Market research for new PowerPC system

[the_leander]

This announcement is not even over a day old and you are already making this call. Give the guy a chance... or is it that it is PPC that you don't like the idea?

If this guy is genuine and checks the sales numbers for both the A1 and Sam, he will run a mile.

No one outside of serious enthusiasts is going to burn large sums of money developing pretty much from scratch a brand new PPC board for desktop use in the current economic climate, or any climate for that matter.

Perhaps positioning it as a games console for developers/hardware hackers might work, but even then you're still in serious niche market territory.

Given the amount of vaporware products that have been offered to the amiga community in the past 9 years, on balance I have to say that this is probably another iWin.

I hope I'm wrong, but this seems way too good to be true.

[the_leander]

Despite the expertise of bloodline or any other person,they can only offer their OPINION.

That swings both ways you know.

If someone wants to  make a new PPC  and you don't like it,you could just ignore it.

It's not about like or dislike.

Too many experts DEMAND all users/customers must follow their advice and opinion;similar to other totalitarians like the globull warming bs.

Ahh, so people who have a clue about markets, hardware design etc who have commented on this are by implication totalitarian..

Cute.

PPC is dead when no one uses it.Just because the people who drive/restore/show certain old cars/tractors/computers are a tiny percentage of  the market doesn't mean they  can't enjoy  the activity.

Did you actually bother to read what has been said here? Because nowhere in this thread has anyone said or implied such. What they have said is that PPC for the desktop is dead end. The more cynical (including myself) view this with a great amount of suspicion on the basis of previous trollings of the Amiga community by the likes of iWin, for instance.

And a PPC Mac port of Amiga OS or MorphOS or AROS for Mac will instantly have a huge pool of computers to run on.

No, it really wont. First there is the driver issue, which thanks to the limited resources would take months to bring up to date, second, of the three OS's you've pointed to, only one (AROS) could actually use the system due to the dualcore nature of the proposed system. The other two would have to leave one core completely idle (so far as I'm aware neither MorphOS nor AOS are SMP capable).

In conclusion:

[the_leander]

I don't think PPC is dead at all...

PPC survives in telecoms situations. Even in telecoms (As I recently discovered) it is now in danger of being squeezed out by pure fpgas.

But in the desktop area it's day is long gone.

IBM made a lot of money selling PPC based servers, and it still make money with that... Power 7 is around the bend, and it will catch up with Intel and AMD again. PPC's are cheaper to produce than any X86 architecture...

There are niches the PPC fills nicely. Whilst PPC might be cheaper to produce then some X86 chips, the cost of developing it into a chip that can take on X86 in the desktop market and continue to do so generation after generation is an entirely different matter. The only reason PowerPC lasted as long as it did on desktop systems was because of Apple, IBM would have dropped it long before.

Power 7 may well be upon us soon, but Power is not the same as PPC and big iron is a very different market then consumer desktops.

EVEN, XBOX360, Wii and PS3 do use PPC, and that's nothing new.

Yes again, a niche product.

I bet they will be using PPC still on their next gen consoles. So PPC is not dead at all. If you don't like "fresh air" on the PPC scene, just stick up with windoze and the X86 @@@@.

Oh good gods. (oh and watch your language - kids visit this site)

X86 are faster? Yeah they are, but that doesn't mean PPC's are lame or something...

If you're attempting to gain a foothold into the desktop market with one, yes, yes it is.

If you have a niche, then you might get away with it. But this particular board would be an ill fit due to the architectural limitations of AOS/MorphOS/AROS.

If the person behind this is genuine I do wish him luck. But of his targeted OS's, only Haiku would make any sort of sense and given the response by the Haiku board linked to... Well look for yourself.

[the_leander]

Apart from the variety factor, Atom power consumption is in fact higher than the MPC8610 (at least the earlier models, don't know about the 330 to be honest). Also since the speed is similar, and the Atom is not really the fastest Intel chip -nothing to do with C2D or Nehalems, etc- , performance-wise, the PPC chips will be very competitive. The price is another matter, but for that reason I'm looking to include something extra for added value (eg. USB 3.0 host chip). That still remains to be seen.

You should be aware one of the biggest complaints about BeOS and by extension Haiku was it's lack of hardware support, now there are plans to integrate gallium3d but the question remains - does your ppc board offer enough value added to offset the large cost difference? So far as I know most of the development effort for Haiku as been aimed squarely at X86.

Certainly as a desktop offering I think you're walking a very dodgy path.

Anyway, as I said elsewhere, the question is not if there is a market. The market is there. The question is "is the market big enough to sustain itself?"
If I get enough interest I will go forward. If I get 90% mails to deter me from going forward with this, well chances are that I will abide and just invest my money on ARM instead.

In all honesty I think you would be better off using ARM if you want a market that'll sustain itself, either that or perhaps you might want to look at the gp2x model and see if you couldn't produce a non portable console for hackers along the same lines. Now that I think has some real potential.

@tone007

Given that Haiku is being designed to integrate some of the next gen *nix architecture such as gallium3d, it's going to be in a position to offer hardware support on a par with linux but offer things like drag and drop application installs (you know, just like OSX and Amiga offered) as well as a number of other things that have long been things accused of holding linux back on the desktop.

Will it go anyhwere... Dunno, but I think it has a fighting chance.

[the_leander]

Maybe you didnt read the title for this thread? :hammer:

Don't worry - it's been added to the tags now so that no one will be in any doubt!

[the_leander]

You mean AROS running hosted on one core?

Yes. Sorry I wasn't clearer.

 

or did someone add support SMP recently?

I figured that'd be more icaros territory though Dammy might be able to tell you one way or t'other.

[the_leander]

Ok, icaros is still aros, or did you mean to write anubis?

Probably. Tbh I'm guilty of not really following AROS or icaros or anubis or thoros or whatever os that's come out of it...

[the_leander]

This is about a new and more modern PowerPC platform, which will *primarily* run Linux -and probably Haiku- and which IF there is enough demand, it will support your preferred OSes (AmigaOS/MorphOS).

I get this, truly. But again I think you'd be better off building a piece of hardware for a small niche such as a games console or set top box. A ppc desktop just doesn't make much sense these days.

[the_leander]

@the_leander:

A games console is much more than just hardware, it's an complete SDK, it's lots of cash to give out to developers and publishers to develop games platform. It costs way much more than just building a board. And when there are already XBOX 360, PS3, and Wii, what chances does a small company have to compete? I haven't seen a niche games console so far.

Now you have.

All achieved with Linux no less.

[the_leander]

Nice. Interesting, thanks for the link. I think a PPC-based one would be much more expensive though and not directly competitive, but it makes room for new ideas. Thanks a lot.

No worries. The GPx2 is a handheld so a more traditional console wouldn't as you say be directly competitive. But having seen that and other similar (but much more modest) projects aimed at allowing developers to cut their teeth on console hardware without the usual restrictions, there does appear to be an opening for such a device in the class that your hardware spec could provide.

Either way, good luck with your efforts!

(One thing though - if you do go down this road, don't do what Andre Lamothe did and offer up a given spec, build a following, then days before the release offer up a product with a fraction of what you were originally offering - it upsets the customer base and almost destroyed his project).