A-EON Interview about Amiga's future - Distrita

[Iggy]

I am supporter, and I'm surprised its over 200.
Its an expensive system for a limited market, with many potential customers dismissing NG hardware entirely.
Adding MorphOS to the mix may slightly increase the X5000's market potential, but A-eon's market is likely to remain small.

[Iggy]

@ Lurch

Crowd sourcing can provide funds, but the board still has to be designed.
And building and testing that design is no small task.
I don't think there are enough of us willing to contribute to see such a project through to completion.

[Iggy]

...Many people in the Amiga community are only interested in Classic and new hardware for Classic...

And a sizable number of us aren't.
It would really have to be both low cost AND extremely capable for me to consider wasting anything on the further pursuit of a virtually dead system.
Nostalgic value be damned, I need practical utility to interest me.

While you speak for yourself, Thorham, do you really think you speak for the majority of the market?
Because if you do, the Amiga really is dead.

[Iggy]

A future based on AmigaOS? An OS stuck in the past? Why? What's the point? Even my A1200 with 68030 can do better than cruddy old AmigaOS.

Anyone who thinks AOS is going to go anywhere is dreaming and needs to start seeing things from a realistic viewpoint.

Basically it's replace AOS by something that's MUCH better, or no chance in hell.

You ARE living in a fantasy, aren't you?
Your '030 is pathetic compared to any cpu used in a NG system.
And comparing my ten years old 2.7 GHz G5 system to your processors is pointless, the 68K series even ramped up to 2 or 3 times it current clock speeds would still benchmark at a small fraction of the performance.

And I was a big supporter of the 68K family when it was relevant.
Of course, that was back in the '80's and '90's when I was working for a company that sold systems based on those processors.

You can continue to live in your dream world, but don't expect to make statements you can't support in public without being challenged.

[Iggy]

Do not be too proud on your PPC

When running 68k in UAE on modern hardware most of the systems are outperformed already (not G5 or X1000 of course, at least not yet)

You mean running 68K emulation on an X64?
Of course, but that isn't a real 68K.
Its an Intel derived processor pretending its a 68K.

Which, considering my past disdain for Intel's products is pretty depressing.

[Iggy]

What on earth do NG systems have to do with the fact that a 68030 can run something better than AOS? I wasn't talking about HARDWARE, I was talking about SOFTWARE. S-O-F-T-W-A-R-E. Get it?

Why, in the name of all that's good and wholesome, would I say that a 68030 can run better things than NG? NG can run something better than AOS, too. In both cases it's only impossible because nothing better has been written yet.

68030 -> Can do better than AOS.
NG -> Can do MUCH better than AOS.

Understand now?

Sorry, I knew it was snide when I posted it.
My apologies for what was probably my deliberate misinterpretation.

Yes AOS is weak.
I have considered purchasing an OS4 system to play around with, but frankly the its a weak re-implementation of OS3.1 (and 3.1 had a lot of rough spots in its day).

We could do better.

Probably why I'm using MorphOS. It could evolve into something completely beyond AOS. Particularly when they make the proposed ISA change and jetison legacy compatibility.

And...I'll have to admit, if a decent re-implementation of the 68K is done, I'll probably follow that really closely.
After all, I was working in sales and development simultaneously when we moved from the 68000 to the 68020.
Frightening jump in performance per cycle (not so much with the '30).
Then the '040 and '060 provided yet another big jump.

Were there a serious attempt to start there ('40/'60), and move forward...
Particularly if it was a higher end FPGA or better yet dedicated silicon...

Hey, you'd have my attention.

A 64bit GHz speed 68K derived processor, yeah a pipe dream, but it would be cool.

And as to Amiga OS?
Yeah we are on the same page.
Too primitive.

Again, my apologies.

[Iggy]

Cool, thanks


That's probably very hard, because a reimplementation implies backward compatibility with existing software. If that's the case, then you're still stuck with a sizable portion of AOS crud. What I'd rather see is something completely new that has absolutely no ties to AOS at all, so that you could implement whatever you wanted, in whatever way that you wanted. Classic and NG would have to go their own separate ways, of course.

The big problem is that you'd end up with a cool OS with no software For NG it would also mean that there would be no ties to Amiga anymore.

Yeah, I know it can be hard to let go.
But evolution offers so much more than backward compatibility does.
The last OS' I used on the 68K were micro kernel OS', as is MorphOS.
Jettison backward compatibility and we can embrace SMP, 32 or 64 bit addressing, and all the other goodies inherent in a modern operating system.
And I know the 68K can do better.
Amiga OS has a lousy multi-tasking system based on a cooperative round robin form of task switching.
Other OS' I've used (for the 68K) had real priority based preemptive multitasking.

Back when Intel boxes couldn't out multi-task a Radio Shack Color Computer, I was using 68K based systems that could dance circles around those lame calculator derived pos.

So, I wholly agree, we could do better.

Even in the '80s and '90s we could have done better.

[Iggy]

The repsonses by you. It is like the opening to a video game.
"Your 68k is no match for my PowerPC."
"Your puny systems are dead"

Sorry, senor Devil Chicken, I was not thinking clearly yesterday.
One-upmanship over such points is childish.
And I still work on hacking project involving 8 and 16 bit processor, if I was that concerned about performance I'd only use modern cpus.

Older hardware holds more than a little fascination for me.

Performance wise, it still can't hold a candle to newer designs.

[Iggy]

The Amiga has always had real priority based preemptive multitasking.

No, it doesn't.
And we've discussed this before on this site.
It has just the type of task switching scheme I mentioned.
Doubt me?
Find a module in Amiga OS that sets the priority level.

[Iggy]

True. Any task can take over the system and turn off multitasking so it is not secure but it is preemptive multitasking by definition. Responsiveness was traded for security.

I feel the AmigaOS has been slighted (not by mongo). The AmigaOS is one of the best and most responsive OSs at multitasking (near real time OS made the Toaster possible). Code reuse and modularity are also top notch even today. The AmigaOS trades security for speed and ease of use. There was a lot of forward thinking in the AmigaOS design and choice of 68k CPU which allows most software from 1985 to still work today. Both the AmigaOS and 68k CPU have survived the test of time quite well, IMO, despite not having been developed anywhere near their potentials. The Amiga weak point (originally it's strength) was the custom chips which again were under developed. Compare the AmigaOS to the DOS+Windows, MacOS, RiscOS and the Amiga has less growing pains and more speed. It's the lack of a more modern 68k AmigaOS, lack of more modern 68k hardware (which I believe can be kept very compatible) and as a result lack of more modern software and software support that makes the grass greener on the other side of the fence.

By those words (which I have bold faced) you make my point.
The OS is cooperative, preemptive multitasking would always allow another process to eventually gain control.
Not that a round robin scheduler always precludes preemptive operation.
But a decent OS would always reserve some time slices for kernel operations that would allow enforcement of task switching.
In short, see the second sentence in my post.
 
Obviously there IS prioritization.
Thanks for pointing to that module.
I missed that.

But in the case of the Amiga (and OSX and Windows for that matter), the definition of a preemptive Multitasking OS has been seriously abused.

[Iggy]

No. Preemptive multitasking uses a timer that lets tasks run until their time is up and then the task is preempted (interrupted) to give another a turn. This is how the Amiga works. Preemptive multitasking can be turned off with other operating systems through Admin privileges or hacking which makes their multitasking no less preemptive (while it's working). The task doesn't have to worry about task scheduling or what task is running with preemptive multitasking. Cooperative multitasking requires the task to call an OS function to allow another task to run. The Amiga exec.library does have a Switch() function (-$36) but it is private (even though it may be useful in some cases). The Amiga is considered to have preemptive multitasking though.

Considered, but not actually is (since preemption can be defeated).
But this is by the definitions I use (obviously), not those you all use (or in my opinion, abuse).
And no, preemptive systems don't always use a simple timer based task switch.
Other systems (that don't use a round robin scheduler) assign a specific percentage of the available time slices to each process.
Since, in the case of Amiga OS, a task CAN seize all available resources, cooperation between tasks is necessary to assure that other processes will receive their share of system resources.

Edit - Looking over this, my bias is (even to me) painfully obvious.
Coming from OS' that always give ultimate priority to the kernel (and thus will never allow a single process to assume complete control of a system), Amiga OS has been (somewhat) disappointing.
So...by common definition, using the term preemptive is acceptable (even if this can be defeated) AND prioritization has previously been documented.

So... I'll cede this one to you guys.
With the qualifier that it is a piss poor implementation of preemptive multi-tasking.

[Iggy]

I actually like Thorham's idea, even if it is impractical.
You wouldn't have any software to run.
But, given a fresh slate, you could undoubtedly come up with a better OS.

I'd start with a micro kernel (again, my bias).
All the cores functions could be protected in this and additional functions could be dynamically loaded in layers outside the kernel.

Coding directly with an assembler makes sense.
Yes, its more painful, but it would also result in more compact, faster code.

Of course, the next thought that occurs to me is that while I like the idea of keeping the 68K cpu (or better yet an '030, '040, or '060), the custom chips in the Amiga date it.
Better, 16 bit sound would be nice.
Certainly better video with 2D and 3D acceleration wouldn't hurt.
A better bus could help speed up access to these elements.
And...well there's a lot more.

But, even retaining the Amiga's core architecture, yeh a better OS could be done.

[Iggy]

...One of these days I'm going to sit down and just do it... maybe... perhaps...

Should you ever seriously decide to do this, I'm in.

Again (and I DO know this is repetitive), we start with the kernel deciding what absolutely has to reside at the core, and work out from there.

[Iggy]

...Don't wait for it.

Yes, I rather figured that.

[Iggy]

"Real time" depends on the CPU performance and OS/multitasking efficiency so it only applies for a particular OS with a particular CPU doing specific tasks. This phrase is more commonly used when referring to embedded systems with defined bounds. Needed Cache sizes and response times can be calculated with most embedded systems but not for general purpose computers. This is why I used the phrase "near real time" when referring to general purpose computers. The AmigaOS with Toaster was real time enough for it's purposes on the Amiga where it was not possible with much faster processors on other operating systems. Throw in some more background tasks on the Amiga (like GCC compiling in the background at low priority) and the response time may have dropped too much. Add a faster 68k processor and the background tasks may be possible again with Toaster.

I asked for a lower task priority for vbcc's vc (maybe 68k only?) to be able to compile in the background while editing. Frank Wille chose a task priority of -2 which made a huge difference in editor responsiveness (major slow down to minor slow down). I am using a CSMK3 68060@75MHz with many of the bottlenecks we talked about before removed. A slower and less efficient Amiga may not feel so responsive while compiling and editing.

Yes, at best "near real time".
That is why you threw me with your comment about Amiga multitasking being one of the best.
I've worked with embedded OS', and Amigas don't come close in terms of true real time response, consistent performance, or reliability.