Hyperion announce 12" Netbook running AmigaOS - due end of Q1/2012

[Karlos]

Is it going to run AmigaOS natively or AmigaOS in emulation?

Because on #amigaworld

Without going into specifics, to the best of my knowledge, it's a PPC machine.

[Karlos]

I'm guessing it will be around 400-600Mhz, which should still be enough for AmigaOS.

Well, OS 4.1 actually runs quite nicely on my 240MHz BlizzardPPC. The biggest bottlenecks are, aside from the total lack of L2 cache, the fact I'm using the original A1200 ports for everything (motherboard IDE, PCMCIA network) and slow 60ns RAM (compared to anything more recent). Of course, I'm also using an RTG card which helps enormously over AGA. So yes, it should be sufficient.

[Karlos]

Now, if this is really 800MHz, that's actually pretty promising (even better if it has AltiVec.)

It's a netbook, not a notebook. That implies low power consumption and thus an SoC configuration. Much more likely to have onboard audio/video/network/whatever on the chip die than AltiVec.

[Karlos]

They're not mutually exclusive; even my Atom N270 netbook has SSE3. Not saying it will have AltiVec, but until we actually hear the specs I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Seriously, I doubt it. The N270 is a full blown CPU, with all the die space used on processor-only components.

http://ark.intel.com/products/36331/Intel-Atom-Processor-N270-(512K-Cache-1_60-GHz-533-MHz-FSB)

If it weren't single core and specifically targeting the low power envelope applications, it would be just as at home in a modest desktop system as it is in a netbook. Latest iterations are multi-core, 64-bit and include SSE3 (and even 4) support, because without it, they'd would be useless for the modern x86 object code it is intended to run. Developers stopped using the x87 floating point unit years ago.

PowerPC stopped being a desktop architecture a long time ago now and most embedded uses of it don't even require floating point, let alone vector units. However, basic floating point is a part of the Power specification that has been around since the start, so that will be included. AltiVec is an extension for multimedia/DSP and is only included in higher-end parts with a correspondingly higher cost.

I strongly doubt that a PPC based netbook intended to be affordable will be using Altivec enabled processors. It would be nice, sure, but if I were a gambling man, I'd bet it being a SoC, rather than an AltiVec compatible CPU + separate video/audio/io hardware.

[Karlos]

Yeah, true. On the other hand, the whole "netbook" idea has been designed from the beginning for small-scale web browsing and video playback among other things, and that's something where SIMD extensions can make a significant difference; it'd be a pretty significant oversight to leave it off.

Again, I'm not going to make any bets on whether it will or won't, I just think it'd be nice if it did.

I think you are overstating the requirement for it versus the alternatives. Hardware accelerated video decoding achieves the same thing in a fraction of the power consumption (not to mention cost, if it allows you to pick a cheaper CPU core). If you were designing such a device within a power/performance budget, which would you pick? I'm pretty sure most systems developers would pick hardware decode over a beefier CPU that would use more power to achieve lower performance.

Having said that, without OS support, the latter doesn't help.

[Karlos]

But the strong point of netbooks are webbrowsing and multimedia, but i can't see os4 webbrowsing an advantage over x86 netbooks...

The advantage is that it runs AmigaOS4, which if you are an enthusiast of the latter but can't afford or justify the price of a higher spec system, is all the advantage you need.

People don't buy AmigaOS4 or MorphOS compatible hardware to be their main media centres or web clients, even if on higher end PPCs they don't completely suck at it. And if they do, they must be a bit mad, because you can put together a cheap as chips PC that will toast any G4 class system for the task.

Nope, people buy this stuff because it allows them to indulge their amiga habit. Anything that allows them to do it for less is good news as far as I am concerned.

[Karlos]

I don't think it's that; they said that it would be in the 600-800 MHz range

Who are "they" and where did they say this?

[Karlos]

Oh, you're right, I didn't read the thread carefully enough. Never mind...

I thought I better point it out as it doesn't do it any good to be hyped up on a misunderstanding only to be criticised for not living up to them once the specs are known for sure.

I'm guessing it's around the 400MHz mark. Would be nice it if was higher, of course, but even at 400 it should be easily faster than my BlizzPPC (note, right now, anything is faster than my BlizzPPC as it isn't working :-/)