Team finds it worthwhile, if the real life benefits would actually warrant the effort? Probably not, even if I personally is of the opinion that Reggae alone could perhaps make it worthwhile (and some other media applications could perhaps also make benefit in an easy enough manner to make it worthwhile?). But OS4 doesn't have Reggae...

(Reggae is Amiga Datatypes done right! :) )
MorphOS is Amiga done right! :)
 

Offline takemehomegrandma

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #43 on: July 25, 2013, 11:07:40 AM »
Quote from: minator;742058
Quote from: spirantho;741778
Would people notice the difference between this and SMP? Probably not, especially on an OS as efficient as AmigaOS.

This matters a great deal.  
Many apps these days originated on Linux or other OSs.  If these apps can make use of multiple processors they can run faster.  These applications are designed for an SMP system, running them on a non SMP-system will get you no speedup because they won't be able to use the other processors.  You will have to rewrite any such applications for that to work.

Furthermore any existing Amiga apps will not be able to take advantage of the other processors either.  You will have to rewrite them to use the other processors as well.  This is no trivial rewrite, it will involve splitting the application into parts and somehow getting them parts to communicate and share data.  This is notoriously complicated.

...and I haven't even mentioned Amdahl's law.

The answer to this is very simple.  The MorphOS guys had it figured out years ago - you need design and build a new OS.  Unfortunately, it's a massive amount of work and will take many years to complete.


Even if applications aren't recoded to actually be multi-threaded in an effective way (but merely ported/recompiled for the "new OS"), having different apps seamlessly spread out running on different CPU's (as well as all the various running OS components themselves) would still mean a general speedup. This is what most people generally mean when talking about multi-processing, a general speedup by having applications (or threads) distributed to run on all available CPU resources (multi-threading of course improves things even more, by increasing the "resolution" of the distribution). But then we are again talking about SMP, and SMP is incompatible with Amiga!

And the point is - If the cord to the legacy is to be cut, if we are to start with a clean slate (which would also enable the possibilities of 64-bit, true memory protection, etc), then the question arise: Why continue with PPC at all? You might as well migrate to x86 then, and gain access to real 2013 level desktop and laptop computers at affordable prices! So if they had been going SMP, there would no longer have been any need for $3.000 systems with incomparably poor performance, you could just use real 2013 level HW! This would also be the only way of expanding the size of a shrinking/dying community of users, maybe even to such a degree that it would be relevant to start thinking of the users as a real *market* again, which would in turn also be the only way of attracting new, fresh blood developers, which would in turn generate more users, which would in turn..., ..., ...
MorphOS is Amiga done right! :)
 

Offline takemehomegrandma

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Re: Will OS4 have SMP after all
« Reply #44 from previous page: July 25, 2013, 11:08:46 AM »
Quote from: minator;742058
Quote from: spirantho;741778
So, don't ask about SMP - ask about multi-processing, as SMP is just one type of multi-processing.

No, do.  It's quite important.


Indeed, the difference is fundamental!

It's like apples and oranges, both may be fruit but they're not at all the same, not even similar.

The point is that when you have been selling $3.000+ HW/OS combos that has a pronounced SMP specification as one of the selling points (and also plans on selling others in the future), playing with words like this won't cut it.

An "Airborne stone falling towards the ground" is very far from "Hovering", both may be "stone-in-air", but while a "hovering stone" can be really useful and give a general overall performance improvement to the system, an "airborne stone falling towards the ground" will very much less so...

This DOES matter, the difference IS important! So, don't ask about multi-processing - ask about SMP!

;)
MorphOS is Amiga done right! :)