Amiga One X 1000 and Xena/Xorro

[amigadave]

I believe it was just a marketing thing. Remember it was set to be perceived as an Amiga like "custom chip". So that it appeared more mind pleasing for those who had a real Amiga and big pockets, and were looking for a next generation amiga-ish computer.

I don't disagree with what you wrote above, but like Lyle, I get annoyed by some other statements that try to tell people what the Xena/Xorro is, or was supposed to be.  Lyle summed up everything in his long 2 part post earlier in this thread, so I will just quote part of what he wrote again for emphasis.

Finally, if you've been reading along this far.. I'd like to vent about  one particularly annoying rant.. Some people keep going on about what  A-EON _SHOULD_ be doing with Xena. Xena is there as a USER_DEFINABLE  expansion. It's not their unfinished project, it's YOURS.
If you want to do something with Xena. GO FOR IT!

I think that Lyle put it into perspective best with that statement.  Xena/Xorro can be what ever the user wants to make of it.  It was included to encourage users to experiment and be creative, which Amiga users have always been famous for in the past.  Call it a marketing gimmick if you want.  Call it useless and a waste to have it on the motherboard, instead of just including the USB version with every X1000 motherboard, if you want.  Trevor acted on the advice given to him at the time of the design for the X1000 motherboard by people who have much more technical knowledge than himself.  The additional cost for adding it to the motherboard was said to be negligible, so Trevor gave them the "Green Light" to proceed.  I don't see many actual X1000 owners complaining about the Xena/Xorro interface and processor being included, and I for one, think it is interesting.  I am glad that this interesting "user-definable" chip and interface is on my X1000 motherboard.  I also plan to "tinker" with it in the near future.  The one thing that should have been done before the release of the X1000, would be to have completed the porting of the XMOS toolchain to AmigaOS4.x, so owners could have begun playing around with the Xena/Xorro combination much sooner.  From what Lyle wrote, it appears that still more work needs to be done, before a complete set of tools is available to develop for Xena/Xorro, while using AmigaOS4.x, but the tools Lyle has made available to us are enough to begin many projects with.

[amigadave]

The real question is what advantage does connecting XMOS directly to the motherboard of the AmigaOne bring?

That is a very valid question, and hindsight is always more clear than trying to predict the future when designing something.

Given the low production numbers, and therefore low number of X1000 owners/users/developers, I think that it may take much more time before we can know if there will be any advantage, or disadvantage, or no difference in having an XMOS chip on the motherboard, compared to a stand-alone XMOS board.  Since it is a User-Definable interface & processor, who knows if/when one or more of the users comes up with an idea to use Xena/Xorro in a way that is unique to having it on the motherboard, instead of a stand-alone XMOS board.

The Amiga community is small now and AmigaOS4.x users are a smaller subset of that niche community.  X1000 owners/users/developers are a fraction of AmigaOS4.x users, and our small community, so it may take a very long time before many projects that use Xena/Xorro are started, or completed.  As one of the members here pointed out, not all Amiga users are programmers or technical people with hardware design experience, so maybe we won't ever see any great innovative use of Xena/Xorro, but I would not bet against something showing up.  Amiga users are amazing people who don't give up easily and they usually do more with what ever is available to them, than what is expected or normal.

[TrevorDick]

Thanks for that AmigaDave.

We have produced Xorro development boards (which are available) and are working on a couple of Xorro specific projects. We are also including an improved Xena/Xorro combination in the AMIGAone X5000, thanks to the specification and hard work of Lyle.

As for complaints, most of the comments appear to come from none AMIGAone X1000 owners?

Trevor

[OlafS3]

Thanks for that AmigaDave.

We have produced Xorro development boards (which are available) and are working on a couple of Xorro specific projects. We are also including an improved Xena/Xorro combination in the AMIGAone X5000, thanks to the specification and hard work of Lyle.

As for complaints, most of the comments appear to come from none AMIGAone X1000 owners?

Trevor

You must admit that up to now there are no many real applications available or known for it. It was marketed as "custom chipset" (if I remember right) and led to wild speculations. It is in any case making the hardware more expensive. It is a industrial component, X1000 (and X5000) are bought by consumers, do you really have possible applications that make it worth to integrate it again?

[KimmoK]

I believe it was just a marketing thing. ...

IMO: That's childish thing to say.

We know the xcore idea came from Varisys. Not from any Amiga custom chip lover or marketing man.

I would love to hear what was the idea by Varisys people when they suggested that core should have direct connection to CPU.  Lower latency (than over PCI or USB) between CPU & xcore? Being able to have 100% control of xcore without extra tools? Being able to reprogram xcore on the fly per desktop application request? All of those? More?

[OlafS3]

IMO: That's childish thing to say.

We know the xcore idea came from Varisys. Not from any Amiga custom chip lover or marketing man.

I would love to hear what was the idea by Varisys people when they suggested that core should have direct connection to CPU.  Lower latency (than over PCI or USB) between CPU & xcore? Being able to have 100% control of xcore without extra tools? Being able to reprogram xcore on the fly per desktop application request? All of those? More?

If the idea is from Varisys and they should have known that you need certain software and drivers for it that are closed source they should have had a plan how to support it in future. If not why integrating it? And why integrating it in X5000 yet again?

[wawrzon]

If the idea is from Varisys and they should have known that you need certain software and drivers for it that are closed source they should have had a plan how to support it in future. If not why integrating it? And why integrating it in X5000 yet again?

taking the comment here into account:

Having the ability to run Linux makes the Nemo board a very good general purpose development platform. We have certainly played with it extensively here although the appetite for AmigaOS amongst the younger engineers seems to be a bit of an acquired taste.

http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwgentle_en.php

it seems that varisys considered comission for x1k an opportunity to design experimental linux based ppc development platform without taking financial risk themselves. they probably have not been technically concerned with os4 side of things, since it likely did not qualify for a valid part of agreement, due to their lack of expertise in the field and also since it couldnt offer a stable reference when finalizing the project.

[kamelito]

As for complaints, most of the comments appear to come from none AMIGAone X1000 owners?

Trevor

Nice to see that you're human
Kamelito

[amigadave]

If the idea is from Varisys and they should have known that you need certain software and drivers for it that are closed source they should have had a plan how to support it in future. If not why integrating it? And why integrating it in X5000 yet again?

The idea obviously came from Varisys, no "If" about it.  Yes, they should have thought more about the difficulties in porting the control software, or development tools, and maybe they mentioned it, or maybe they did not think of that problem at that time.  I don't think Varisys guys had any experience or knowledge about AmigaOS4.x or the capabilities of the Hyperion developers working on the port.  It appears that the XMOS chips had peaked the interest of at least one or more people high up at Varisys, which is why they made the suggestion to integrate one of the chips onto the Nemo motherboard, without regard on how the tools would be ported to AmigaOS4.x.

Varisys was only concerned with the hardware side, and it was A-Eon's and Hyperion's responsibility to port AmigaOS4.x to the new hardware and write all needed drivers.  Varisys only made sure the hardware would run Linux, so they could test all hardware on the motherboard and get A-Eon to "sign off" on it being finished and working.  They had no responsibility or concern on how any of the hardware would be supported in the future by A-Eon, or Hyperion.

As for your question on why it was integrated onto the X1000 motherboard, I think that answer has already been explained a few times.  It was an inexpensive way to make the X1000 motherboard different or unique, and provided a "user-definable" chip and interface to Amiga users.  Something to make it special, even though some people choose to criticize the decision and usefulness of Xena/Xorro, it does not change the reason(s) for initially adding it to the X1000 motherboard.  

Only Trevor and Matthew can answer why it is still being added to their next AmigaOne X5000 motherboards, but I would guess that they still believe that the Xena/Xorro combination will be utilized in some interesting and productive way in the future, either by some 3rd party developer, or perhaps A-Eon has an idea of their own for some use or product that will use the Xena/Xorro interface.  I perceive the availability of Xena/Xorro on the X1000 and X5000 motherboards as an opportunity for owners of such systems to be creative and develop any kind of software and hardware projects that they can imagine.  If removing it from the X5000 only changes the price by $20 or $50, or even $100, then it makes more sense to me to keep it.

It does not matter how much a few people protest, or campaign against the usefulness of Xena/Xorro, specially when those few people are not X1000 customers.  Those opinions are not going to change the decisions of Trevor, or Matthew, though I am sure that both of them are well aware of the valid arguments for and against continuing to include Xena/Xorro on their future motherboards.  The development cost on how to add Xena/Xorro to a motherboard has already been paid out on the X1000 design and development costs, so adding it again to the X5000 does not include the development cost, only the cost of components.  Perhaps Trevor has a good deal with XMOS on the price of the Xena chip, who knows?  I would guess that compared to the over all cost of the X5000 motherboard, the addition of the XMOS chip to it is very small and removing it would not change the price of selling the X5000 motherboards or complete systems very much, so any small cost savings are probably not enough incentive to Trevor and Matthew to give up on Xena/Xorro yet.

There are always going to be a few people who have different opinions and suggestions on how to do things differently, specially in this community, where there are so many different choices to continue the spirit of the Amiga.  There is no way to please everyone, all of the time.  It will be interesting to me when someone finally does utilize Xena/Xorro in an interesting and productive way.  What will all the people who say Xena/Xorro is completely useless say then?  It reminds me of the few who were so sure that the Minimig was a hoax and could never be accomplished.  But I am also open minded and realize that it may take years for anything interesting to be developed for Xena/Xorro, or that maybe it will never happen.  And if nothing ever becomes available for the Xena/Xorro combination, I won't blame Trevor and the Varisys designers for trying to make something unique available to the end users.  Some attempts at innovation work and some don't.  Maybe it will turn out to be a bad idea, but I don't believe that we have given it enough time to make that determination yet.

[Boot_WB]

The idea obviously came from Varisys, no "If" about it.  

Perhaps the specific suggestion of using X-Core might have come from Varisys, and developed into the Xorro/Xena thing, but it's unlikely that a professional design company would have suggested an additional component/design feature be added to the motherboard which doesn't fulfill any critical or even desirable (more like 'wishlist') aspect of the design specification without being prompted to do so.

I think it's more likely it was suggested as a possibility to Hyperion/A-Eon's brainstorming of "how can we customise it in some way to make it a bit different/special/appeal to Amiga users?"

From that perspective, it would have been more about marketing than practicality.

Now it's a 'why not?' for future designs, since presumably good design practice will have made the whole Xena/Xorro subsystem modular enough to copy/paste (more or less) onto the newer designs.

[persia]

Given the complete lack of ideas as to what to do with the two systems joined at the hip it appears that someone just thought it would be neat.  Everything I can come up with is better done on a PC with a US$99 USB programming board.  It's sort of like chocolate milk and chicken soup, great things separately but combining them doesn't make them better.

[KimmoK]

taking the comment here into account:
http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwgentle_en.php
it seems that varisys considered comission for x1k an opportunity to design experimental linux based ppc development platform without taking financial risk themselves. they probably have not been technically concerned with os4 side of things, since it likely did not qualify for a valid part of agreement, due to their lack of expertise in the field and also since it couldnt offer a stable reference when finalizing the project.

There's also this:
"The Xena chip is interesting because it offers users the ability to add functionality to their X1000 machines. We have designed a Xorro interface board that will enable user to add their own circuitry. It follows the ethos of the original Amiga, where users are encouraged to get hands on and be as inventive as possible."

AOS4 integrated xena devkit "just" needs "inventing" first. :-|


The world outside Amiga anyway thinks that there is some use for CPU+xcore integrated product, and because of that, there now exist xcore chips that has also ARM CPU built in. (that also is some kind of alternative to PA6T+xcore combo)

[Kesa]

I'm sick of everyone dissing the X1000 for having it's supposed useless xcore/zena chip. Especially by people who don't even own one. At least Trevor has tried to do something interesting. Do you people have any better ideas on how next gen Amiga's can be innovative? If you don't like something and where it is going then do something about it. If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.

[Megamig]

People do have the point.. I don't believe Commodore sold the Amiga 1200 with a 'Clock port' as one of it's main features. It was a bonus and it turned out to be useful for many hardware developers. Yes Xena (blah blah blah) could be useful in future but why advertise it as a main feature when it is useless (at the moment and possibly into the future!)

[Kesa]

People do have the point.. I don't believe Commodore sold the Amiga 1200 with a 'Clock port' as one of it's main features. It was a bonus and it turned out to be useful for many hardware developers. Yes Xena (blah blah blah) is a useful but why advertise it as a main feature when it is pretty much nothing worthwhile (at the moment!)

If don't like it, do something about it.

[Megamig]

I'm sick of everyone dissing the X1000 for having it's supposed useless xcore/zena chip... At least Trevor has tried to do something interesting...

I can add glitter to my Amiga if I want to make it interesting. The fact is that every bit of nonsense wastes R&D time that could be better spent in refining other aspects of the X1000 system.