Sam460ex available with AmigaOS 4.1

[Louis Dias]

   Flex-ATX form factor (21.6 x 17 cm)
   8 layers PCB
   Applied Micro PPC460ex SoC – upto 1.15 Ghz
   optional maximum 2 GB DDR2 Ram – 200-pin SODIMM
   Silicon Motion SM502 embedded MoC (audio/video) max 64MB Gfx RAM
   Audio 5.1 Realtek ALC655 codec
   PCI-express 4x lanes slot (16x mechanical connector)
   PCI-express 1x lane slot (* check notes)
   PCI slot, 32 bit, 33 Mhz, 3.3V
   1x SATA2 port (* check notes)
   6x USB2 EHCI/OHCI ports + 1 USB 1.1 port
   1x 10/100/1000 Ethernet port (another 10/100/1000 Ethernet is optional)
   Lattice XP2 FPGA with 80 I/O pins expansion connector (connector is optional)
   UMTS/GSM module (optional requires add-on card)
   512 MB NAND Flash (optional)
   integrated SD card reader
   RTC clock
   Serial port, 8-wires
   I2C and SPI/I2C buses
   passive cooling
   U-Boot 2010.06

That's alot of stuff packed into a little board.
DDR2 + GBit Ether + PCIe = Win!

I don't know why everyone makes a big deal about Altivec.  Cell has more floating point power than 360 and even PS2 had more floating point power than the original Xbox and we see where the better games are, don't we?

I'm looking forward to the benchmarks!

If I wasn't deep into my car hobby right now I'd be picking this up.

[Louis Dias]

That doesn't really make sense. Altivec is just one variant of SIMD/Vector processing or whatever you want to call it. Probably every game written on every console you mentioned uses vector processing to speed up execution, usually significantly.

Probably but not everything is appropriate for such things.  If Altivec was the be-all-end-all of application performance, don't you think all chips would have it...  Fast branch prediction and OoO execution are more generally useful...  Even the GC and Wii have SIMD...can you explain to me how that will make your email download faster?  Surfing?  How does your favorite text editor benefit from SIMD?  It doesn't.  SIMD has niche use.

Let's see some real-world benchmarks before denouncing the SAM460...  The G5 Macs only got up to DDR2-533, iirc.  If this board can support DDR2-800 and higher, then real-world benchmarks will get interesting...

[Louis Dias]

AltiVec can be used to accelerate many things: For instance OWB uses altivec to accelerate video decoding. z.library (shared zlib) has AltiVec acceration that is used by ALL applications using the library to decode gzip data (including png.library and thus PNG datatype). jfif.library has AltiVec acceleration (jpeg datatype uses jfif.library). Raggae multimedia multimedia framework uses AltiVec. Some low level graphics operations such as alpha blending and scaling and 3D are AltiVec accelerated as well. PowerSDL uses AltiVec when available. AHI software volume control (Mac HW) is AltiVec accelerated. Since these operations are in the OS itself it doesn't matter if the application supports AltiVec or not: All applications benefit automagically.

Various applications themselves use AltiVec too, such as Ambient, mplayer and ShowGirls.


Whatever rocks you boat. I prefer to have my system significantly faster, though.

And when driver supporting gpgpu's on SAM460 like the AMD/ATI 4XXX series get released that outperforms that, then what will a PPC Mac have?

Yes, I'd like a faster overall experience too...

[Louis Dias]

Doesn't GameCube, Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 have Altivec?

Numerically that is effectively "all".

GC has 37 instructions, Wii a few more.
360's cores does have SIMD.
Cell's PPE doesn't I don't think but the SPU's handle that and there are 7 cores.

Cell's capacity exceeds the 360 in floating point power...but yet better games are on the 360.  Why?  Because floating point power does not directly translate to a better gaming experience.  The 360 has a more powerful gpu but weaker overall cpu.  360 still takes the cake.

SAM460 can/may support much more powerful gpus (even more powerful than 360 and PS3) then any PPC Mac.

[Louis Dias]

Let me know when that happens, assuming we're still alive and kicking

Will do.

[Louis Dias]

Let me know when that happens, assuming we're still alive and kicking

Will do.

It will come to AROS first ofcourse, afterwhich anyone will be free to copy...

[Louis Dias]

Cell PPE has AltiVec.

That only makes my 'gpu is king' argument better, you do realize...

[Louis Dias]

166 * 7 = 1162

If so, I think even I would have preferred 200 * 5.5...