Amiga.org
Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Topic started by: VingtTrois on January 01, 2010, 07:29:16 AM
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Follow the link as we can see on the new TIMBERWOLF screenshots :
(http://www.a-eon.com/gfx/jan1st.png)
Power ISA v.2.04
The specification for Power ISA v.2.04[9] was finalized in June 2007. It is based on Power ISA v.2.03 and includes changes primarily to the Book III-S part regarding virtualization, hypervisor functionality, logical partitioning and virtual page handling.
Compliant cores
* Cores that comply with the Power ISA v.2.03
* The PA6T core from P.A. Semi
* Titan from AMCC
Titan AMCC anybody? -
Suports up to 4 cores
Manufacturered on the cheaper 90nm CMOS process and other cost reductions
Design allows for dual cores at under 15watts power consumption
"The first implementations of the Titan core design. Two 1.5 GHz cores with FPU, 512 kB shared L2 cache, DDR2 controller, security engine, multi-channel DMA and I/O engine for gigabit Ethernet, PCIe, USB, RapidIO and/or SATA. It began sampling in October 2009"
Titan AMCC more specifications -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28microprocessor%29
I'd say that fits with what they say on the a-eon site - "The AmigaOne X generation will come with a variety of CPUs, conforming to the Power ISA 2.04 and newer standards. The X1000 processor currently has very limited availability, and you've probably never seen one in the wild, so don't worry too much about it. For now, please be content with knowing that it's a dual-core Power Architecture™ CPU, with a very low Thermal Design Point. For reference, our designers have been running the cores at 1.6GHz during thermal testing, but this isn't the exact nominal clock speed."
Since the Titan just started shipping limited quantities in October of 2009, is dual-core, has a very low thermal design point - the clock speed could be at 1.6Ghz but the cores are rated to 2Ghz currently. Sounds like a contender to me. ;^)
a-eon site - "Just as Commodore did with the A1000, we're aiming at the high-end first, with a powerful desktop computer aimed at the professional and serious hobbyist markets (although you won't have to wait until summer, and it should be a little cheaper!)"
Commodore Amiga 1000 Price: US $1295 without monitor (So under $1295 for those asking about price.)
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New Amiga has a song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aEnnH6t8Ts
:)
We can't see this video here !!! arrghhh !
"This includes video content Vevo, who decided to hang in your country."
Informations about X1000 project, in few website since the start of enigma:
AMIGAIMPACT.FR (http://www.amigaimpact.fr)
http://i48.tinypic.com/b82z2f.jpg
1310 views
AMIGA.ORG (http://www.amiga.org)
http://i50.tinypic.com/9k7adz.jpg
20.187 views
AMIGAWORLD.NET (http://www.amigaworld.net)
http://i49.tinypic.com/67jw4x.jpg
179.734 views
ONLY AMIGA.FR (http://only.amiga.free.fr)
http://i47.tinypic.com/2rwxk7t.jpg
910 views
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We can't see this video here !!! arrghhh !
"This includes video content Vevo, who decided to hang in your country."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=podSwaNge7E
Try that one..........Still pants !!!!! I preferred not knowing personally.
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Neither of these work in Norway.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6bH8PpKSas :hammer:
+1
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@Kulla: ++1
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New Amiga has a song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aEnnH6t8Ts
:)
This link should work for everyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_U_Seek_Amy
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How about a punched card reader too?
It has a CF reader. You can punch one and try :D
Now for the serious question: Does anybody have experience with the XMOS chip? It looks very nice, but what it is capable of?
I undertand that as it uses a parallel architecture, I should not take the 400Mips speed as I would do for an ARM fo example, but is it fast enough for data processing, or it is just something I could use for minor tasks?
Would it make the difference or would it better to rely on raw CPU power instead?
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@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.
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It has a CF reader. You can punch one and try :D
Now for the serious question: Does anybody have experience with the XMOS chip? It looks very nice, but what it is capable of?
I undertand that as it uses a parallel architecture, I should not take the 400Mips speed as I would do for an ARM fo example, but is it fast enough for data processing, or it is just something I could use for minor tasks?
Would it make the difference or would it better to rely on raw CPU power instead?
It's a low power embedded processor with 64kb sram that probably won't be utilized because it doesn't actually add anything of value to a desktop system. If it was stuffed onto a PCI-e card for the PC folks would laugh at it and the company that made it would go out of business.
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Since the Titan just started shipping limited quantities in October of 2009, is dual-core, has a very low thermal design point - the clock speed could be at 1.6Ghz but the cores are rated to 2Ghz currently. Sounds like a contender to me. ;^)
Nice find. I'm liking this more and more.
Either I need cheaper hobbies or a good paying job, so I can afford all the cool toys.
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Nice find. I'm liking this more and more.
Same here... Although I dunno if I'm going to get the A-Eon. From what I'm reading SAM is listed as the low end in the a-eon website so like others have mentioned we could see a motherboard cost alone that is up to double the cost of a SAM. $1000 for a fully functional configured system is all I spend (and it will have to blow my socks off). I'll spend more on a money on a system if it makes me money back for my business.
But for something that will for the most part be used for trips down memory lane and reliving retro games (until Siginificant OS4 releases come out) I can't justify $1000. I suspect that many others can't justify that either.
The hard reality Hyperion are going to face here is that current patterns effect future trends. The trend is for $300 netbooks, $150 consoles, and low cost machines. Big Desktops sales are down and all my buddies would only spend $1200 or more on a KICK ASS laptop or Desktop for a highly specialzed business purpose...or a MAC
But Hyperion know all this and will price the machine for Amiga Enthusiasts who are prepared to pay for this. I hope that this X1000 will spawn a X500 with expansion capabilities. I think Hyperion will realize this just like Commodore did when they released the A1000.
History repeats itself!
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I hope that this X1000 will spawn a X500 with expansion capabilities.
Hopefully it has an edge connector ;)
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The hard reality Hyperion are going to face here is that current patterns effect future trends. The trend is for $300 netbooks, $150 consoles, and low cost machines. Big Desktops sales are down and all my buddies would only spend $1200 or more on a KICK ASS laptop or Desktop for a highly specialzed business purpose...or a MAC
But Hyperion know all this and will price the machine for Amiga Enthusiasts who are prepared to pay for this. I hope that this X1000 will spawn a X500 with expansion capabilities. I think Hyperion will realize this just like Commodore did when they released the A1000.
These days it's almost impossible to compete with x86 on the desktop. There just isn't enough volume for PowerPC to drive the R&D necessary to create competitive chips for the desktop (and laptop) market. Apple realized this and switched to x86. If Hyperion wanted OS4 to be anything more than a niche OS for nostalgic hobbyists, they would head in the same direction.
There is some chance that ARM could gain a foothold in the low end market. They're starting to approach netbook class processing power, they're dirt cheap (considerably less than PowerPC chips with similar oomph aimed at the embedded market ) and they tend to have reasonably decent video hardware onboard (it seems most of the PowerPC based SoCs tend to be oriented at network hardware and thus don't have integrated video hardware). Even then, it's hard to say whether ARM will make it in the personal computer market (though it's doing just fine in the mobile device market obviously).
So anyway, I wouldn't expect an X500, or if there is one I wouldn't expect awesome price/performance. PowerPC desktop hardware is going to be a niche for the forseeable future and as a result it's going to be expensive for what you get.
Sorry for the negativity. It's cool that Hyperion is trying to keep the Amiga platform alive, but I think it's good to have realistic expectations.
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@Crom00
$1000 = 700 euro .....
700 euro isnt enough to buy you a complete Sam440 system, let alone this a-eon thing.
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These days it's almost impossible to compete with x86 on the desktop. There just isn't enough volume for PowerPC to drive the R&D necessary to create competitive chips for the desktop (and laptop) market. Apple realized this and switched to x86. If Hyperion wanted OS4 to be anything more than a niche OS for nostalgic hobbyists, they would head in the same direction.
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. 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 lol'd at the mention of a floppy disk drive earlier in the thread, but I have to say, it would be nice to have a USB Amiga compatible floppy disk drive available for less than $35 for transferring data either on any new machine or just to be able to load games into UAE.
My humble opinion is that Hyperion have a lot of work cut out for them, but they seem to have hit the ground running and I wish them all the success in their endeavours.
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@Crom00
$1000 = 700 euro .....
700 euro isnt enough to buy you a complete Sam440 system, let alone this a-eon thing.
The A-Eon thing comes with a packet of white grease you can apply to the one foot heat sink pole on the XCore processor. The idea is that then end user sits and spins on it while nobody writes applications for it.
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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...
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New Amiga has a song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aEnnH6t8Ts
Psh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YInEKdjsT3w
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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.
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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.
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@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
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This thread has peaked.
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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.
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Ok the thread has definitely peaked now the main man has spoken :)
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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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.
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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. ;)
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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
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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.
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...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!"
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The e600 is only compliant to the PowerPC spec, not Power Architecture 2.04.
Duh! There goes my theory... :D
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@hazydave
Good to see you lurking and posting here, it gives a unique perspective.
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@hazydave
Good to see you lurking and posting here, it gives a unique perspective.
Yep... God only knows how uniquely qualified he is to comment on the matter...
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What, you don't want a KITT simulator for your PC? :-P
Hans
Only if they sell me a talking Pontiac with a Xorro board interface :D
(A black Trans Am.... coooooool!)
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The PA6T from PA Semi also fits the description, but who knows how they would get their hands on it now.
I've heard that Texas Instruments was a partner to P.A. Semi before it got bought by Apple. Maybe they've still got some production rights.
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I think if the unknown CPU turned out to be a really really powerful CPU, some people here would start saying that this is an overkill. :)
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Yep... God only knows how uniquely qualified he is to comment on the matter...
It's always great to hear from Dave Haynie or anyone else who was involved in the original Amiga project.
I bet they never imagined there would still be interest in the Amiga in 2010. :cool:
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But, if you're dedicated to outdated concepts like the PowerPC, this is probably as good as it gets.
You're telling Amiga entusiasts about outdated stuff? lol :) Nice to see you posting here though :)
I guess we'll see what Hyperion / A-Eon pull out of the magic Amiga hat and how well it works :) Only time will tell.
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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.
The Mac mini 1.5 GHz running MPlayer/MorphOS does a 720 movie at about 2/3 cpu load. 1080 is possible under some certain circumstances (has beed demoed a while back), but not in a manner that you could say it is an everyday solution.
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.
The only outstanding feature of the XMOS chip I figured out so far is that the threads are hardware warranted real time. Thus, sub tasks can use RT features even in a non RT envirionemnt. But this surely has its limits once interaction with the Host non RTOS on the host cpu is involved, because then it is again a question of how the interruped triggered by the XMOS gets processed.
And I fail to see the need to include that XMOS chip on the mainboard, a pci(e) card would certainly do as well, for many purposes (when no dma master is required) even a usb extension would work
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The only outstanding feature of the XMOS chip I figured out so far is that the threads are hardware warranted real time. Thus, sub tasks can use RT features even in a non RT envirionemnt. But this surely has its limits once interaction with the Host non RTOS on the host cpu is involved, because then it is again a question of how the interruped triggered by the XMOS gets processed.
And I fail to see the need to include that XMOS chip on the mainboard, a pci(e) card would certainly do as well, for many purposes (when no dma master is required) even a usb extension would work
That's the reason it smells like SAM440ish to me, designed for something else. Look at it this way, this is truly a make or break mobo for Ben and his partners. Why in the world would they spend that type of additional money to add complexity to a mobo that has to be nearly bug free to recoup any ROI. That's a significant risk to undertake for S&G reasons because the components are cheap and there is no demand for it within the Amiga Community. So it does sound like this mobo was in existence and was either bought out or perhaps exclusively licensed to avoid another AmigaOne:Teron PR disaster.
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I guess they never thought what would be of interest next year, it was pretty much a mad journey from one project to the next by the anecdotes on the Deathbed Vigil and great publications such as On the Edge. I wonder what the living members of the C= Amiga team could come up with now if we locked them in a room with a few dev machines and lots of coffee!
It's always great to hear from Dave Haynie or anyone else who was involved in the original Amiga project.
I bet they never imagined there would still be interest in the Amiga in 2010. :cool:
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... if we locked them in a room with a few dev machines and lots of coffee!
Don't forget the beer! ;) @Dave
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I guess they never thought what would be of interest next year, it was pretty much a mad journey from one project to the next by the anecdotes on the Deathbed Vigil and great publications such as On the Edge. I wonder what the living members of the C= Amiga team could come up with now if we locked them in a room with a few dev machines and lots of coffee!
Other then consoles or low end systems, I don't know what they really could produce that would be significant as far as desktops are concerned. 20+ years is a long time in desktop evolution for any group to produce something that would shock and awe the mature desktop market.
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Quoting hyperion:
"We know it means eceptional. Remember when Amiga hardware was eceptional, not just the OS? You won't need to remember much longer. Nemo brings Amiga back to the high-end."
So in other words, it will be up to par with high end 2000 Euro+ PCs? You know, I would have settled for something less powerful, and a matching price.
They'd like to claim the high end. That doesn't mean they actually there, any more than any other of the zillions of Amiga-industry promises made since ESCOM closed the Amiga Technologies doors.
Whats high end now anyway? 3 SLI Video cards, quad cores, 4 gigs RAM and all that?
i7 CPU, 6-12GB DRAM, certainly at two full PCIe x 16 slots (well, at least they tried on that... they have two full lenght PCIe slots, but they degrade to x8 if you use them both... so there's really only one x16 slot).
So, in other words, the new Amiga will do stuff that current PCs dont? Nice. With which OS?
Well, they're letting you fill in that assumption, rather than just outright saying it. It would be really nice if Amiga wanna-be computer companies stopped doing this.. what's the point of raising Amigaoid hopes once again, just to smash them. I would like this to not be another one of those, but really... not much to expect here. PowerPC CPUs have a hard time beating Intel Atoms on performance these days (and the ARM may be a valid competitor, soon). I can't imagine how this is going to be anything but overpriced and underwhelming.
And I'd love to be proved wrong.
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Unfortunately, you won't be. All of this is being approached from an idealistic standpoint rather than a practical one. If they were being practical, they'd be producing a machine that fans can buy. Not a empty "dream" machine with a price range that's out of reach.
The Amiga curse continues...
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certainly at two full PCIe x 16 slots (well, at least they tried on that... they have two full lenght PCIe slots, but they degrade to x8 if you use them both... so there's really only one x16 slot).
Lots of PC chipsets do the same thing. I'm not sure what the point of having two x16 slots is though. I doubt OS 4 is going to support CrossFire/SLI anytime soon and given the relatively slow CPU (compared to a PC) you're likely to be CPU bound even with a single GPU anyway. I suppose it could be useful for multi-head setups (though the Radeon 5700 and 5800 cards support three displays per card these days). Does OS 4 support that?
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I can't imagine how this is going to be anything but overpriced and underwhelming.
And I'd love to be proved wrong.
Couldn't have said it better. I'd like to be optimistic, but it remains to be seen what is going to happen...
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I've said that what Hyperion needs to do is at least become price competitive with Apple, selling mobile phone spec hardware for over over €1000 is not being price competitive. Nobody expects them to get down to PC range, but can they get down close to Apple range?
Well, it's very different, cellphones vs. PCs. The cellphone industry has blown the price of phones way out of line with most any other sort of consumer electronics. Mush of that's due to many countries (USA, Canada, for example) always buying subsudized phones.
But chew on this one: you can buy an iPod Touch here for about $200. That's almost exactly the same thing as an iPhone... it leaves out the cellular modem, Bluetooth, and a microphone. What else? GPS? In much smaller quantities than Apple's doing, that's less that US$40 worth of parts. So an iPhone ought to run around $300 unlocked, unbundled. But they start around $600. Why? Because they can, pretty much.. everyone else is doing it (the retail price for the Motorola DROID is $599, too).
Apple's a bit out of line with PCs, but Macs are, precisely, just plain old PCs today... I guess you could add "with casework some people consider pretty, and without a frickin' removable battery, too, if you look at the laptops. I bought an HP laptop two years ago for US$1280... a Mac laptop with identical memory and CPU, and virtually identical everything else, ran US$2999.
But don't discount that last bit... identical CPU and other features. You might justify paying twice as much to get the same computer with MacOS.... I'm pretty sure I won't be paying $1719 for an OS in this lifetime, but plenty of people did. The problem is, these guys may very well be asking you to pay twice the high-end price for something with netbook-class performance. And think of this... even modern netbook-class performance would be a new thing in the post-Commodore world of Amiga. None of the "Amiga" hardware so far has even made it that far. In fact, today's cellphones probably have faster CPUs.
And hey, I do realize CPU speed ain't everything to every person. The problem is, doing the things that really made the Amiga the Amiga, like video and other multimedia, CPU performance pretty much IS the live or die thing. That's why I have a Q9550 CPU here, 2.83GHz, Quad Core, 8GB of really fast DDR2 memory, nVidia 8800GT graphics, etc. I don't play games, and you don't need this hardware for electronics CAD... it's all for doing multimedia on my desktop. If you can do this on "Nemo", than they ought not to call it "Amiga"... there was a time, at least, when that name really meant something, and something good.
Not to be all Davie Downer on you all, but you know this is a well-traveled road, big promises followed by same-old, same-old disappointments.
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I have to disagree that the Amiga never competed on price. It always did. Comparing it to the Spectrum/64 - still available at the A1000 introduction is unfair. You have to compare them to the 8-bit machines at the introductory price of those older machines, and to contemporary mac/pc hardware. I paid about $1500 for my 1000 in 87 or so... That was only a little more than my Atari 800 setup in 79. The Amiga was cheaper than the MACs and PCs available at the time, and more powerful, especially for multimedia stuff.
I agree... you can't really put the A1000 up against the Spectrum or C64... its initial competition was really the Macintosh and the PC/PClones.
At the time it shipped, the A3000 was about half the price of a comparable Macintosh. When the A500 shipped, it was faster and about half the price of the cheapest PCs could could buy. But time does march on. And as well, no real billion-dollar consumer electronics company has made anything with an Amiga brand on it since Commodore... well, you could count the brief time of Escom. But other than that, it's been glorified garage shops. They just cannot built comparable hardware in the 100's or 1000's of units and price them against machines made in the 10's of millions or more (since, after all, even the big PC companies rarely make their own motherboard... they buy from the guys in Taiwan, same companies that make the motherboards you buy at Newegg or MicroCenter if you build your own).
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EON definition...
An eon is an indefinitely long period of time. In geological time it is the period of time that includes two or more eras.
Could the EON reference to two or more eras refer to legacy amigas and new OS4 or OS5?
hmmm
I think its an allusion to how long it might actually take before a real Amiga hits the market again.
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In the end, before the bankrupcy in 94 it did not compete in price. At that time I was an Amiga user because "it just worked". A sales pitch that Apple have learned from main stream computer users that has a big appeal.
Most apple users would tell you if you ask them why they want it: "it just works, right out of the box". Now, that it's not entirely true is another thing, just like it was with my Amiga. But never the less, it feels like it for the most part.
Perhaps it wasn't Commodores fault that Amiga couldn't compete on price, perhaps it was Phase5, Village Tronic etc etc. But it still means that I paid more for my Amiga4000 setup than I would have for a comparable PC set up.
But I wouldn't have AmigaOS then. And I wanted to use Amiga hardware with Magellan II back then, still wants to :-) lol
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Not to be all Davie Downer on you all, but you know this is a well-traveled road, big promises followed by same-old, same-old disappointments.
I think you are mostly preaching to the quire.
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When A1000 released 1985 it cost around 1295$
Recalculated into todays value should be around 1950$
So either cheaper then 1295 or 1950.
If that is with a case you got a deal :D
No... because that's only looking at the value of money, not the value of computers. In 1985, the typical entry-level home computer cost about $500... because it was a Commodore 64, before the last few price cuts. By the mid 1990s, it was up to $1500 or so, as everyone moved to PCs and Macs. Today, it's back about $500, though it's a full PC, complete with monitor and probably printer.
If you had something as groundbreaking as the Amiga 1000 was, that might really sell for 2.5x-3x the going rate of the typical home computer (both Amigas, Macs, and PCs took on the typical home computer, before they became it, of course), you could start at around $1500.
But that's a pretty big IF... The A1000 was better in every single way than the $500 home computers and even the $3000-$5000 PCs of 1985. Faster computation, better graphics, much more capable and sophisticated OS, etc. Everything was groundbreaking.
Anyone REALLY expecting that here?
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I'm expecting an Amiga that is $1000 to $1500 which performs like the lsat high end PPC Macs.
Other than that I want Hyperion to contunie to improve OS4, I don't care if AmigaOne X1000 is the last PPC amiga. What I care about is having PCIe, DDR2 ram (would like it to be DDR3 but that's not doable). There are more things I'd like to have, but you eat an elephant one bite at a time.
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I'd actually really like it if they'd let us run OS4 on anything with a ppc and supply our own drivers. If someone had made that decision in the 90s we wouldn't be in this situation, and it's not too late now. I can get a G3 mac that'll keep up with the first round of amigaones performance wise for £40. All this farting about pretending the amiga will ever be a hardware platform again is a joke, and they need to swallow their pride before it kills them. And us.
That said, if they throw in An amiga Keyboard and mouse, and maybe (long shot) have an amiga branded Monitor available they can have my money faster than i'll earn it. Any chance of a desktop case? I'll throw a fat CRT on it and be old school again.
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It's old and talked to death but the only way to be price-performace compatible is to go intel, otherwise you can't compete on cost. Power PC has nothing that can compete in terms of raw computing power with the chips being turned out by Intel and AMD. Apple realised that and switched.
If you have a spare billion US I suppose you could develop better faster chips, but you'd have to charge a million US a piece to recoup the investment....
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Is there any chance Hyperion would let us ask for what we want in OS5?
I'd like to see web site set up with polls and comment areas designed to give the community a chance to tell them what we want. I know there will always be a few a55hole5 that try to hijack anything productive but overall i think our community is well behaved and would provide valid feedback.
I like the motherboard they announced (not sure about this "Xena" co-processor, but will wait and see what it can do) and i expect OS4.2 to mainly be support for the new hardware. Certainly planning for OS5 must be going on now or very soon.
We often talk about needing memory protection to improve stability and give the user a list of running applications where they can select one and close it at any time. Why only duplicate what others have? It needs to go a step further.
The average user doesn't care what applications are running. They care about their work and their games. The average user wants to know if they could lose two hours of typing or that awesome high score from Bubble Bobble level 99. Give us a list of each running applications/games open documents, showing whether each has changed or not, and let us save, close, or switch to each document from the list. The system could also have a preference setting to save everything from time to time and warn us if we forget to save something before shutting down.
The original Amiga OS was way ahead of it's time and OS5 must be to. We must think beyond what is already out there and the more minds we have working together in an orderly fashion the better the system can be.
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Yeah, but getting the buggers to actually do it is the hard bit. PPC apps can be ran the same way 68k is on a PPC, but getting 68K running on x86 is apparently hard. And Porting AmigaOS without the Amiga software is pointless, you might as well throw in the towel and make a whole new OS.
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you might as well throw in the towel and make a whole new OS.
..or use one of the already existing and well-supported ones!
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Rogue says in the interview that Intel is the only real CPU alternative. But he also says that he's not talking for Hyperion and that it's not in the cards as they don't have the time or resources to do it. That's why it's not a topic for discussion.
For all Amiga Intel fans, they should put their energy into AROS for now. Not into nagging MOS or AOS4 devs.
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..or use one of the already existing and well-supported ones!
This.
This is how {bleep} the Amiga platform is. Yet we stick around anyway. Are we insane? Overly loyal? Hell, I was born a couple of years before the amiga died anyway, why am I even here?
Well, it's a kind of cool system and the demoscene amazes me. And I can't go outside because we're a foot and a half under the snow and I have to use a hairdryer to get a drink.
Why are you guys here? Spock is fascinated.
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I wouldnt be an "intel fanboy", but I am a realist.
x86 / x64 is the only way.
The OS is going to have to be rewritten at some stage.
Might as well start now...
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This.
This is how fraked the Amiga platform is. Yet we stick around anyway. Are we insane? Overly loyal?
Here's my theory.... The Amiga Saga is like a long, tedious, and not very well written (by several authors) novel.... but by this time, we've invested too much time into it to just give up on it. Next time wait for the movie. ;-)
It was a dark and stormy night in Silicon Valley.....
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I wouldnt be an "intel fanboy", but I am a realist.
x86 / x64 is the only way.
The OS is going to have to be rewritten at some stage.
Might as well start now...
I'm guessing there is a 3rd way, which is what MorphOS finally did in supporting 2nd hand PPC Macs. A little late IMO, but better now than never. This is not a solution for world domination, but give retro hobbyist something nice to play with at a dirt cheap price. Hyperion taking this route with OS4 would have made more sense to me.
If either the MorphOS team or Hyperion really want to take a run at mainstream, I don't see any other option than x86.
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I wouldnt be an "intel fanboy", but I am a realist.
x86 / x64 is the only way.
The OS is going to have to be rewritten at some stage.
Might as well start now...
Thinking about it, They could break compatibility with existing software and add memory protection/security/accounts without a total rewrite. Then they could have the old OS4 running in an emulator transparently.
Unlike apple, they could do this because (i'm assuming) They actually bothered to document the code, and there isn't the whole singletasking-no-wait-shoehorn-cooperative-multitasking-oh-look-it-crashes-what-a-surprise-insert-a-nanokernel-pointlessly-still-crashes-oh-sod-it-rename-NeXTStep-instead problem to deal with.
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If only more people could understand that it's Aros that needs to be backed up. Aros have fought the up hill battle for so long and finally it starts to feel like a modern Amiga. I don't want Aros to be "Amiga" I don't need the name, I just need the feeling. I want Aros to be "just Aros" an Amiga inspired OS.
You won't see Amiga OS4 on x86 ever (ok in my life time then), that's why I lost interest in OS4 ages ago. I refuse to pay for overpriced hardware that is overpriced only because it's produced in so small quantities that it makes it expensive. What's the point in that ? I might as well give that 400 euros (only a guess) extra I pay directly to a developer instead or to a bounty to gain something software wise. That would be better.
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Redrumola, your idea is good. Having OS4 running on macs is a good deal. G5's that were $1200 or more are now $275-$350 second hand. Then port AmigaOS to x86.
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If only more people could understand that it's Aros that needs to be backed up. Aros have fought the up hill battle for so long and finally it starts to feel like a modern Amiga. I don't want Aros to be "Amiga" I don't need the name, I just need the feeling. I want Aros to be "just Aros" an Amiga inspired OS.
You won't see Amiga OS4 on x86 ever (ok in my life time then), that's why I lost interest in OS4 ages ago. I refuse to pay for overpriced hardware that is overpriced only because it's produced in so small quantities that it makes it expensive. What's the point in that ? I might as well give that 400 euros (only a guess) extra I pay directly to a developer instead or to a bounty to gain something software wise. That would be better.
I tried AROS/icaros desktop several times, last time was about three weeks ago. It was balls. Whoever made that skin and icon pack needs to be led out back and shot. 3.1 code compatibility isn't there yet, it can't naively run 68k or ppc apps and probably won't ever, and the list of non-iMica hardware for it is about the same size as a receipt from kfc.
AROS would be great if somebody put some money behind it. Nobody has. So it's the worst amiga system there is. It's literally better to steal an old PC out of a skip and put WinUAE on it.
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I tried AROS/icaros desktop several times, last time was about three weeks ago. It was balls. Whoever made that skin and icon pack needs to be led out back and shot. 3.1 code compatibility isn't there yet, it can't naively run 68k or ppc apps and probably won't ever, and the list of non-iMica hardware for it is about the same size as a receipt from kfc.
AROS would be great if somebody put some money behind it. Nobody has. So it's the worst amiga system there is. It's literally better to steal an old PC out of a skip and put WinUAE on it.
Sure, that is why I asked people to support it, join the effort, code, donate whatever. Don't you think it can get better ?
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Aiming at the professional market first is a smart move imo. It will ensure a backbone for further development. And I don't mind having to wait if it turns out to be too far out of my reach price-wise.
WHAT professional market could they possible address? First of all, you're picking off what's likely a tiny segment of the population, so you're setting an inherent upper limit to your customer base. And then, of course, professional markets are already well established, so even if you offer something revolutionary, many people won't consider moving.
For example, Avid and Adobe have both sold video editors (NLEs) in the professional market, for years. Both have become established standards, and both typically have offered trailing edge features (it was only recently, relatively speaking, that you could mix different video formats, or get reasonable audio support, in these apps). Sony, NewTek, and many others have offerings that are more powerful in many ways, but they are never going to get some people off "the standard". And this kind of thing is true in pretty much every professional market.
Next, you have infrastructure. Let's say I want to do video editing. So I need the video editor, something pro-class. I also need a high-level audio program or two, something like Cakewalk's Sonar or Sony's Acid... and an editor for audio, while you're at it, like Sound Forge.
Back to video... I need something for compositing and particle animation... Adobe AfterEffects or Boris FX or something like that. For some users, a high-end titling program, for others, 3D animation tools like Lightwave.
Of course, your video has to go somewhere, so you need a pro-class DVD and Blu-Ray authoring program. You have to prepare artwork for video, disc, and packaging, so you need something like PhotoShop for graphics editing.
And within the video and audio editors... I'm going to do stuff here, right? I need effects, transitions, equalizers and dynamics processors and noise reducers and noise makers... I probably have close to 100 plug-ins for audio and video processing on my system. If you do lots of music, you need to add in software synthesizers, etc.
That's just do the CORE of one professional job. If you're a one-man shop, you might also need web development tools, business tools, publishing tools, etc.
And if some of the pieces in this ecosystem are not up to par, don't expect to get any professionals interested. You not only need to attract them from what they're doing now with something better, you have to make that a smart move. Think about it... if you're already doing this job, you have thousands already invested in hardware and software... why do I move to something new and different, rather than, say, new, more powerful, but otherwise the same... like upgrading that Core2 CPU to an i7. That's a move that can be measured directly in increased productivity, and it doesn't add software expenses to the hardware expenses.
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A voice of reason in the middle of madness.
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A voice of reason in the middle of madness.
Does this mean you're not gonna buy a x1000 system and develop useless demo programs for the XCore embedded processor?
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Does this mean you're not gonna buy a x1000 system and develop useless demo programs for the XCore embedded processor?
As if anyone will develop anything useful for that waste of Bakelite and silicon.
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Does this mean you're not gonna buy a x1000 system and develop useless demo programs for the XCore embedded processor?
guys.. even NewTek has a hard time convincing folks to use Lightwave these days in this AutoDesk 3dsMax - Maya dominated world.
I work in graphics... I can tell you. This is never going to get professional markets. If they win a military or government contract for some specialized task then great, but those machines are built to "military spec" (where's Doomy when you need him)
Guys, we're going to have an Amiga to (hopefully ) run classic apps and tinker with. That's the way it's gonna be for a long while unless somthing magic happens.
I think that machine or option should start at $300-500 and move up from there for the hardcore users. You know we kind of have ourselves to blame for this too in some small degree.. We all remember how we went bananas when Gateway proposed a move to X86...?
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All this talk of x86 this...x86 that....
Has it ever occurred to anyone the x86 viability roadmap is coming to an end, even with multiple cores? Perhaps the new hardware is onto something with the nod, assisted of course at first by a beefed up PPC 'co-processor', to the use of a transputer.
I personally don't think Intel even knows the future in any certain terms, as the P4 debacle probably best most recently illustrated when they fell behind AMD, albeit briefly.
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Conversation going back to how it's all Commodore managements fault in 3...2...1...
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Guru_meditation.gif)
Right then, Can we go back to speculation about what the machine will actually be like when we get to buy it?
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Has it ever occurred to anyone the x86 viability roadmap is coming to an end, even with multiple cores?
Has it? I can't see that anywhere. I can see false moves with Intel's P4 and - even more apparent - Itanium's 64 bit approach (not a bad design for a start, but bad migration path & marketing) . But AMD's 64 bit move has put so much fresh air into everything x86 that it's here to stay.
x86/64 is absolutely dominant in the professional segment, the home computing & gaming segment and super-computing. If Intel's plans work out it'll even dominate the embedded market but that remains to be seen. IBM's Power has some niche it still defends, but nobody knows how long that's gonna last. Everything else is pretty much dead or dying - PA-Risc, Alpha, Sparc. ARM & MIPS have conquered their markets but not without threat from x86.
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*sticks fingers in ears*
So What do you think the chances of an amiga keyboard coming out are?
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Interesting comments.
Late last year I sold my 4.1 system. While it was seriously fun to be able to run Workbench on such super fast hardware natively as a 1 GHz G4 the whole machine lacked purpose. And I hate to own "stuff" that do not fill a purpose so I sold it.
Thats why I hoped for x86 port of AmigaOS4.1, run it on cheap hardware.
How dumb I was.
AmigaOS x86 was before my eyes all the time: AROS
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Redrumola, your idea is good. Having OS4 running on macs is a good deal. G5's that were $1200 or more are now $275-$350 second hand. Then port AmigaOS to x86.
Well, actually there is an OS available that runs on ppc Mac hardware and provides legacy compability and all this stuff. It doesn't has the name though, but a very beautiful logo instead... If you have a spare Mac mini G4 around trying it out is just a download away. PowerMac G4 and eMac support is also coming. Later on probably even for some powerbooks. That surely doesn't mean MorphOS would be "the solution", but it provides some fun and usefulness w/o dreaming of resurrecting some long gone states where the successor lead the IT world for a few years...
I think it is more about what is possible now with limited resources or "better a sparrow in your hand than a dove at the roof".
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AmigaOS x86 was before my eyes all the time: AROS
Well spoken! AROS is actually quite good. Yes it doesn't run 68k, unlike MOS and AOS4 it doesn't have a 68k emmulator.
Some new ideas has to be brought into AROS, atm endianess limits stops the efforts to bring a 68k emmulator to AROS.
Perhaps mr Hayne can give the AROS devs ideas and inspiration to break out of the endianess haze... :-P
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*sticks fingers in ears*
So What do you think the chances of an amiga keyboard coming out are?
Slim to none :-)
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Interesting comments.
Late last year I sold my 4.1 system. While it was seriously fun to be able to run Workbench on such super fast hardware natively as a 1 GHz G4 the whole machine lacked purpose. And I hate to own "stuff" that do not fill a purpose so I sold it.
Thats why I hoped for x86 port of AmigaOS4.1, run it on cheap hardware.
How dumb I was.
AmigaOS x86 was before my eyes all the time: AROS
I suppose you could have sold your regular computer and used the amiga instead. I spent most of 2008 using nothing but a G3 era iMac (one of the SLOW ones) and OS 9.2 and I got used to it. To be honest there was nothing I couldn't do apart from play modern games, and I regret building my uberpc instead of keeping the money. Funnily enough I still think OS9 beats windows 7 in every way imaginable.
Slim to none :-)
Ahh, 'tis a shame.
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Has it? I can't see that anywhere. I can see false moves with Intel's P4 and - even more apparent - Itanium's 64 bit approach (not a bad design for a start, but bad migration path & marketing) . But AMD's 64 bit move has put so much fresh air into everything x86 that it's here to stay.
x86/64 is absolutely dominant in the professional segment, the home computing & gaming segment and super-computing. If Intel's plans work out it'll even dominate the embedded market but that remains to be seen. IBM's Power has some niche it still defends, but nobody knows how long that's gonna last. Everything else is pretty much dead or dying - PA-Risc, Alpha, Sparc. ARM & MIPS have conquered their markets but not without threat from x86.
x86 is pretty dominant indeed, though its worth noting that all three current generation consoles use powerPC and consoles rule gaming with an iron fist.
The embedded market seems to be an interesting place for new stuff coming up and showing itself. Very refreshing.
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Suppose PPC will be fine for us for a while then, so long as we don't mind only low and low-mid end hardware. If the next gen consoles use something else other than PPC there'll be no steam behind the architecture, and we'll be buggered. again.
Excuse me while I fire up the time machine and rob a bank to fund escom.
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Suppose PPC will be fine for us for a while then, so long as we don't mind only low and low-mid end hardware. If the next gen consoles use something else other than PPC there'll be no steam behind the architecture, and we'll be buggered. again.
Excuse me while I fire up the time machine and rob a bank to fund escom.
If we're bringing in time machines, I'd make sure IBM rather than Gateway gets the spoils after Escom.. then twist whatever arms I need to, to have the amiga OS released as open source as soon as damn possible, and lean back and see what the world can come up with
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Slim to none :-)
Someone will make an Amiga 4000 keyboard to USB adapter.
http://ezhid.sourceforge.net/amikbd.html
Use Keyrah to turn an A600/A1200 into a USB keyboard.
http://eabmobile.abime.net/showthread.php?p=335648
It wouldn't be that hard to have some Amiga keys molded to replace the Windows keys on a USB keyboard.
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If we're bringing in time machines, I'd make sure IBM rather than Gateway gets the spoils after Escom.. then twist whatever arms I need to, to have the amiga OS released as open source as soon as damn possible, and lean back and see what the world can come up with
Sod that, I'm going back to the pet era and making sure the Commodore 8-bit machines are all compatible and expandable like an apple ][, that MOS tech develops the 6502 up to present day, and that the amiga is properly developed and marketed. No stupid crap like the C64gs, cdtv, cd32, or A600 neither. MOS Tech would develop 68k processors...
Im aiming to have the computer industry split between Apple macintosh, Apple ][, NeXT, C64 successors, Acorn risc and Amiga. William Gates was mysteriously found dead in an alley after a deal to write altair basic went badly wrong.
Assuming that commodore's fate is unavoidable, escom would be the priority.
Now all I need is a 1980s irish sports car.
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Actually, I find this all rather amusing. If this were a movie, it would be a person stranded on on island in search of some type of craft almost capable of getting him to the mainland. Oh sh@T, I have already seen it. Gilligans Island
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I'm guessing there is a 3rd way, which is what MorphOS finally did in supporting 2nd hand PPC Macs.
I agree!
You can get HW for $50-$350 depending on what you need and want. Support for Mac Mini is here today, support for PowerMac is close, and after that follows (probably) the PowerBook support. Desktop to Laptop, via the Mini.
A Mac Mini 1.4 GHz is about 2x as fast as a Pegasos2 in some areas. And you can get it from everywhere.
A little late IMO, but better now than never.
They obviously focused on getting a full MorphOS 2.0 out. Then they had to deliver the Efika 5200B port (which they could have done much earlier, based on some 1.4.x version, but this is how it was played out).
This is not a solution for world domination, but give retro hobbyist something nice to play with at a dirt cheap price. Hyperion taking this route with OS4 would have made more sense to me.
If either the MorphOS team or Hyperion really want to take a run at mainstream, I don't see any other option than x86.
I agree:
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=11&topic_id=6684&sortname=&sortorder=&sortdays=&viewmode=flat&order=0&start=171
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http://www.power.org/devcon/07/Session_Downloads/PADC07_Chang_AMCC_Titan_V0_2.pdf
* Cores that comply with the Power ISA v.2.03
* The PA6T core from P.A. Semi
* Titan from AMCC
Titan AMCC anybody? -
[/quote]
I think that's a good guess. For one, it just started shipping at 1.5GHz last October... they say you probably haven't seen the chip yet (true), and something about clocking at 1.6GHz (implying that's the not the normal speed).. regular speed is 1.5GHz. And all the SOC I/O matches the stuff they're claiming for the main board. Here's the AMCC paper on this from the 2007 PowerPC Devcon:
http://www.power.org/devcon/07/Session_Downloads/PADC07_Chang_AMCC_Titan_V0_2.pdf
Manufacturered on the cheaper 90nm CMOS process and other cost reductions
Design allows for dual cores at under 15watts power consumption
They's using some weird NMOS with mult-phase clock (6502, anyone?) and dynamic logic, like CPUs from back in the 80s and early 1990s, to cut down on speed demands. Certainly better than the stuff that's been out in the Amiga market, but a shame they couldn't go to a real [at least formerly] destop-class CPU like the PPC970. The AMCC has an FPU, but no vector unit. So, multimedia performance is even worst than it might have been with a modern applications processor.
And of course, they would be crazy to use a PA Semi chip... scraps from Apple's table that could be withdrawn at any minute.
Only thing.. that huge heat sink area show on the MB is crazy overkill for the AMCC chips.
They claim 4000 Dhrystone MIPS per core for the AMCC at 2.0GHz, so that's 3000MIPS per core at 1.5GHz. That's in the range of a Pentium 4 or Athlon/Athlon "Barton" CPU, PC-wise, at least from the one benchmark.. but of course, dual core... great. If they have AmigaOS supporting dual core, of course. Not modern desktop, but let's see... my Q9550 system replaced an Athlon64x2, which replaced an Athlon Barton system... so that's only three geenrations behind the PC state of the art (given my Q9550 is already one generation behind). This is about 1/2 the performance of a Core2 core, or 1/3 the performance of an i7 core, give or take. Of course, it's the FPU and Vector instructions that come to play on the heavy duty multimedia stuff once associated with the Amiga.
Since the Titan just started shipping limited quantities in October of 2009, is dual-core, has a very low thermal design point - the clock speed could be at 1.6Ghz but the cores are rated to 2Ghz currently. Sounds like a contender to me. ;^)
According to the article I saw, it's actually the 1.5GHz version that's shipping. They need a shrink to 65nm to support 2.0GHz+.. at least according to the article.
a-eon site - "Just as Commodore did with the A1000, we're aiming at the high-end first, with a powerful desktop computer aimed at the professional and serious hobbyist markets (although you won't have to wait until summer, and it should be a little cheaper!)"
A professional doing ... what? Does anyone make a living doing AmigaOS development? That's about the only profession I can see happy here.
Commodore Amiga 1000 Price: US $1295 without monitor (So under $1295 for those asking about price.)
Yup... back then, Macs and PCs were averaging around $3,000. In 2009, the average desktop computer bought for home use was just over $500 in the USA, and came with monitor and printer.
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Now for the serious question: Does anybody have experience with the XMOS chip? It looks very nice, but what it is capable of?
I undertand that as it uses a parallel architecture, I should not take the 400Mips speed as I would do for an ARM fo example, but is it fast enough for data processing, or it is just something I could use for minor tasks?
Would it make the difference or would it better to rely on raw CPU power instead?
Well, it's a weird ass chip, that's for sure... I haven't used it. Not sure anyone has... they don't explain very well why you would want to, rather than, say, a normal ARM. Their idea seems to be to support a bunch of hardware threads per chip. Now, of course, eight threads on a single core, all running, means each thread is lucky to get 1/8 of the total performance... there's enough delay and waiting in a typical modern CPU to make two threads per core sometimes a good idea (Intel "Hyprethreading"), but eight?
But they also say "event-driven computing". So maybe as an I/O processor? Most threads would be sitting idle most of the time, but spring to life when triggered a hardware event? Remedial I/O processing for folks who haven't discovered multitasking and interrupts, or something more profound? I really do wonder if they have an actual use for this, or just dropped it in to fool Amiga fans into thinking "ooooh... magic chip".
I'd much rather have seen an FPGA that could be addressed on the PCIe bus, as a standard feature. A decent one could be programmed to accelerate all sorts of things that the CPU may be too anemic to do to a modern par. I don't see how a PEAK of 1600MIPS (all four cores and all eight threads per keeping busy) is a big help, even to a 6000MIPS or so host processor. But if it's doing something significant to handle I/O, then maybe it's a good idea. Again, have to see just what they're doing with it.
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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.
That was a symptom of the greater problem... the PPC just could not compete. Period. The PPC970 caught up to the Operton's of the day (they were a pretty decent match), but that, after how many years. And the big battle between AMD and Intel was still hot. Today's desktop chips are better than twice as fast, in not that many years.
And that PPC970 was just one chip. There were dozens of parts, from many companies, competing in the PC market, optimized for desktop, laptop, server, etc. PPC had and has far better representation for embedded computing, but for PC-class, it was never that strong. This was the inevitable result of Apple's ending of the Mac Clone... the market never got large enough to compare to the x86 market.
Apple was also losing customers and applications. Their market was too small for custom coding and testing, being the only PPC folks around. And there was a certain risk going to a Mac, particularly given the apparent dead-end of the PowerPC on the Mac. And they were charging quite a bit more for quite a bit less CPU.
All of these things lead to Apple switching to the x86. Making the Mac into just a PC in an Apple case, they actually improved the breed. It didn't cost Apple crazy money to keep developing motherboards and system chips.. they could just order them up from Foxcon or whomever.. so they could fall in price... one big barrier to entry. You could run Windows, native, full-speed, etc. as long as Apple supported some way of booting though a standard BIOS... there goes the risk, and that's one big barrier to entry. They follow the CPU, chipset, and peripheral market driven by pretty much everyone except Apple. All very good things for Apple, and their customers.
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I work in graphics... I can tell you. This is never going to get professional markets. If they win a military or government contract for some specialized task then great, but those machines are built to "military spec" (where's Doomy when you need him)
Actually, a very great deal of what the military buys is COTS (Consumer off-the-shelf) or "hardened COTS". The robotics controllers I built for a number of different robots found their way to Iraq in about 3000 robots. Consumer technology, but "hardened" by using higher spec parts where possible. But a far, far cry from MIL-spec. There's no faster way to turn a $5,000 robot into a $50,000+ robot... well, you all have probably heard about what it does to hammers and toilet seats. Same deal.
But for PCs, unless there's some very special purpose, they have all kinds of rules about security, operating systems. etc. And it's usually very difficult to get your company approved by the government for military or other government procurement. My company did, mainly because we had the only R/C controller technology at the time that did what they wanted.
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All this talk of x86 this...x86 that....
Has it ever occurred to anyone the x86 viability roadmap is coming to an end, even with multiple cores?
Let's see.. there hasn't been a new PowerPC desktop chip in six years, but you really think the x86 is ending its life. Despite the fact Intel and AMD sell over half a billion CPUs a year? Despite the fact that Intel is nearly 15% of the IC industry's sales, but nearly half of the profits for the ENTIRE chip industry (hint: the AVERAGE CPU is sold for $6.00.... ?
And despite widely published roadmaps to the contrary?
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/intel_32nm_westmere_roadmap/
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_cpu_roadmap_update_2008/
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-deneb-heka-propus,6364.html
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I'd much rather have seen an FPGA that could be addressed on the PCIe bus, as a standard feature. A decent one could be programmed to accelerate all sorts of things that the CPU may be too anemic to do to a modern par. I don't see how a PEAK of 1600MIPS (all four cores and all eight threads per keeping busy) is a big help, even to a 6000MIPS or so host processor. But if it's doing something significant to handle I/O, then maybe it's a good idea. Again, have to see just what they're doing with it.
I have the same opinion. A FPGA could be programmed to emulate AGA for compatibility and other nice stuff. They selected a 400MIPS chip, so based on speed, it is not a big help regarding processing power
If the idea is to use the XMOS to handle some kind of internal IO operations, it is a good one. But if they are aiming at using this chip to control some kind of user port, few people would take advantage of it. Probably, just geeky engineers like me :D
At some point, they stated that it could be used to emulate SID. I believe most of us would expect this chip to be capable of emulating the Amiga chipset, or doing something brand new. (I bet on the last one)
Anyway, the XMOS chip seems very nice, as a microcontroller. I could not resist to show that to the folks at work.
(PS: Oh my god, I'm talking to "the man". It's such an honor)
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@hazydave
I'd much rather have seen an FPGA that could be addressed on the PCIe bus, as a standard feature. A decent one could be programmed to accelerate all sorts of things that the CPU may be too anemic to do to a modern par. I don't see how a PEAK of 1600MIPS (all four cores and all eight threads per keeping busy) is a big help, even to a 6000MIPS or so host processor. But if it's doing something significant to handle I/O, then maybe it's a good idea. Again, have to see just what they're doing with it.
There was an FPGA on Acube's SAM board yet nobody found any use for that. Of course the customer base is very small and there are so few with skills for FPGA programming. Not that XMOS makes difference either but it can be programmed in C at least...
@AeroMan
At some point, they stated that it could be used to emulate SID. I believe most of us would expect this chip to be capable of emulating the Amiga chipset, or doing something brand new. (I bet on the last one)
Anyway, the XMOS chip seems very nice, as a microcontroller. I could not resist to show that to the folks at work.
It could be used to emulate SID chip (to replace entire player there isnt enough SRAM) but making such chip which works as good as original SID chip is such achievement that I doubt it...
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Why does everyone talk about Motorola PPC? The original AIM (Apple IBM Motorola) created the chip, it was based on IBM power technology. Motorola spun off it's IC business to Freescale and sold some power architecture to AMCC. The current Power.org companies are IBM, Freescale and AMCC...
But that aside, it's pretty much dead technology, used in Game consoles and Micro-controllers, and developed for those industries. If a big player came along, the Power architecture could be developed to compete with Intel, but if Apple, who was part of the alliance that created it, wasn't big enough to force that kind of development, who would be?
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HazyDAVE...
My comment about military spec came from a young lady I know who is a project manager on the Hubble Space telescope. She told me that one of the Computers in the thing is a 1990's 486... not a chip from another supplier with equivalent CPU power... it's a 486..they had to go through so much engineering BS to get it approved and fabbed for aerospace use. It's built to withstand the rigors of liftoff and whatever else happens up there.
Reagardless of all that am I crazy to believe that a FAST Amiga legacy compatible machine can be made using FPGA technology and come in under $300????
I mean go to deal extreme and you see Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis TV game units for like $30 bucks. Those consoles were more or less Amiga 500 like tech...
I think 99% of us here would pay $200-$250 for a NATAMI like device with an expansion bus for a faster CPU a la the A1200, or Walker styled motherboard design.
AS for the potential high price.... This is happening because you can bet Acube and Hyperion watch CVPPC cards go for $800 or more on EBAY and wonder well... if they're willing to pay that much for a 10 year old CPU card they can pay up to 2X that for a new system.
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To be honset I want to know WHY the old amigas are so expensive. Every one of it's peers is £10-30 on ebay or the like, yet we pay around £100 for one somebody kept the box for. madness. Though I guess the 1200 and 4000 staying current all the way up to 2004? though I guess a with late 90s early 2000s amiga setup, "1200" is more of a vague description than a model number.
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Let's see.. there hasn't been a new PowerPC desktop chip in six years, but you really think the x86 is ending its life. Despite the fact Intel and AMD sell over half a billion CPUs a year? Despite the fact that Intel is nearly 15% of the IC industry's sales, but nearly half of the profits for the ENTIRE chip industry (hint: the AVERAGE CPU is sold for $6.00.... ?
I would argue that, technically, x86 is dead. It exists in RISC emulation layers and x64 is steadily erasing its footprint.
And thankfully at that. Intel has been flogging that damnedable 32-bit stuff since 1983, meanwhile 64-bit chips have been floating about since around 1990. It is about time that 64-bit made a strong landing on the desktop.
And as much as people hate Microsoft, it has done something right with Windows 7: in order to obtain WHQL status for a device, a manufacturer must provide 64-bit as well as 32-bit drivers.
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I think all A-Eon are selling are rose-tinted Amiga glasses, nothing more; it's like beer goggle surgery for nerds and the number of people seduced by this hype has amazed me.
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I think all A-Eon are selling are rose-tinted Amiga glasses, nothing more; it's like beer goggle surgery for nerds and the number of people seduced by this hype has amazed me.
And I suppose there is nothing for which you harbor (or is that "harbour"?) a passion, other than trolling?
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I would argue that, technically, x86 is dead. It exists in RISC emulation layers and x64 is steadily erasing its footprint.
And thankfully at that. Intel has been flogging that damnedable 32-bit stuff since 1983, meanwhile 64-bit chips have been floating about since around 1990. It is about time that 64-bit made a strong landing on the desktop.
And as much as people hate Microsoft, it has done something right with Windows 7: in order to obtain WHQL status for a device, a manufacturer must provide 64-bit as well as 32-bit drivers.
That's not really true. The AMD64 architecture is a superset of the x86 one. Of all the x86 features, only 16-bit mode is unsupported in x64 native mode, all the 32-bit x86 stuff is very much part of the architecture still and most of it works when the CPU is running in 64-bit mode too. Hence, you could make the argument that in fact, x86 is continuing to grow.
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Let's see.. there hasn't been a new PowerPC desktop chip in six years, but you really think the x86 is ending its life. Despite the fact Intel and AMD sell over half a billion CPUs a year? Despite the fact that Intel is nearly 15% of the IC industry's sales, but nearly half of the profits for the ENTIRE chip industry (hint: the AVERAGE CPU is sold for $6.00.... ?
And despite widely published roadmaps to the contrary?
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/intel_32nm_westmere_roadmap/
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_cpu_roadmap_update_2008/
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-deneb-heka-propus,6364.html
I have a question to you lot in general, since I don't know a ton about processors.
Its pretty obvious that x86 is ruling the desktop, and it seems ARM has embedded devices as their big thing. Why did the next gen consoles use powerPC processors?
Im not trying to pick a fight or anything, Im just curious. Do they do better in a smaller (physical) machine or less heat or what made them go that way ?
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I think all A-Eon are selling are rose-tinted Amiga glasses, nothing more; it's like beer goggle surgery for nerds and the number of people seduced by this hype has amazed me.
What never ceases to amaze me is that people will actually prefer software and hardware NOT to be used.
What do we lose if this particular computer gets sold with OS4 ?
Nothing. But it'll be fun to play with.
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What never ceases to amaze me is that people will actually prefer software and hardware NOT to be used.
What do we lose if this particular computer gets sold with OS4 ?
Nothing. But it'll be fun to play with.
Maybe, but I fail to see the lineage that allows them to tag this new hardware with the name 'Amiga'. In doing so they are playing on a link to a Commodore and Escom heritage that doesn't exist.
It's like Ford's marketing people saying "A Ferrari is distantly related to a Ford just because it's a car and has four wheels, so we'll badge the new Mondeo as a Ferrari...." It's like The Emperor's New Clothes story......
A modified embedded processor board that originally was more related to a PLC controller might be fun to tinker with from a hacker standpoint, but aiming that board at high-end applications is maybe the wrong market. Their approach seems more like Sinclair than Commodore in that it's almost a modified kit board.
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http://www.power.org/devcon/07/Session_Downloads/PADC07_Chang_AMCC_Titan_V0_2.pdf
* Cores that comply with the Power ISA v.2.03
* The PA6T core from P.A. Semi
* Titan from AMCC
Titan AMCC anybody? -
I think that's a good guess. For one, it just started shipping at 1.5GHz last October...
They's using some weird NMOS with mult-phase clock (6502, anyone?) and dynamic logic, like CPUs from back in the 80s and early 1990s, to cut down on speed demands. Certainly better than the stuff that's been out in the Amiga market, but a shame they couldn't go to a real [at least formerly] destop-class CPU like the PPC970. The AMCC has an FPU, but no vector unit. So, multimedia performance is even worst than it might have been with a modern applications processor.
......... Of course, it's the FPU and Vector instructions that come to play on the heavy duty multimedia stuff once associated with the Amiga.
According to the article I saw, it's actually the 1.5GHz version that's shipping. They need a shrink to 65nm to support 2.0GHz+.. at least according to the article.
Yes, This is absolutely not going to be considered a high end modern computer but it certainly is an high end Amiga, as you mention. It has some potential to actually give us a platform that could make and Amiga usable for more tasks. If they keep developing the OS and if it's enough to draw back or in a few developers. I'm not sure about that but I'm excited for something different and this looks like fun at least.
I'd love to have an AmigaOS equipped computer with modern browser, office suite and email package. I know, I know, why not just use a cheap $500 Windows PC. I guess I still like something about the way AmigaOS functions. It's sort of like crusiin' on a tricked out custom Schwinn, it might not have the racing chops or modern gearing of Cannondale or Mongoose but something just feels right about it. ;^)
I don't claim to be an Electrical Engineer but from what I was reading on the Titan they think it'll go to 2Ghz at 90nm.
From EETimes article on the Titan - "SAN JOSE, Calif. — Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) debuts today a new PowerPC core it hopes can drive the company into high-end embedded markets. The 90nm Titan is a dual-core processor that hits 2 GHz in bulk CMOS to deliver 8,000 Dhrystone MIPS.
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AMCC hopes its device offers higher performance than the competing 90nm Freescale e500 which tops out at 1.5 GHz. Titan potentially could offer lower cost than the PA Semi device which also hits 2 GHz but requires a 65nm process technology."
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199501275
So at least from what I've been reading the expect to reach 2Ghz at 90nm whereas the PA Semi chip apparently needs to go to 65nm to reach that goal.
A professional doing ... what? Does anyone make a living doing AmigaOS development? That's about the only profession I can see happy here.
I have no idea, that's from a quote from the marketing on the X1000 page. However, I know the Titan is geared at the Telecommunications/Embedded markets, so you tell me does having an Xena chip with custom I/O socket on board give anyone the opportunity to develop/test Telecom/Embedded systems using this board before moving them onto a physical board or is it pointless with today's virtual circuit design and automatic PCB milling system?
Yup... back then, Macs and PCs were averaging around $3,000. In 2009, the average desktop computer bought for home use was just over $500 in the USA, and came with monitor and printer.
Too true, a $1000 Amiga today with a design that's roughly 3 generations behind as you point out isn't exactly compelling to a mainstream mass market. I think they are correct on hobbyists being interested.
The question would be, as you point out well, is there any use today for AmigaOS 4 running on what for the OS is a fast system with a Zena processor that would move this to other markets. I don't have a good answer but I for one would love to see AmigaOS get even a small foothold in the market so that it can continue to be developed.
I guess I'm still a dreamer. 8^) Those crazy Commodore engineers made me into one. 8^) Starting with the VIC20, progressing to the C64 onto the Amiga - they always had a way of pushing the envelope and creating something revolutionary not evolutionary.
Maybe I'm just clinging onto the past but maybe someday someone will find that special spark that triggers another revolution. Not claiming that the X1000 is it but I'm happy to see any new Amiga hardware.
-Nyle
P.S. It was enough to get Dave to follow the thread so maybe it's at least a little intriguing. 8^) Good talking with you again after all these years. Last time would have been on a newsgroup in the early days of the Internet on my A4000D/030 over modem. 8^)
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To be honset I want to know WHY the old amigas are so expensive. Every one of it's peers is £10-30 on ebay or the like, yet we pay around £100 for one somebody kept the box for. madness. Though I guess the 1200 and 4000 staying current all the way up to 2004? though I guess a with late 90s early 2000s amiga setup, "1200" is more of a vague description than a model number.
Simple, few people want an 8088/286 or a 68000 based Mac. ;^) Ok, ok - not trying to start a flame war.
It's supply and demand - people are looking for old Amigas all the time so the market for old equipment is still there.
I'd love to have a well working A4000 but I've already bought 3 of them and had them all die on me within a few months. I don't have the soldering chops to repair them and I can't afford a foreign repair service. ;^(
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Precisely, things are worth what people are willing to pay for them, no more and no less...
Simple, few people want an 8088/286 or a 68000 based Mac. ;^) Ok, ok - not trying to start a flame war.
It's supply and demand - people are looking for old Amigas all the time so the market for old equipment is still there.
I'd love to have a well working A4000 but I've already bought 3 of them and had them all die on me within a few months. I don't have the soldering chops to repair them and I can't afford a foreign repair service. ;^(
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It could be used to emulate SID chip (to replace entire player there isnt enough SRAM) but making such chip which works as good as original SID chip is such achievement that I doubt it...
Yeah, SID is more analog than digital. Beautiful stuff from the days when raw brains counted more than raw processing power. Genius work !!!
Have you seen the C64 version of Desert Dream? Check on Youtube. It is hard to believe that they made the music with one channel less and they are doing that without Paula´s capabilities.
Ok, way off-topic, but I could not resist...
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(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y116/zebeedee/animated-avatars0502.gif)
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(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y116/zebeedee/animated-avatars0502.gif)
what is it with the popcorn whenever people go off topic?? seen it a few times on this site now?? :)
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All this talk of x86 this...x86 that....
Has it ever occurred to anyone the x86 viability roadmap is coming to an end, even with multiple cores? Perhaps the new hardware is onto something with the nod, assisted of course at first by a beefed up PPC 'co-processor', to the use of a transputer.
I personally don't think Intel even knows the future in any certain terms, as the P4 debacle probably best most recently illustrated when they fell behind AMD, albeit briefly.
As for "x86 viability roadmap is coming to an end" subject, AMD Bulldozer(1) and AMD Llano(1)(2) indicates otherwise.
1. Inlcudes Intel AVX's 256bit wide SIMD and reverse hyperthreading.
2. Includes DX11 type GpGPU with 480 SPs.
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I have the same opinion. A FPGA could be programmed to emulate AGA for compatibility and other nice stuff. They selected a 400MIPS chip, so based on speed, it is not a big help regarding processing power
Nope. It seems possibly designed for use as an I/O processor, but you can't tell from what they've said if it's actually going that job already, or just counting on someone to provide additional hardware -- as you said, a glorified user port. I don't see hardware development being a big attractor for a machine with effectively zero installed base. This was a hard enough cookie to swallow at Commodore... adding the video slot, CPU slots, and Zorro III slots as a I did. But at least C= had intentions to do something with those, so we could internally justify it, and keeping the interfaces simple enough to allow garage-shop guys using PALs to play helped, too.
At some point, they stated that it could be used to emulate SID.
Well, you need it routed to audio a DAC and audio out path. And heck, there's a SID emulator out for an ATMega 168... that's an 8-bit micro with 16K of memory. I would HOPE a 400 MIPS per core device could do this. But why bother.. you can do this on the host CPU for an immeasurably small amount of CPU. Most current PCs do a full 16-32 voice General MIDI synthesizer in software... that's built in on Windows.
I believe most of us would expect this chip to be capable of emulating the Amiga chipset, or doing something brand new. (I bet on the last one)
You can emulate the Amiga chipset running UAE on the host machine... what's the minimum speed CPU that does a passable Amiga emulation. I guess you could splt up the emulation between threads... maybe. But you'd have to watch that whole multi-threading thing.
And as well, a forward-moving AmigaOS can't get bogged down worrying about custom chip emulation. Just run UAE. If they wanted to be nice about it, integrate the UAE functionality within the OS, like Windows 7 does the full XP emulation, or OS/2 used to let you run Windows 3.1 windows on the same Presentation Manager screen as native OS/2 apps.
But long run, the goal needs to be to never want legacy apps, or they're doomed to forever be seen as some weird retro machine.
(PS: Oh my god, I'm talking to "the man". It's such an honor)
I'm really not that impressive :-)
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I don't claim to be an Electrical Engineer but from what I was reading on the Titan they think it'll go to 2Ghz at 90nm.
Yeah, maybe you're right... though I think that's after some process tweaking. They seem to be using the Intrinsity technology, or something very much like it, on that CPU. They do a much of tweaking up just the bottlenecks, changing CMOS to NMOS circuity, and some other tricks to get the speed of things up. There are a bunch of CPU companies doing this... for example, Samsung used Intrinsity to get their ARM A8 core running at 1GHz (Samsung has the kind of ARM license that lets them the ARM... and keep in mind, they were the guys pushing the DEC Alpha to new levels, back in the day).
I have no idea, that's from a quote from the marketing on the X1000 page. However, I know the Titan is geared at the Telecommunications/Embedded markets,
Of course it is... that's "code" for "PowerPC" these days. At least some years back, Cisco was putting PowerPC in most every router and switch they made. Thus, PowerPCs grew all sorts of router and switch friendly hardware, like modern memory buses and RapidIO links.
Of course, every CPU that's not an "applications processor" (eg, desktop PC, PDA/phone, etc) is an embedded CPU... they're used in a box or board, hidden away somewhere. For example, I built an R/C controller system. which had two 32-bit ARM CPUs on the main controller, one 16-bit RI MSP430 CPU on the remote, even a tiny Zilog Z8 on an optional tachometer sensor. That's "embedded". So are the CPUs in your DVD player, TV, microwave oven, etc (in case anyone here's not familiar with the term).
The first TiVo used an embedded PPC... not super fast, though, so they had a bit of hardware to decode and encode. Second model used some MIPS CPU, fast enough to decode MPEG-2 in software, but they still needed the hardware encoder.
so you tell me does having an Xena chip with custom I/O socket on board give anyone the opportunity to develop/test Telecom/Embedded systems using this board before moving them onto a physical board or is it pointless with today's virtual circuit design and automatic PCB milling system?
I don't believe anyone building embedded telecommunications gear would bother with something like this. You can get a reference design board for any CPU you're after... all CPU companies either make the boards themselves, or partner with a board company. These are often small enough to fit your target device... in fact, many embedded designs just use off-the-shelf embedded CPU boards -- not everyone wants to design these things from scratch. But you wouldn't likely waste the space of a full-sized ATX motherboard, even for development.
The question would be, as you point out well, is there any use today for AmigaOS 4 running on what for the OS is a fast system with a Xena processor that would move this to other markets. I don't have a good answer but I for one would love to see AmigaOS get even a small foothold in the market so that it can continue to be developed.
That's the question. I'm not sure just what you'd do with that XMOS chip on its own. It's interesting, but I reject their example of MP3 player... that's well served by $3.00 DSPs these days, probably with a bunch of on-chip peripherals specifically designed for making MP3 players, ultra-low power, maybe even power managed to run off AA cells or a 3.6V Li-ion rechargeable. And they'd have reference designs, software, etc. There's a whole food chain for every microcontroller, which goes by application. Some companies web sites have hundreds of application notes, examples, code, hardware designs, etc.... for each CPU family they make. The fact I didn't really "get" the XMOS chip... ok, I wasn't motivated by "this is work", but you know, I do this for a living. I shouldn't have to guess :-)
I guess I'm still a dreamer. 8^) Those crazy Commodore engineers made me into one. 8^) Starting with the VIC20, progressing to the C64 onto the Amiga - they always had a way of pushing the envelope and creating something revolutionary not evolutionary.
None of those guys are working on this, far as I know. And it's a very different world. When we were doing this, personal computing was still very, very young. Right now, not so much.. it has matured. And yeah, it's a little sad, because who gets excited about a new computer release? Ok, maybe a few silly Macheads, but really, the PC you see this year is just a little better than last year. There are occasionally new CPU microarchitectures, but most of the time, it's just small improvements. Same with GPUs.
The reason isn't that no one's trying.. but rather, that many tried, and most ultimately failed. Those who are left are spending billions to incremental improvements, funded by the billions of chips they sell. Mature market.
Doesn't mean there can't be fun, or cool new things. I've been far more interested in the cool computing devices I can put in my pocket, or even my livingroom, than on my desktop. There's just more action in those places.
P.S. It was enough to get Dave to follow the thread so maybe it's at least a little intriguing. 8^) Good talking with you again after all these years. Last time would have been on a newsgroup in the early days of the Internet on my A4000D/030 over modem. 8^)
Ok, I'm hooked in via satellite modem... it's a little faster than dial-up. And many, many times more expensive. But all those dishes on the roof is great for my tech-cred :-)
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My comment about military spec came from a young lady I know who is a project manager on the Hubble Space telescope. She told me that one of the Computers in the thing is a 1990's 486... not a chip from another supplier with equivalent CPU power... it's a 486..they had to go through so much engineering BS to get it approved and fabbed for aerospace use. It's built to withstand the rigors of liftoff and whatever else happens up there.
Stuff that's going into space needs to be radiation hardened. Our atmosphere shields us from a lot of the radiation that comes our way. Apparently this is a lot easier to do with older slower designs.
Reagardless of all that am I crazy to believe that a FAST Amiga legacy compatible machine can be made using FPGA technology and come in under $300????'
Depends on what you mean by fast. The Terasic DE1 board goes for $150 and a modified Minimig with the 68K in the FPGA fits on the device on that board. There are other FPGA dev boards with bigger FPGAs that are under $300 so you could certainly do something faster than an Amiga 500 at such a price; how much faster I can't say.
Putting an Amiga clone chipset in the FPGA of the hardware the Atari Coldfire Project is producing could be interesting, but I doubt that will run under $300 when they're done.
I mean go to deal extreme and you see Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis TV game units for like $30 bucks. Those consoles were more or less Amiga 500 like tech...
It's all about volume. You won't see an FPGA in those, but a custom IC. A custom chip is much cheaper per unit than an FPGA big enough to fit an equivalent design, but the upfront costs are much higher so it only makes sense if you know you can deal in a certain amount of volume.
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Putting an Amiga clone chipset in the FPGA of the hardware the Atari Coldfire Project is producing could be interesting, but I doubt that will run under $300 when they're done.
THE ACP looks amazing. They managed to et the coldfire to work, that's impressive. If this was an Amiga product... $1000 price tag... yet this is a total Hobbyist product a la Minimig.
I think this is the MiniMIG 2/3.0 everyone's been thinking about.
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I have a question to you lot in general, since I don't know a ton about processors.
Its pretty obvious that x86 is ruling the desktop, and it seems ARM has embedded devices as their big thing. Why did the next gen consoles use powerPC processors?
Im not trying to pick a fight or anything, Im just curious. Do they do better in a smaller (physical) machine or less heat or what made them go that way ?
I think it primarily comes down to costs and control. Technical reason are not a primary factor. If Intel or AMD would have sold console makers powerful chips for peanuts many of the consoles would have been happy to use x86 chips, as long as some other critera can be satisfied. The original Xbox did. For Intel/AMD I think it is hard for them to justify to their markets selling powerful chips to console makers for much cheaper than they sell chips to desktop PC makers. When this generation of consoles came out equivalently powered Intel chips to what was in some of the consoles would have cost you closer to the $1000 range than $20 range. You can bet Intel would have cheesed their desktop PC consumers if console makers were getting leading edge chips for $20. With x86 Intel is still able to demand a large premium for their chips at the top end of the market. I am not sure this is very true for many other chip markets.
There are some additional reasons though:
1) Control: Console manufacturers generally want to license or own the chip designs and manufacturing processes where possible to avoid being at the mercy of a single vendor. That is why Microsoft moved away from buying off the shelf Intel chips. This gives them the ability to change manufacturers, reduce costs via further development, integration, etc. The original Xbox became very expensive to produce near the end of its life because the parts in it didn't get cheaper. Those off the shelf parts just got bigger ... you couldn't get 8 gigabyte or whatever drives, microsoft had to buy 120 gigabyte drives for the same price of the original 8 gigabyte one, even though it was useless for them. So for the 360 Microsoft was determined to have more fate over its destiny by gaining more control over these areas.
2) Off the shelf X86 chips are usually more complicated than they need to be in order to cope with the millions of applications developed for X86 over the years. They need to maintain full compatibility with a constantly expanding x86 instruction set, and they try to execute code as efficiently as possible with all sorts of out or order execution hardware, etc. Console manufacturers have the luxury of knowing their hardware will not typically change for the life cycle of the console. This means they can tweak their compilers to generate code that will run efficiently against a single, simpler CPU. They won't include whole areas of instruction sets such as fancy integer extensions because 99% of the expensive code in games is floating point. So what they can do is dedicate less silicon to these areas and more areas of silicon to the things that make games execute efficiently.
With PPC, I believe both the above points are addressed because PPC is more of an industry consortium and is easier to license and develop customized variants of, as well as find places to manufacture chips based on the design.
3) Some consoles were already well along the PPC path from long ago, when PPC was probably thought to have the edge over x86, e.g. GameCube/Wii. Wii basically is a GameCube. So it was very easy for them to continue for reasons of low cost development + backward compatibility. I'd be shocked it the next Nintendo console didn't continue with PPC because of this.
4) Sony wanted to try and push boundaries with CPU designs with Cell. While it does have a PPC component, it's not used for the grunt of processing, the SPUs are. Again it was easy to just license the PPC portion here. Quite frankly I think Sony have kind of worked themselves into a corner with Cell ... I am very curious what PS4 will do when it comes to CPU, or maybe PS5.
Anyway, that's my take on it. What this has to do with Amiga at this juncture in time I am not sure because I am not sure the reasons the console makers went with these chips over 5 years ago has any relevance to what is reality now. I don't think it does.
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Fallout 1/2 had way more class than F3. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3PXiV95kwA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWaTB1LkQhA&feature=related
People who say that just are angry because the format changed. Fallout 3 was a master piece. I love that game. The SDK for it is also good and there is such a huge modding community for it that I can't quit playing it. I think Fallout 3 has made a bigger impression on me than most of the games I've played in the last few years.
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Stuff that's going into space needs to be radiation hardened. Our atmosphere shields us from a lot of the radiation that comes our way. Apparently this is a lot easier to do with older slower designs.
I suspect that the smaller 'feature size' of newer chips is a factor... making them more susceptible to disruption by radiation.
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been a while since i have posted so let me re-introduce myself. i'm basically an old 8bit burnout from user/programming/custom interfacing standpoint having cut my teeth on pet machines then doing the c64. exciting times back then. my amiga experience was with a stock 500 machine in the mid 90's. was user of this machine, never programmed it. went on computing hiatus and returned to commodore as hobbyist several years ago. still have same c64 i used in early 80's and it still works along with a majority of floppies and even cassettes. have a 128 that i am about to utilize for greenhouse environmental control purposes. have modernized 3000 seeing most use. so this is me. i follow amiga happenings a lot. bad as it sounds, my best amiga user experience is currently uae (sorry but for what i do on amiga this is easier than maintaining my 3000 machine and also portable on my laptop too.) run the 3000 because i wanted to modernize an original machine. will never do this again due to cost vs returns. play with the other post amiga systems (never os4) but settling on none. so guess i still have my head in the 68k sand. tried many linuxes and unixes but never like them as 'home' computers. simply do not have the time to become expert at too many things. i guess i am commodore loyal from pre-amiga days. i like amiga because of good usable applications simply not available in any goodness on other platforms (scala). am starting to use for creating interactive infant/early childhood learning programs. not my working profession, have a youngster that i am trying to teach at home. also like amiga because of the long term loyalty of hardware/software developers and many users. a long introduction...sorry.
new x1000 board better than others before it and also obviously behind x86 stuff. spent some time reading xmos papers today. neat little devices for hacking and interfacing. this is a good thing in my opinion. problem is mainboard due to be very expensive to get this hacking/interfacing ability. specifics unclear but seems to link up through pci-ex 8lane. wouldn't mind having one of these chips for some alternative energy projects i am working on. i see os4 people having a slightly better time of it in the next year. user base real small but increasing a little here and there. x1000 probably a high end developers machine or well to do hobbyist machine. still, i'm glad for community that there is something new. it looks like hyperion is going for it in a sense and i wish them well. looks like a lot will be happening on os side of things this year as well. so maybe board not for everyone, but at least it is something to continue with. if anything os should improve. maybe one day porting to smaller/cheaper devices would be viable. until then i say carry on. there are lots of camps to choose from. many people in more than one, as I am. although i can say that i will be retiring from one of them. i can't say if i will jump into os4 yet. being a user, it depends on software availability. os4 getting there so maybe?
cheers.
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People who say that just are angry because the format changed. Fallout 3 was a master piece. I love that game. The SDK for it is also good and there is such a huge modding community for it that I can't quit playing it. I think Fallout 3 has made a bigger impression on me than most of the games I've played in the last few years.
He's right, you know. It didn't become Game Of The Year for nothing. I'm still playing it :roflmao:
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I would argue that, technically, x86 is dead. It exists in RISC emulation layers and x64 is steadily erasing its footprint.
Both of those ARE the x86. Only Microsoft says "x64"... the official name from AMD is x86-64... Intel calls it something else. Regardless, it's all x86. Sure, it's improved... that's been happening, here and there, since 1981. They've got gotten better at it over the last decade... and, well, Intel wasn't always in control.
Now, of course, anyone who's got a religious rather than technical objection against something called "x86"... if they can find they don't hate it when they call it "x64", I say go for it. And while you're at it, stop being insane. The instruction set hasn't mattered since whenever it was in the 1990s that compilers just got better than people (if you want to say 99.9999% of the programmers out there, I'll concede there may be some joker in a cave somewhere who can code better than the compiler... not more accurately, not faster, but better. At least until I change from one x86 chip to another).
And as much as people hate Microsoft, it has done something right with Windows 7: in order to obtain WHQL status for a device, a manufacturer must provide 64-bit as well as 32-bit drivers.
Yes, that was a smart move.. also smart when they required it for Vista, but at least people seem to actually be using Windows 7, not reformatting XP over top.
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Its pretty obvious that x86 is ruling the desktop, and it seems ARM has embedded devices as their big thing. Why did the next gen consoles use powerPC processors?
The main reason is that they wanted IBM as a foundry. Particularly the Cell... there just weren't many chip fabs that could make that when the PS3 came out. The PowerPC, driven for years by Cisco and, a bit, by Apple's desktop use, was (and still is) one of the faster embedded processors. No game machine can really put a desktop-class processor in -- the costs (CPU, heat management, power supply) are way too high.
Also, IBM apparently had the design methodologies in place to redesign the PowerPC at lower costs. And they were taking things down in power, which is always simpler... it would have been much more expensive to add performance, SMP and multithreading to ARM in those days.
Some of it was their design goals, too. Microsoft wanted "anything but x86", since apparently, they were tired of how easily the XBox-1 (which was essentially just a super low-end PC) was hacked. They also wanted multiple threads and cores, based on estimate of how video games were being built at the time. Most embedded processors are single-core only.
Of course, Nintendo had done this, years ago, for the GameCube. The Wii uses PowerPC simply because the GameCube did, and the Wii is only a small upgrade of the GameCube architecture.
There's also this: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/new-book-from-ibmers-sony-suckered-into-funding-xbox-chip.ars. Some IBMers are claiming that Microsoft chose the PowerPC because Sony had already paid a huge pile of money developing a version of the PowerPC optimized for video games.
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Now, of course, anyone who's got a religious rather than technical objection against something called "x86"... if they can find they don't hate it when they call it "x64", I say go for it. And while you're at it, stop being insane. The instruction set hasn't mattered since whenever it was in the 1990s that compilers just got better than people (if you want to say 99.9999% of the programmers out there, I'll concede there may be some joker in a cave somewhere who can code better than the compiler... not more accurately, not faster, but better. At least until I change from one x86 chip to another).
I think the choice of the XCore chip using the LLVM (Low-Level Virtual Machine) toolchain was a good transitional state. Soon it may be possible to go cross-platform in the way that Java would have done early on if it hadn't sucked so bad at first. And best of all, LLVM is funded by Apple, Google, and Adobe.
The one problem is that the supervisor-level stuff on a Kernal needs to be done in assembly rather than C. Perhaps porting LLVM to AROS would be a better idea in the long run.
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Thanks for the explanation guys. That makes a lot of sense.
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You can emulate the Amiga chipset running UAE on the host machine... what's the minimum speed CPU that does a passable Amiga emulation. I guess you could splt up the emulation between threads... maybe. But you'd have to watch that whole multi-threading thing.
Once upon a time, when compiling UAE for Linux, there was something along "--enable-penguins", which IIRC, enabled UAE to emulate 68k on one CPU and chipset emulation on the next. But I might remember wrong, and UAE has certainly evolved since then, the option is no longer there.
Just run UAE.
That's what I'm doing :) Most of the time. Even though I do have hardware to run latest MorphOS, for example. UAE is just too flexible to ignored, I can use the same virtual amiga on my laptop, desktop, under Linux, Windows, OSX or whatever. The only thing I miss is a way to have amigaos windows interleaved with host OS, or have host OS being able to address and render inside an amiga window on UAE.
My biggest gripe these days is the legal state of OS3.x, with copyrights east and west, all the fuzz around unofficial BB3 for example, developers having signed NDAs and given away copyrights of their own software to "dead" companies like Haage&Partner and Amiga Inc., so they cannot even continue to work on software they originally wrote themselves. I would not be surprised if MorphOS and OS4.x will share this destiny eventually. :(
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Yeah, maybe you're right... though I think that's after some process tweaking.
I thought it was cool that they thought they could get it to 2Ghz at 90nm though. Still love to see it on a mainstream desktop processor as you point out but the OS isn't there yet. 8^)
Of course it is... that's "code" for "PowerPC" these days. At least some years back, Cisco was putting PowerPC in most every router and switch they made. Thus, PowerPCs grew all sorts of router and switch friendly hardware, like modern memory buses and RapidIO links.
Absolutely, Like back in the day when printers were using a lot of 68K series processors.
Of course, every CPU that's not an "applications processor" (eg, desktop PC, PDA/phone, etc) is an embedded CPU... they're used in a box or board, hidden away somewhere. For example, I built an R/C controller system. which had two 32-bit ARM CPUs on the main controller, one 16-bit RI MSP430 CPU on the remote, even a tiny Zilog Z8 on an optional tachometer sensor. That's "embedded".
Zilog, Sweet - I haven't seen that name since college. I think the heath kits we had used a Zilog at their core. I had a machine code manual for one of that generation somewhere around here. I remember designing a primitive A/D on the kit but my sample rate was too slow to really capture the waveform.
I don't believe anyone building embedded telecommunications gear would bother with something like this.
Yeah, I figured it was a totally stab in the dark. Hopefully, someone comes up with some unique use for it and sells a several thousand extra computers because of it.
That's the question. I'm not sure just what you'd do with that XMOS chip on its own. It's interesting, but I reject their example of MP3 player... that's well served by $3.00 DSPs these days, probably with a bunch of on-chip peripherals specifically designed for making............
Maybe there is some benefit to be had for an FPGA connected to the Xorro slot being able to gain access to the XMOS chip and the I/O logic there. Would that possibly offload some of the work the FPGA would have to do to interface with all I/O systems and let the XMOS take care of it? I better stop now, I'm just hoping there is something neat that comes of it.
The fact I didn't really "get" the XMOS chip... ok, I wasn't motivated by "this is work", but you know, I do this for a living. I shouldn't have to guess :-)
LOL!!! Too true. Maybe they'll have some seed ideas closer to release time. I bet they'd let you in on the project. Have any fun ideas that you've been keeping to yourself? Love to see some of them. 8^)
None of those guys are working on this, far as I know. And it's a very different world. When we were doing this, personal computing was still very, very young. Right now, not so much.. it has matured. And yeah, it's a little sad, because who gets excited about a new computer release? Ok, maybe a few silly Macheads, but really, the PC you see this year is just a little better than last year. There are occasionally new CPU microarchitectures, but most of the time, it's just small improvements. Same with GPUs.
The reason isn't that no one's trying.. but rather, that many tried, and most ultimately failed. Those who are left are spending billions to incremental improvements, funded by the billions of chips they sell. Mature market.
Doesn't mean there can't be fun, or cool new things. I've been far more interested in the cool computing devices I can put in my pocket, or even my livingroom, than on my desktop. There's just more action in those places.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that any of the innovative old guard were on this project. Being there in the early days while each of you broke new ground in the brave new world of personal computers spoiled me. I sometimes feel like they deliberately hold back the full ramifications of new technological developments in order to incrementally improve things. That way they can sell more product as the new slightly better model comes out. I know that it's not true but someday I just hope there is a unique team of hardware and software developers that get together to release something truly groundbreaking again.
I too have found most of my enjoyment in the smaller portable device market - MP3, Smart phone, GPS, digital cameras and other gadgets. Now that those markets are maturing everything is converging into a single device. That's interesting to watch - someday to have one device that's just as good as a separate video/digital camera, GPS, MP3, video player, phone, etc. Still keeps my interest peaked.
On the desktop side, I have to admit that PeeCees have become little more than a communications tool for me. I do a little video editing for my wife's school musicals and concerts as well as family outings but nothing like the enjoyment I got back in the day. I must be getting old - You guys sure did make it interesting though. It was a fun ride. Thanks.
Ok, I'm hooked in via satellite modem... it's a little faster than dial-up. And many, many times more expensive. But all those dishes on the roof is great for my tech-cred :-)
LOL!!!! Did you really need help in the tech-cred department. *Chuckle* Somehow I don't think so. We are lucky to have broadband and DSL available here. I hear that while it's expensive FIOS is really, really fast and the HD quality on it is good. Maybe someday that'll be here as well. Good talking with you Dave.
So long and thanks for all the Fred Fish...
-Nyle
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hmmm... Interesting document. Definitely hardware. But, if it ain't x86, then it'd better be xbox or ps3, 'cause, i doubt they're gonna sell too many of them otherwise.
But we will wait, and we will see... :)
i find it kind of amusing that that this document lists trevor, anthony and ben's birthdays... Is this normal for belgian law? Or is it a european thing?
Hmmm... Ex box... Or am i thinking blasphemy here? :)
who cares. Cheap supportable hardware or bust!
Probably bust...
pa6t
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They'd like to claim the high end. That doesn't mean they actually there, any more than any other of the zillions of Amiga-industry promises made since ESCOM closed the Amiga Technologies doors.
i7 CPU, 6-12GB DRAM, certainly at two full PCIe x 16 slots (well, at least they tried on that... they have two full lenght PCIe slots, but they degrade to x8 if you use them both... so there's really only one x16 slot).
Well, they're letting you fill in that assumption, rather than just outright saying it. It would be really nice if Amiga wanna-be computer companies stopped doing this.. what's the point of raising Amigaoid hopes once again, just to smash them. I would like this to not be another one of those, but really... not much to expect here. PowerPC CPUs have a hard time beating Intel Atoms on performance these days (and the ARM may be a valid competitor, soon). I can't imagine how this is going to be anything but overpriced and underwhelming.
And I'd love to be proved wrong.
Nbench on my G4 1.25 GHz
BITFIELD : 1.8098e+08 : 31.04 : 6.48
FP EMULATION : 136.04 : 65.28 : 15.06
FOURIER : 6710.1 : 7.63 : 4.29
ASSIGNMENT : 14.934 : 56.83 : 14.74
IDEA : 2398.1 : 36.68 : 10.89
HUFFMAN : 1230.6 : 34.13 : 10.90
NEURAL NET : 11.981 : 19.25 : 8.10
LU DECOMPOSITION : 415.28 : 21.51 : 15.53
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX : 35.571
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 14.674
Baseline (MSDOS*) : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU :
L2 Cache :
OS : Linux 2.6.27-1.ydl61.4
C compiler : gcc version 4.1.2 20071124 (Red Hat 4.1.2-42)
libc :
MEMORY INDEX : 7.227
INTEGER INDEX : 10.355
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 8.139
Baseline (LINUX) : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.
My Dual Intel Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
MEMORY INDEX : 17.249
INTEGER INDEX : 14.827
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 26.020
Nbench on Dual GenuineIntel Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @1.60GHz 1600MHz
MEMORY INDEX : 7.239
INTEGER INDEX : 7.268
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 7.359
http://www.jacobheider.com/hardware/nbench.php
Nbench on 4 CPU Intel Core i7 940 @2.93GHz 1600MHz oc 3608MHz
MEMORY INDEX : 7.239
INTEGER INDEX : 7.268
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 7.359
http://www.tux.org/~mayer/linux/results2.html
My G4 is 1.42 times faster than the Intel Atom.
My G4 is only 3 times slower than fastest overclocked i7.
My G4 is only 1.43 times slower my 6600 .
x86 can be faster than the PowerPC, if
1.Problem can be carried out over multiple cores
2.Software developer knows how to write software for multiple cores.
3.Software developer has time to make the software on multiple cores.
Most of the software on my pc use only one core,
and works just a bit faster than my G4.
Next time check, before you write.
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My G4 is 1.42 times faster than the Intel Atom.
My G4 is only 3 times slower than fastest overclocked i7.
My G4 is only 1.43 times slower my 6600 .
Comparing only the performance of a synthetic integer benchmark is rather misleading especially since the benchmark you used provided floating point and memory performance numbers. Your G4 is 1.42 times faster than an Atom at doing integer operations, but has no advantage at memory intensive tasks and only a small advantage at floating point. Your Core 2 Duo may only be 1.43 times faster at integer operations but it's 2.39 times as fast at memory intensive tasks and 3.2 times as fast at floating point. That overclocked Core i7 may only be 3 times faster at integer ops than your G4, but it's 4.64 times faster for memory intensive operations and 6.61 times faster at floating point. If you don't think that a 3x to 6+x speedup is not significant then I don't know what to say.
And all that is just for a single core. nbench is not a multi-threaded benchmark program.
x86 can be faster than the PowerPC, if
1.Problem can be carried out over multiple cores
2.Software developer knows how to write software for multiple cores.
3.Software developer has time to make the software on multiple cores.
Uh, no. It's faster even on single threaded code. IBM's POWER6 might be faster than an i7, but there aren't any PowerPC CPUs for the desktop market that are competitive with even midrange x86 CPUs like the Core2 and Phenom II. I imagine the chips for the embedded market (one of which is likely what's going to be in the X1000) fare even worse.
Further, things that really need a lot of CPU power have been moving to multithreaded code. The latest game engines and video encoders can use multiple cores.
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Uh, no. It's faster even on single threaded code.
So You think that the software done on one core, will work by itself without a rewrite of several core faster.
You're not very smart.
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You're not very smart.
He's not funny either. You, on the other hand, you are very funny. :roflmao:
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but there aren't any PowerPC CPUs for the desktop market that are competitive with even midrange x86 CPUs like the Core2 and Phenom II
The Cell in the PS3 has 8 cores clocked at 3,2 GHz, granted only 6 of those area available to the developer. Linux performes very well on the PS3. Its very cheap and I know people who use is as their desktop computer.
Also, you really need to look at performace vs powerconsumption. Which Intel x86 based CPU only uses less than the 440? and still gives the same performance.
I dont know eveyrthing there is to know about CPUs far from it, but my guess is that the CELL is more than powerfull enough and that the PPC does have a future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)
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but there aren't any PowerPC CPUs for the desktop market that are competitive with even midrange x86 CPUs like the Core2 and Phenom II
The Cell in the PS3 has 8 cores clocked at 3,2 GHz, granted only 6 of those area available to the developer. Linux performes very well on the PS3. Its very cheap and I know people who use is as their desktop computer.
Also, you really need to look at performace vs powerconsumption. Which Intel x86 based CPU only uses less than the 440? and still gives the same performance.
I dont know eveyrthing there is to know about CPUs far from it, but my guess is that the CELL is more than powerfull enough and that the PPC does have a future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)
How many watts does the SAM440's CPU/SoC consume?
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According to AMCC's data sheet (http://www.appliedmicro.com/MyAMCC/retrieveDocument/PowerPC/440EP/PPC440EP_DS2002.pdf):
Typical power (measured): Less than 3W at 533MHz,
2.5W at 400MHz.
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Once upon a time, the Amiga was at the head, technically:
- CPU, sound, graphics
- Operating System
Then other machines caught up (since the Amiga didn't improve: it took them 7 (!) years to release a major upgrade, AGA chipset to the original one). So people started to say "ok, other machines can do nice things, but the AmigaOS is better anyway, cause Windows sucks, and started to argue around the OS.
Then other OS caught up as well (and went far, far beyond), so, well, what do we have now ?
- slow and un-adapted CPU for desktop use
=> it consumes a lot more than desktop CPUs (of course! It's designed to run 24/24 in a printer, routers (well, no, routers now mostly run ARM cpus))
- outdated OS
=> it boots faster (of course, it provides way less services, and I don't even talk about security, stability, lack of protection,...)
25 years ago, people were arguing about the Amiga's superiority.
Today, people are arguing about Amiga's inferiority. I wish people started to be humble, construct something really superior, and designed for its use, not some underpowered embbed stuff slower than a smartphone before thinking about superiority...
It's a fact: Amiga has lost every superiority... Now couldn't we live with/accept that ?
So yes, when you run 50 servers 24/7 power consumption is important. But as my desktop computer, it never was that important.
And about the PS3: it consumes way more than SNES. So it must sucks, right ? Even though it must consume less than a traditionnal PC, today's consoles (apart from the Wii maybe) are power hungry... This is a fact too.
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A lot of Amiga users live in a strange alternate universe where the last fifteen years in computers never took place. A niche product is ok, but you have to have a niche in mind, not "you tell us what it can do, we don't have a clue..."
(http://adiumxtras.com/images/thumbs/spinning_beach_ball_of_death_1_13512_5315_thumb.gif)
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but there aren't any PowerPC CPUs for the desktop market that are competitive with even midrange x86 CPUs like the Core2 and Phenom II
The Cell in the PS3 has 8 cores clocked at 3,2 GHz, granted only 6 of those area available to the developer. Linux performes very well on the PS3. Its very cheap and I know people who use is as their desktop computer.
Also, you really need to look at performace vs powerconsumption. Which Intel x86 based CPU only uses less than the 440? and still gives the same performance.
I dont know eveyrthing there is to know about CPUs far from it, but my guess is that the CELL is more than powerfull enough and that the PPC does have a future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)
Linux feature was removed from PS3 Slim. CELL's SPEs competes against GpGPUs.
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So You think that the software done on one core, will work by itself without a rewrite of several core faster.
You're not very smart.
I see you joined in Dec 2009, belated welcome to Amiga.org. Please check out our posting guidelines.
http://www.amiga.org/index.php?pageid=posting_guidelines
Please refrain from remarks that can be seen as personal attacks.
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So You think that the software done on one core, will work by itself without a rewrite of several core faster.
You're not very smart.
You misunderstand. I'm saying that a single core on an i7 or even a Phenom II will outperform a G4 or even a PowerPC 970 core. nbench only measures the performance of a single core, not the whole chip.
The Cell in the PS3 has 8 cores clocked at 3,2 GHz, granted only 6 of those area available to the developer. Linux performes very well on the PS3. Its very cheap and I know people who use is as their desktop computer.
The Cell has a single PowerPC core and a bunch of SPEs. The PowerPC core may run at 3.2GHz, but since it's a relatively simple in-order design it's not all that fast (the Intel Atom has the same problem). The SPEs add a fair amount of oomph, but they're not really general purpose cores. They only have direct access to a very small amount of memory. Data from main memory has to be copied to this local memory via a DMA transfer in order for an SPE to work on it. They work in a manner more similar to a GPU than a CPU. They're a bit more general purpose than that, but GPUs have been getting more general purpose over time.
Also, you really need to look at performace vs powerconsumption. Which Intel x86 based CPU only uses less than the 440? and still gives the same performance.
It's not from Intel, but the VIA Eden ULV has a TDP of 1W at 500MHz (100mW at idle) and 3.5W at 1GHz (500mW idle). That's a little worse than the Titan (not sure about the chip in the SAM 440), but it's not bad. Not bad enough for x86 to have anything to worry about from PowerPC on the laptop/desktop anyway. ARM has more of a chance of putting a dent there. An ARM SoC intended for a smartphone has everything a cheap netbook needs whereas PowerPC SoC tend to be oriented towards communications equipment and thus lack things like video hardware.
I dont know eveyrthing there is to know about CPUs far from it, but my guess is that the CELL is more than powerfull enough and that the PPC does have a future.
PowerPC definitely has a future. Just not on the desktop.
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Ok... it' been almost 2 weeks since the puzzles. Any word out there on when more info will be dropped.
?
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Gosh you didn't hear? The X1000 is going to be the 1st quantum computer sold to the "consumer electronics" market. But you will need to install a cat, you know, Schrödinger's Cat and all that tricky stuff. Nicknamed "feliX" by the developers.
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I hear it harnesses the power of the X-Men, or Xylophones or Xerxes, not sure which...
(http://media.auslan.org.au/auslan-static/images/twohanded/th_x.jpg)
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Gosh you didn't hear? The X1000 is going to be the 1st quantum computer sold to the "consumer electronics" market. But you will need to install a cat, you know, Schrödinger's Cat and all that tricky stuff. Nicknamed "feliX" by the developers.
Oh very droll, All computers, all matter to be exact has a quantum state, its how you look it then determines the outcome.
(Conventional Calculus)
* Example - How many Elephants can you get in a Mini ?, 2 in the front, 2 in the back and 1 in the trunk....
(Deterministic Quantum Entanglement)
* Example - How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb ? Banana !
Phew...I thought I had lost it for a moment.........Time is up Thread No 5. What am I going to do now.......
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- slow and un-adapted CPU for desktop use
People still bay and use PC with SLOWER processor than G4 - for example Intel Atom.
1GHz G4 is enough for work on linux, for use OpenOffice, Firefox, Java,Netbeans. Today, people are arguing about Amiga's inferiority.
Only in Your imagination.
Most of the software on my pc is one core only and run just a little bit faster than my G4.
I wish people started to be humble,
Start with yourself. construct something really superior, and designed for its use, not some underpowered embbed stuff slower than a smartphone before thinking about superiority...
Nbench show that You lie. Use google +linux +nbench .
It's a fact: Amiga has lost every superiority... Now couldn't we live with/accept that ?
You should accept the fact that the Amiga still represents the level of the middle pc available in a shop.
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Look in all honesty, I alreayd stated, I dont know eveyrthing there is to know about CPUs, its a hardware issue, I really dont care I just want to develop SW.
But as for this debate X86 vs PPC is futile, AmigaOS only chance of X86 is with AROS just accept it.
PPC has a lot to offer, and I bet you lots of beers, that if it didnt, then Hyperion would have chosen some thing else years ago.
When it all boils down, then I for one trust Hyperions choice.
This thread has become (as every x86 vs ppc thread does), the never ending story.
Over and out, I will go back to just reading news again. IMHO its those x86 zealots who are now killing of the amiga.
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Look in all honesty, I alreayd stated, I dont know eveyrthing there is to know about CPUs, its a hardware issue, I really dont care I just want to develop SW.
But as for this debate X86 vs PPC is futile, AmigaOS only chance of X86 is with AROS just accept it.
PPC has a lot to offer, and I bet you lots of beers, that if it didnt, then Hyperion would have chosen some thing else years ago.
When it all boils down, then I for one trust Hyperions choice.
I'll bite, what major success has Hyperion achieved to earn that trust? AFIAK, it's two guy, one is only part time, who have a bunch of subcontractors who, last I heard, have not been fully paid for their initial work. I would like to understand your reasoning to trust Hyperion's decisions, but I fail to see anything beyond simple faith that things will work out in the end.
This thread has become (as every x86 vs ppc thread does), the never ending story.
Over and out, I will go back to just reading news again. IMHO its those x86 zealots who are now killing of the amiga.
No, it's clearly the PPC fanatics who have hobbled the Amiga. It was clearly a bad choice back then, it's suicidal choice to stay with something that's only use is for embedded market (automotive and networking because of Cisco use of PPC). Netbooks will likely out preform X1000 on it's launch, question is now when will mobile phones surpass the X1000.
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I'll bite,
I bet you do.;)
I get the impression there is some confusion that there is some sort of hardware race to catch up with.
X86 does what X86 does, there is no obligation that PPC must follow or even lead. Why does it have to be more that 1mhz / a gadzillion terrafloppies or even capable of playing anything remotely close to the Assassins Credit Card ?
The imagination and application of technology drives change not the other way round. Computer Music only came into existence because of the interference cause by the computer electronics.
Whether or not X1000 is the best thing since sliced bread depends on the user and it doesn't even need a fighting chance at out flopping the x86, the Iphone proves that and it wasn't cheap either.
Stop concentrating on the what x86 can do and imagine what the x1000 could do. Or as Bruce Lee said "Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory!"
;)
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I get the impression there is some confusion that there is some sort of hardware race to catch up with.
X86 does what X86 does, there is no obligation that PPC must follow or even lead. Why does it have to be more that 1mhz / a gadzillion terrafloppies or even capable of playing anything remotely close to the Assassins Credit Card ?
The imagination and application of technology drives change not the other way round. Computer Music only came into existence because of the interference cause by the computer electronics.
Whether or not X1000 is the best thing since sliced bread depends on the user and it doesn't even need a fighting chance at out flopping the x86, the Iphone proves that and it wasn't cheap either.
Stop concentrating on the what x86 can do and imagine what the x1000 could do. Or as Bruce Lee said "Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory!"
;)
Exactly.
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You should accept the fact that the Amiga still represents the level of the middle pc available in a shop.
Accept what ? Whats a Middle PC is it less that a top one, or better than a small one ? All do email rather well, browsing the net a breeze and ironically the small one, I save 20 quid a month on electricity so it pays for itself rather than having a kick ass pc with kilowatt psu processing nothing most of the time..
If people are into raw processing power then buy 4 socket Quad core Xeons, don't even waste your time with a shop pc, raw slowness and its no bigger than a laptop and you can get 10 of em in the space of a large tower.
Horses for Courses, the X1000 won't be a competitor, nor is the Popcorn hour, Sky HD receiver, nor my tv or Iphone yet suprisingly they do things the middle pc doesn't.....ironic that.
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I bet you do.;)
I get the impression there is some confusion that there is some sort of hardware race to catch up with.
X86 does what X86 does, there is no obligation that PPC must follow or even lead. Why does it have to be more that 1mhz / a gadzillion terrafloppies or even capable of playing anything remotely close to the Assassins Credit Card ?
The imagination and application of technology drives change not the other way round. Computer Music only came into existence because of the interference cause by the computer electronics.
Whether or not X1000 is the best thing since sliced bread depends on the user and it doesn't even need a fighting chance at out flopping the x86, the Iphone proves that and it wasn't cheap either.
Stop concentrating on the what x86 can do and imagine what the x1000 could do. Or as Bruce Lee said "Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory!"
;)
So your saying AI/Hyperion have completely given up on being anything remotely competitive in price and performance to the alternatives? The only justification to spending something that will most likely be outlandishly expensive is to run one of the three Amiga-like OSs on? Yes, that does sounds like they have raised the white flag and have surrendered to their fate in the tar pool. :rolleyes:
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Accept what ? Whats a Middle PC is it less that a top one, or better than a small one ? All do email rather well, browsing the net a breeze and ironically the small one, I save 20 quid a month on electricity so it pays for itself rather than having a kick ass pc with kilowatt psu processing nothing most of the time..
Problem is Atom based, extremely cheap, PCs have more CPU power and also saves on power. Of course, if you really want highier end gfx, you can spend huge sums of money, probably equal to X1000 pricing, and buy gaming laptop.
If people are into raw processing power then buy 4 socket Quad core Xeons, don't even waste your time with a shop pc, raw slowness and its no bigger than a laptop and you can get 10 of em in the space of a large tower.
Horses for Courses, the X1000 won't be a competitor, nor is the Popcorn hour, Sky HD receiver, nor my tv or Iphone yet suprisingly they do things the middle pc doesn't.....ironic that.
Except the above is not trying to pass itself off as a computer either.
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So your saying AI/Hyperion have completely given up on being anything remotely competitive in price and performance to the alternatives? The only justification to spending something that will most likely be outlandishly expensive is to run one of the three Amiga-like OSs on? Yes, that does sounds like they have raised the white flag and have surrendered to their fate in the tar pool. :rolleyes:
No...Is there a need to be competitive, whats the drive force behind being competitive ? You are judging on the basis of a competition that has no drive to compete ? Are we saying AROS is a competitor ? UAE ? Linux / Windblows. ? Whem and Wheres the competition going to start, what the criteria for success ?
What do you want to achieve should be the driving force behind buying the X1000 or not, not whether the competition has merit ?
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Problem is Atom based, extremely cheap, PCs have more CPU power and also saves on power. Of course, if you really want highier end gfx, you can spend huge sums of money, probably equal to X1000 pricing, and buy gaming laptop.
Except the above is not trying to pass itself off as a computer either.
Yes it does. In the blurb for a blade it says it runs all the latest x86 software...you mean its not in the same form factor as a PC. Ah.............this is where I really cannot abide narrow views. I have 200 staff working daily on a computer that doesn't exist, it software...vmware...the user doesn't know its a blade the user doesn't care if it is blade. They thinks the PC thats sat in front of them is running the software......nope it doesn't the blade does.
Maybe Hyperion shouldn't have shown a picture of a motherboard, thats their mistake....it should have been a Green Orb with try me written on it. If it came the size of a postage stamp with a multitude of expansion connectors you wouldn't have compared it such but because its the size of an atx form factor for a tooling and production reasons (not for your benefit), it has to be compared to the same form factor equivelent a PC and a Mac, wow.....yea of little Atx faith.
I really don't care what factor it comes in, its nice that its ATX because I do have an awful lot of kit round here (mostly pc) that may or may not work with it but if it had come looking like a Mini-Mig would you have compared it to that or a i7 gaming rig ?
Nuff said.
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No...Is there a need to be competitive, whats the drive force behind being competitive ? You are judging on the basis of a competition that has no drive to compete ? Are we saying AROS is a competitor ? UAE ? Linux / Windblows. ? Whem and Wheres the competition going to start, what the criteria for success ?
What do you want to achieve should be the driving force behind buying the X1000 or not, not whether the competition has merit ?
Any hardware and OS that a consumer can chose over the X1000 is competition. With that in mind, there is no reason for outside the current OS4 community to buy a X1000. Even within the OS4 community, there is going to be a small portion who can afford to buy it which means the scale of economy is dooming A-EON's chances of financial success.
Definition of success is making a good long term ROI. You could go short term ROI, but I don't think that is what AI/Hyperion/A-EON are trying to build on.
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You never know, they could be using surplus components from other companies that don't need or want them any more...
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Yes it does. In the blurb for a blade it says it runs all the latest x86 software...you mean its not in the same form factor as a PC. Ah.............this is where I really cannot abide narrow views. I have 200 staff working daily on a computer that doesn't exist, it software...vmware...the user doesn't know its a blade the user doesn't care if it is blade. They thinks the PC thats sat in front of them is running the software......nope it doesn't the blade does.
Maybe Hyperion shouldn't have shown a picture of a motherboard, thats their mistake....it should have been a Green Orb with try me written on it. If it came the size of a postage stamp with a multitude of expansion connectors you wouldn't have compared it such but because its the size of an atx form factor for a tooling and production reasons (not for your benefit), it has to be compared to the same form factor equivelent a PC and a Mac, wow.....yea of little Atx faith.
I really don't care what factor it comes in, its nice that its ATX because I do have an awful lot of kit round here (mostly pc) that may or may not work with it but if it had come looking like a Mini-Mig would you have compared it to that or a i7 gaming rig ?
Nuff said.
Except of course, they are not trying to pass the X1000 off as a microwave oven, they are trying to tell us this is the next generation Amiga. I should be able to buy a ARM based netbook that has more horsepower for a fraction of the X1000's costs by the tim the X1000 is released. The only thing that is up in the air, is when smartphones will come faster then the X1000.
Explain to me why anyone should buy a X1000 over say a comparable netbook, either ARM or x86? Or a laptop that already beats the X1000, your choice.
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Except of course, they are not trying to pass the X1000 off as a microwave oven, they are trying to tell us this is the next generation Amiga. I should be able to buy a ARM based netbook that has more horsepower for a fraction of the X1000's costs by the tim the X1000 is released. The only thing that is up in the air, is when smartphones will come faster then the X1000.
Explain to me why anyone should buy a X1000 over say a comparable netbook, either ARM or x86? Or a laptop that already beats the X1000, your choice.
Whats this fascination with raw horsepower its not a car. or is it ? Whats the target market for a netbook or smartphone, what target application do they need raw horsepower for. ? I have lower power low speed cpu's pc here to answer you. ? I don't write on the forum with anything else more powerful, those devices have other jobs to do. My StudioHybrid Media Center is connected to the tv to watch bluray/HD content ( I don't play games on it thats the xbox360's job), for general media I have a popcorn hour. There's a couple of linux boxes (routing and firewalls) and a vmware box for webhosting and other webby stuff where it gets left on all day. Most of the computers round here are on Wol so they don't suck power 24/7. I have a couple of dev kits wireup for experimental stuff and the new Amiga will sit nicely in that bracket for non-intel dev work and general mucking about. what do you want the X1000 to do will decide what its worth, don't u think?
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Why use linux when I can do it all on windows?
Why use windows when I can do it all on Linux?
Why use either when I can do it all on MacOS?
It's all up to personal preference. I'll choose to use AmigaOS when the X1000 comes out because I believe in the OS. Never liked X86 or Apple. At least I'll have a system I like again. Something fun. I don't care if a 1000 people have one or a million. I know I will and I'll be happy.
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Whats this fascination with raw horsepower its not a car. or is it ? Whats the target market for a netbook or smartphone, what target application do they need raw horsepower for. ? I have lower power low speed cpu's pc here to answer you. ? I don't write on the forum with anything else more powerful, those devices have other jobs to do. My StudioHybrid Media Center is connected to the tv to watch bluray/HD content ( I don't play games on it thats the xbox360's job), for general media I have a popcorn hour. There's a couple of linux boxes (routing and firewalls) and a vmware box for webhosting and other webby stuff where it gets left on all day. Most of the computers round here are on Wol so they don't suck power 24/7. I have a couple of dev kits wireup for experimental stuff and the new Amiga will sit nicely in that bracket for non-intel dev work and general mucking about. what do you want the X1000 to do will decide what its worth, don't u think?
Then why not stick with a SAM440 if that is all that it takes?
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Why use linux when I can do it all on windows?
Why use windows when I can do it all on Linux?
Why use either when I can do it all on MacOS?
It's all up to personal preference. I'll choose to use AmigaOS when the X1000 comes out because I believe in the OS. Never liked X86 or Apple. At least I'll have a system I like again. Something fun. I don't care if a 1000 people have one or a million. I know I will and I'll be happy.
That is my point, who else but the OS4 community is going to buy it? The higher the price, the smaller percentage of the OS4 community can/will buy it.
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That is my point, who else but the OS4 community is going to buy it? The higher the price, the smaller percentage of the OS4 community can/will buy it.
yes your right on that point, not until the OS4 Community write something worth having, will OS4 grow but Linux didn't have many folk either until LAMP wiped its feet. MacOS didn't get going until DTP came through the door. Windows didn't get going until Word went GUI and DOS didn't get going until Wordstar, DB2 and Supercalc walked along. Amiga didn't get going until the graphics/sound were realised and the Lemmings dived off cliffs. The list goes on. CP/M didn't get going until MultiCalc......
A new hardware means a chance for the Killer app to be found again. Follow the other hardware and you'll be following with hand me down ported software.
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yes your right on that point, not until the OS4 Community write something worth having, will OS4 grow but Linux didn't have many folk either until LAMP wiped its feet. MacOS didn't get going until DTP came through the door. Windows didn't get going until Word went GUI and DOS didn't get going until Wordstar, DB2 and Supercalc walked along. Amiga didn't get going until the graphics/sound were realised and the Lemmings dived off cliffs. The list goes on. CP/M didn't get going until MultiCalc......
It's been about six years. Nothing is coming.
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Well I suspect that the 2010 iPhone, the 3G Suppa Duppa, or what ever they decide to call it, will have a >1 GHz processor and sell for less than the X1000.
Why would I spend premium money on crude petroleum? How do you sell a computer that's "less powerful than a netbook, but costs more than a dual quad core? One without memory protection and simple security? What does this X chip give you anyway? A small processor that has it's own IO that will blow up the whole overpriced motherboard if you get the voltages the wrong way round. Emulation? Of what? Virtually all emulation of classic computers will be faster and more accurate on a simple core2duo.
Somebody explain what a low powered embedded system can do for me? Why would I want one? What can it do better than a regular desktop PC?
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You should accept the fact that the Amiga still represents the level of the middle pc available in a shop.
Currently you can only buy the Sam440 which is well below anything in the mainstream PC market today and is already beaten by mobile phones.
MorphOS has the G4 Macs but even they are firmly low end compared to PCs.
The X1000 will come in above the netbooks but not for long, there'll be both x86 and ARM based netbook chips that'll beat it within 6 months to a year of its release.
I'm sure the X1000 will be a great machine for those who appreciate it, it will be the most powerful Amiga ever made. However there's not point comparing it with PCs, it just comes out badly. It's not going to be cheap and compared to PCs, not every powerful.
Just accept the Amiga is a hobbiest machine now and enjoy it, if you can accept that it doesn't matter how it compares with PCs.
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X1000 isn't an Amiga, Hyperion don't have a license for that brand.....
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Oh very droll, All computers, all matter to be exact has a quantum state, its how you look it then determines the outcome.
Actually it's if and how you look at it that determines the outcome.
;)
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It's all up to personal preference. I'll choose to use AmigaOS when the X1000 comes out because I believe in the OS.
If you've gone this long without picking up an A1 or a SAM, you won't get an X1000 either.
Pull the other leg, it's got bells on it!
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Somebody explain what a low powered embedded system can do for me? Why would I want one? What can it do better than a regular desktop PC?
Well, one might say that you simply don't have a creative mind and can't see the possibilities. However, given the amount of innovation coming out of the OS4 community over the last six years, I would hope that people who live in glass houses don't throw rocks.
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Actually it's if and how you look at it that determines the outcome.
;)
Smart-Arse ;)
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Somebody explain what a low powered embedded system can do for me? Why would I want one? What can it do better than a regular desktop PC?
Nothing, well, nothing worth writing home about. To top it off, adopters of the x1000 will still have to stuff a mac/windows or linux machine on the desk just to compile their XC programs. LOL
And they'll probably have to buy one of the dev boards from XMOS too unless the gracious folks at hyperion decide to put an xtag header on a slot in the back of the computer.
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Here's the new X1000 processor:
(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/a4-apple-chip-top-1.jpg)
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Here's the new X1000 processor:
(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/a4-apple-chip-top-1.jpg)
A4 is ARM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture).
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X1000 isn't an Amiga, Hyperion don't have a license for that brand.....
Who told you? Hyperion have a perpetual, free, worldwide licence to pretty much anything amiga. Can't get mugh more "Amiga" than that.
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X1000 isn't an Amiga, Hyperion don't have a license for that brand.....
Good point Sir!!
I suppose they could call it an "Amiga compatible" system though.
(Even though it's far from compatible with 99.9% of Amigas!)
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Who told you? Hyperion have a perpetual, free, worldwide licence to pretty much anything amiga. Can't get mugh more "Amiga" than that.
No, only AmigaOS. Amiga, Inc. still own the Amiga name.
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Read the agreement, Amiga Inc agreed to give Hyperion a license to the AmigaOS name as well as the Boingball. They also agreed not to go into competition with an alternate AmigaOS, and Hyperion agreed that Amiga Anywhere wasn't competition. Their is no mention of hardware and Amiga Inc granted no license to the name Amiga. It would be quite possible for Amiga Inc to produce an Amiga computer that ran MS Windows or OS X or Linux or Haiku, they could I suppose event produce machines that ran Hyperion's Amiga OS. The agreement was software, specifically the OS part.
Personally I'd like to see an Amiga that ran Haiku (partially because you could likely dual boot AROS on it and partially because Haiku is a pretty neat OS).
Who told you? Hyperion have a perpetual, free, worldwide licence to pretty much anything amiga. Can't get mugh more "Amiga" than that.
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A4 is ARM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture).
Pretty funny the Acorn Archimdes architecture now powers Apple products.
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Pretty funny the Acorn Archimdes architecture now powers Apple products.
I think at this point, Apple has put stuff on just about every architecture they can come across
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Pretty funny the Acorn Archimdes architecture now powers Apple products.
It is even funnier to know that most of us Amiga maniacs are dreaming about x86 powered Amiga...
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If you've gone this long without picking up an A1 or a SAM, you won't get an X1000 either.
Excellently put!
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Excellently put!
Which spells poor sales for the X1000 if it's not going to attract outside of the OS4 community. If your not making every former Amiga owner drooling at the prices we think they are going to be charging, it's time to go back to the white board.
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MorphOS has the G4 Macs but even they are firmly low end compared to PCs.
I've been away for a while, but last time I saw MorphOS was running on g4 Minis only. An eMac version prototype was rumored (some pics) but that was pretty much all.
I have a beautiful Quicksilver PMac just waiting for a MorphOS port... :)
*PS* Everyone keeps saying how much MorphOS is better than AmigaOS. Nevertheless, ppl seems to be much more interested on AOS. Hmmm, makes sense the Hyperion battle just to use the Amiga name...
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I've been away for a while, but last time I saw MorphOS was running on g4 Minis only. An eMac version prototype was rumored (some pics) but that was pretty much all.
MorphOS for PowerMAC G4 support coming (http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6684&forum=11)
PowerBook G4 MorphOS sneak preview (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50075)
Yet another PowerBook G4 MorphOS video (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50912)
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Good to know that Piru.
My 933mhz Quicksilver is collecting dust... I use OSX on my main PC hackintoshed.
It's with a Geforce 4 4600ti, but I'm pretty sure I'll have to change it for a Radeon, right?
Regards,
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*PS* Everyone keeps saying how much MorphOS is better than AmigaOS. Nevertheless, ppl seems to be much more interested on AOS. Hmmm, makes sense the Hyperion battle just to use the Amiga name...
No, your confusing noise with sales. I wouldn't be at all surprised if MOS has sold more copies of MOS then Hyperion has of OS4.
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Well it looks like reading that thread about 730 copies of morphos, no idea on AOS4.
And I am not a fanboy of either OS, not tried either.
I have the hardware to run OS4 classic but don't want to pay to try it out.
Dont own any mac hardware yet. At least MorphOS gives you the chance to try out the OS and see if its to your liking.
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He's right, you know. It didn't become Game Of The Year for nothing. I'm still playing it :roflmao:
Hey Karlos I'm writing a mod for Fallout 3. I completely agree and have already ordered a early copy of the collector's edition of Fallout: New Vegas. If people want to talk about this since it must be off topic, please PM me.
F:NV will come with the GECK engine similar to the first one so I am super happy.
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Pretty funny the Acorn Archimdes architecture now powers Apple products.
Also powered the Nintendo Gameboy Advance too, prolific little CPU architecture indeed!