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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => General Internet News => Topic started by: AJCopland on September 23, 2008, 02:54:36 PM
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ArsTechnica has a review of AmigaOS 4.1 and a brief interview with Thomas Frieden on the last page.
As usual its an informative and interesting read.
The reviewer "Jeremy Reimer" seems to be a long term Amigan and obviously has a like for the system. He also wrote the History of the Amiga series (http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-1.ars) of which there should be another installment coming soon (apparently).
Ars Reviews AmigaOS 4.1 (http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amigaos41-ars.ars)
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Interesting part about it running on the PS3. That would be pretty sweet.
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"A Hyperion developer told me that not only has the OS been run on a PS3, but they have even tested support for the seven SPU units in the Cell processor."
I'm more likely to buy a PS3 to run OS4.1 than a SAM400 I know that for certain!
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I had a chance to look at a preview copy of the latest release, AmigaOS 4.1, and it is an impressive piece of work.
:-)
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Interesting and well written article
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"A Hyperion developer told me that not only has the OS been run on a PS3, but they have even tested support for the seven SPU units in the Cell processor."
Like tonyyeb, I'd rally behind a PS3 port as well, but this quote brings the claim into question. My understanding of the PS3 is that seven of the eight SPEs are active, meaning the PS3 can be produced cheaply using "faulty" Cell processors. (That's not a bad thing--witness the introduction of the Intel Celeron processor and the rise of budget PCs.) One of the seven SPEs is reserved for the hypervisor, so assuming OS4 is running on the PS3 in a system-friendly way, it should only have access to six SPEs....
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A port to the PS3 is the only way I could see OS4 bringing in any new users. Besides its tech specs, people view it as up to date hardware. As a bonus you also get to play all the PS3 games & BR movies :-P
The Sam is nice for current users but, no one outside of the community is going to pay $850 for a motherboard & OS4.1 :oops:
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Well, I certainly wouldn't mind paying for a copy of OS 4.1 for my PS3. :-D
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Okay, now they have gone and put their foot into it.
If they don't come out with AmigaOS on the PS3, I for one am going to be very *issed off!
That would be an "Amiga Dream" come true and it is just plain EVIL to leak that information and tease us all without any real plan to release it.
I hope that some real announcement from Hyperion comes to confirm this report, or a direct quote from the developer is confirmed, with a name and date of when the quote occurred.
Exciting times for Amiga fans this year. Just hope this one is not vapor.
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There is a market here as WalMArt in the US was selling low cost linux PC's. The selling point something like "cheap easy to use, works like a mac or pc, but no viruses,".
An official PS3 Amiga OS release could be a home run. Match made in heaven really. It wiould get some homebrew coders onboard for sure. Look the the avid community of XBOX homebrew development that spawned Xbox Media Center.
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Thanks Jeremy. Very interesting review and interview.
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redfox
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Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...
-Michael Corleone
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Aside from the potential for more memory, the PS3 is superior, hardware wise, than the system Amiga Inc claims to be developing.
I doubt they will be able to get their hands on any PA Semi PPC processors now that Apple bought that company out...
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wow how cool does os4.1 look! id buy if it came with some descent hardware.
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Don't get your hopes up for a PS3 port. The way Sony allow you get your graphics on screen is so bloody slow and useless it makes the whole "OS on playstation" support pretty much a waste of time.
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I'd like to see one day a portable Amiga.
I don't like consoles - prefer so a top-Acube-Quadra-X86-Uboot-protected with AmigaOS gcc-compiled for X86.
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@xeron,
So how is Yellow Dog Linux able to pull it off on the PS3?. Did Sony grant them some kind of special Kernel or something? :lol:
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So how is Yellow Dog Linux able to pull it off on the PS3?. Did Sony grant them some kind of special Kernel or something?
Did Yellow Dog bypass Sony's Hypervisor?
Dammy
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Quote:
Did Yellow Dog bypass Sony's Hypervisor?
Dammy
I've even seen the expensive US$20K/license embedded hard real time operating system VxWorks running on the PS3 to use as a Cell development station, by the company hackers at Wind River, and they couldn't get around the Hypervisor.
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Okay, now they have gone and put their foot into it.
If they don't come out with AmigaOS on the PS3, I for one am going to be very *issed off!
I guess you're pissed off then. (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=26994&forum=14&start=40&viewmode=flat&order=0#457032)
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I have a PS3, and I'd lay down my money for OS4.1 (or 4.2 ;) heh) for it, even if it had to run within the Hypervisor and hence had framebuffer graphics only. Maybe someone could write a compositing engine on one of the SPUs...
Not that there are NVIDIA graphics drivers for OS 4.x anyway, as far as I am aware? Weren't Sony going to expose a limited set of compositing functionality through the Hypervisor at some point for the Linux ports anyway? Not that I'd ever hold my breath waiting for it.
The good thing about the PS3 is its use of standard Bluetooth and USB, so I can sit back on my sofa with a standard Bluetooth keyboard and browse the web or chat online.
Can't complain about a 3.2GHz PowerPC core, even if it is in-order with low IPC. It'll beat a 667MHz G3-era core.
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@spihunter
No, apparently the graphics performance is as crap as can be expected from a slow framebuffer.
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@jorkany
And seems that AmigaOS has a high probability of working on the Cell processor now or in the near future--as hinted in his wording. So who has a motherboard with Cell processors besides the PS3?
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So who has a motherboard with Cell processors besides the PS3?
Mercury Systems of course. But I suspect the pockets of the OS4 community aren't quite $8K deep.
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The SPUs are nothing more than streamlined FPUs (just read the Cell vs. Xenon comparisons on ArsTech).
If you ever had a use for an FPU on your Miggy, then you know that apart from some very dedicated work the interest of an FPU is marginal at best. By the way, the 360 has only two of them, yet it's more than enough for any power user (let alone the average gamer).
Unless you have a need for an Amiga-based datablade cluster, any reference to the PS3's SPUs is just a naive sales pitch.