Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Mrs Beanbag on September 19, 2011, 06:08:23 PM
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Just throwing an idea into the wind here, but with NVidia's Project Denver desktop ARM based CPU threatening to mop the floor with Intel (yeah believe it when you see it), perhaps an ARM implementation of AmigaOS would be a prudent move. I've waited for so long for x86 to bite the dust, it's kind of amazing how they've managed to keep the 680x0's arch enemy propped up for so long. Plus a surprise victory from the good old Acorn Archimedes, or to my mind the "British Amiga"!
Any thoughts?
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Aros is already supporting ARM... and AmigaOS will propably never be ported to other platforms because of licensing issues
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Aros is already supporting ARM... and AmigaOS will propably never be ported to other platforms because of licensing issues
+1
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As much as I like Arm, I don't think another platform is the answer.
I agree with the others, you can't count on software support, even for PPC based platforms.
68k is pretty much the one constant in the Amiga universe, we just need them to be faster, cheaper and available.
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If Hyperion ever choose to go to different processor that PowerPC, I think ARM would be a great choice. There's already laptops running on ARMs. Nearly all the tablets do. I'm not aware of an ARM desktop, but desktops are falling out of favor these days, and no one says you can't make one the way Acube makes PowerPC desktops, when PPC is no longer a desktop platform. There's a lot going on in the ARM world these days, performance is going up, and I think it'd make a great architecture for AmigaOS.
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@Heiroglyph
Well that would be nice wouldn't it, a 3GHz quad core 68k chip, but where are we going to get one of those?
I'm well aware the Amiga has a past, but what concerns me here is whether it has a future. I think Operating System support for software emulation seems as much as we can realistically hope for.
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I love AROS, but I have a hard time pinning my hopes on it, it's just glacially slow to progress.
Hyperion has the source and the ability to license, but tie to costly licensed hardware.
I could see MorphOS making a good run at Arm once the used Macs run out, but I don't think they are in too big of a hurry to make a new platform either.
Another platform shift would divide the few developers and users into even smaller groups than we have now.
Something like the Natami CPU is probably the better bet for Amiga long term IMHO.
When people think Amiga, they think 68k. All the beloved software is on 68k, the rest are almost always ports just because the 68k CPU was too slow.
Everyone seems to agree with 68k. If you don't have one, it's easy enough to emulate, so it has the most broad appeal to all groups.
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Amiga is 68k not ARM to me.
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"When people think Amiga, they think 68k."
Well I think there is a partial truth in that. I'd say that would mostly apply to the remaining Amiga fan scene. To me, the Amiga is 68k too (although more importantly, not x86!). But if you asked most people in the tech scene, they would say Amiga meant to them the graphics and sound capabilities as well as the responsive multi-tasking operating system and window-based GUI that were ahead of their time. If you asked most people generally, they'd just remember their favourite games and wouldn't even know what a 68k was.
A modern 68k hardware solution is sadly simply not plausible anymore; but I would agree that any computer calling itself an Amiga should be able to run 68k software seamlessly.
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+1 but..................
It would be one of the biggest insults to the Amiga.......eventually beaten to death by the child of Acorn Computers and an Irony where Tripos was developed and destroyed by a chip developed only from the same neck of the woods and just a stones throw away from Cambridge Uni, were the Micro Men fought out the 80's computer revolution.
Actually when you come to think of it, full circle would be a fitting end.
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Aros is already supporting ARM... and AmigaOS will propably never be ported to other platforms because of licensing issues
Not according to Hyperion, who posted in June, 2011:
Then there are some legal issues like some licences being tied to PPC only.
All of this could be worked around however given sufficient funding. E.g. an ARM/X-Scale version of AmigaOS 4.x is perfectly possible.
#6
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@Boudicca:
"biggest insults" oh come now let's not get petty! Or would you rather Amiga was beaten to death by IBM's little minions?
Although the irony does not escape me, but it doesn't stop there. Of course there was also the Apple Macintosh that also ran on 68k, migrated to PPC and managed to survive with a respectable share of the market only finally to admit that they had to migrate again to the dreaded x86. Now Microsoft has stated that Windows 8 will be available for ARM, and how willing will Apple be to put its customers through another platform shift? Apple will be out on a limb clinging to x86 while Windows jumps ship to the Neo-Archimedes!
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@Number 6: That's very interesting. I wonder which part needs the funding? Even drivers for existing PPC solutions and Mac computers seem to be quite a stretch, I can't imagine how a CPU change would ever take place. It's almost like they want someone else to make money for them.
Even then I think my other points still apply, especially the point of further dividing the community.
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Some people think Amiga is a CPU or Amiga is some special "custom" chips, or whatever. To me, Amiga is the user experience. What the GUI looks like, and more important how I interact with it. It multitasks. I find it agreeable to use rather than an awkward thing to fight into submission.
For those that demand a 68k, you're frozen in time. So are the "custom chips" zealots.
While new PowerPCs still come into being, such as Freescale's exciting new AMP series, PPC zealots are also in an awkward position due to the difficulty in getting them in a form that a) runs AmigaOS and b) we desire. (ie a laptop in my case)
And while ARM doesn't seem to come in a desktop board (that I'm aware of anyway, perhaps I'm just ignorant), we could have them with similar difficulty/expense as we get our PPCs in. But ARMs are already in netbooks! And they already dominate tablets, for anyone who wishes for a REAL Amiga tablet. Not one of those phony things that are Amiga in nothing more than the sticker on the case, however "legal" those stickers may be.
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Aros is already supporting ARM... and AmigaOS will propably never be ported to other platforms because of licensing issues
Can't resist my 2 cents here...
yea but too bad:
1> aros has absolutely nothing to do with real amiga's..other than being a native pc wanna be copy.... and now arm aparently.
2> doesn't take advantage of all the existing 68K amiga software out there
3>doesn't run amiga games
4> doesnt run on real amiga hardware(and i don't mean the crap that has boing ball stickers all over it).
5> oddly aros is to be done for the real amiga? what a joke. so a old,real amiga is supposed to run aros apps written for a 3ghz+ pc? yea that will work really fine.
its the same problem now,we have people coding bloatware for 68K amigaos written on a emulator with 32MB chip ram,and crazy speed,so it crawls and is useless for real 68K machines. its contaminating aminets code base.
Aros is just another fork in the road to take amiga developers off real machines that won't be any use to anyone(except people who dont have a clue what an amiga really is).
Without getting everyone on the same page(remember when we all furthered real amiga's along),i dont think there is much hope of getting anywhere if putting licensing and copyright issues aside.You just cant make good progress when you are split in 6+ directions.
-Mech-
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@billt: I totally agree on this. The Arm would be just as "Amiga" as PPC is.
As I've never had a spare $1000 to buy into a PPC Amiga, I can't say how Amiga-like it feels, but I guarantee that the PPC chip wouldn't be the reason for feeling Amiga-like and an x86 wouldn't prevent it.
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Wouldn't it be great if the hardware obstacles to going back to (or remaining with) 680x0 based code were eliminated? I mean if FPGA's, or something similar, but not yet invented were to come along that could run a 680x0 core at speeds where it did not matter anymore, speeds that could rival, or surpass current and future x86 designs at lower power consumption and could also provide access to modern peripherals, like USB, Firewire, SATA devices, PCI-e slots, or what ever comes to replace these standards.
What if, in the future, a movement backward to simpler programming techniques like coding for the 680x0 was claimed to be by many programmers, were to become more popular if the hardware was available to make it competitive with other designs?
You must admit that there were many more "Bedroom Programmers" back in the heyday of the 680x0 Amigas than there are today.
Then again, perhaps ARM is already moving in that direction and will make such a comeback of 680x0 coding remain with only the retro crowd.
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@Number 6: That's very interesting. I wonder which part needs the funding? Even drivers for existing PPC solutions and Mac computers seem to be quite a stretch, I can't imagine how a CPU change would ever take place. It's almost like they want someone else to make money for them.
Even then I think my other points still apply, especially the point of further dividing the community.
Think of it this way. Anyone wishing to make an AmigaOS4.x driver needs to buy something that runs 4.x. Then the widget he wants to write a driver for. Financially, for that individual, buying the 4.x prerequisite hardware may be more of a challenge than buying a commodity x86 PC. Heck, it may be a financial impossibility for that particular individual. And thus that particular driver doesn't get made. However, if this individual could afford a commodity hardware base and then run OS4.x on it, then we'd have gotten that driver.
OK, one might argue that someone able to make such a driver for AmigaOS is likely to find a way to afford the base hardware, or is more likely to be able to afford it to start with. Possibly. But then you still have what the guy desires vs what is available. Can he have a laptop, or must he succumb to being tethered to a desk in a room somewhere where he doesn't want to be, or cannot be for enough time to be useful? Being able to afford something can still leave someone without that something.
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Heck, even Arduino has now gone Arm
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/19/1835250/Arduino-Goes-ARM
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@billt: My basic point was that Hyperion seems barely able to make minor changes themselves with their resources. Another platform change doesn't seem within their capability, so having AOS4 support for Arm seems extremely unlikely.
MorphOS seems able to get things accomplished much faster, but they also seem to have their priorities exactly where they want them already.
FPGA tech is getting better every year, I can foresee FPGA 68k's that could reach PPC speeds within the next few years. I'd buy that in a heart beat.
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@billt: My basic point was that Hyperion seems barely able to make minor changes themselves with their resources. Another platform change doesn't seem within their capability, so having AOS4 support for Arm seems extremely unlikely.
MorphOS seems able to get things accomplished much faster, but they also seem to have their priorities exactly where they want them already.
FPGA tech is getting better every year, I can foresee FPGA 68k's that could reach PPC speeds within the next few years. I'd buy that in a heart beat.
I agree with the above, but I wonder what else might be available "in a few years" that might dissuade you, or distract you from buying a FPGA 68k that can reach PPC speeds?
Still, I think that AROS and the Natami projects have better long term prospects than OS4, or MorphOS, if both of those systems remain on PPC too much longer.
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I foresee a wholesale move to ARM over the next few years. One of the main things that limits CPUs today is the amount of power they consume and hence the amount of heat they put out. They've been pushed as far as they have mainly because of Intel's clout, Microsoft's software support and the need for backwards compatibility. ARM, however, requires a fraction of the power. They're already being pushed for the server market: see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14/calxeda_arm_server/
It's the sensible way to go. 68k can only have appeal to old-school enthusiasts; it's much better than x86, granted, but it's still CISC and will still have the same limitations at high speeds. Besides, nobody programs in ASM anymore. Even embedded systems programmers now typically code in C.
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Now Microsoft has stated that Windows 8 will be available for ARM, and how willing will Apple be to put its customers through another platform shift? Apple will be out on a limb clinging to x86 while Windows jumps ship to the Neo-Archimedes!
Actually, I don't think Apple would hesitate to do another architecture shift if they feel it's a better business decision. They've already got an established ARM software base and toolchain with iOS, so migration wouldn't even be as difficult as it was going from PPC->Intel, where they were starting from scratch. I believe they were even toying with the idea not too long ago, though I don't think they decided to make that move yet.
For those that demand a 68k, you're frozen in time. So are the "custom chips" zealots.
Yes, that's nice. I don't really care if I'm frozen in time, I like the Amiga hardware because it's interesting, and I don't feel the need to keep up with the Joneses.
And while ARM doesn't seem to come in a desktop board (that I'm aware of anyway, perhaps I'm just ignorant), we could have them with similar difficulty/expense as we get our PPCs in. But ARMs are already in netbooks!
Are they? I've been waiting for a decent ARM netbook ever since the Tegra 2 was announced, and all I've seen are those cheap-**** $100 things, the Efika MX netbook (okay, but underpowered,) and a handful of tablets with snap-on keyboards (which have one tiny little connector for an obvious point of failure.)
What if, in the future, a movement backward to simpler programming techniques like coding for the 680x0 was claimed to be by many programmers, were to become more popular if the hardware was available to make it competitive with other designs?
You must admit that there were many more "Bedroom Programmers" back in the heyday of the 680x0 Amigas than there are today.
Bedroom coding is a cultural thing, not a technical one. The reason there aren't more clever one-man assembler developers today is because increasing CPU horsepower has made high-level languages usable even on inefficient compilers, so it's no longer necessary, which means you've only got the hardcore hobbyists doing it :/
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The reason there aren't more clever one-man assembler developers today is because increasing CPU horsepower has made high-level languages usable even on inefficient compilers, so it's no longer necessary
Well there is that, plus modern optimising compilers pull all kinds of tricks that you'd have to be super-expert to know about. But have you ever seen x86 asm? It is the very work of the Devil.
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In Novermber when the RaspberriPI thing comes out, You've got a $25 ARM based platform. Couple that with a 8-12" portable TV with a computer video port, and you have the makings of a neat homebrew Amiga tablet.
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In Novermber when the RaspberriPI thing comes out, You've got a $25 ARM based platform. Couple that with a 8-12" portable TV with a computer video port, and you have the makings of a neat homebrew Amiga tablet.
A neat homebrew tablet, I agree with you on. However, Amiga has little to do with it.
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@HenryCase: it does if you put UAE on it!
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@HenryCase: it does if you put UAE on it!
So if I put SNES9x on it, does it become a SNES tablet?
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@HenryCase: yeah, why not?
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@HenryCase: yeah, why not?
...and if I put DOSBox on it and run Windows, does it become a Windows tablet?
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@HenryCase
I don't know where you're going with this. It's a Windows tablet if it runs Windows. It's a Mac tablet if it runs OSX. It's an Amiga tablet if it runs AmigaOS. Or maybe you think it needs a 880k floppy drive to qualify?
Windows 7 now needs an emulation layer to run XP software. Is it still Windows? Double glazing, maybe.
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A neat homebrew tablet, I agree with you on. However, Amiga has little to do with it.
Natively running AROS on it would make it an Amiga for me.
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Well there is that, plus modern optimising compilers pull all kinds of tricks that you'd have to be super-expert to know about. But have you ever seen x86 asm? It is the very work of the Devil.
I still think this "optimizing compilers are better than humans" thing is a load of crap. What they mean is, "optimizing compilers are better than insufficiently educated humans," which is true of any optimization techniques, not just the use of assembler.
And yeah, x86 is ugly. Not as awful as it was in the bad old 16-bit days, but still ugly.
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I don't know where you're going with this. It's a Windows tablet if it runs Windows. It's a Mac tablet if it runs OSX. It's an Amiga tablet if it runs AmigaOS. Or maybe you think it needs a 880k floppy drive to qualify?
Windows 7 now needs an emulation layer to run XP software. Is it still Windows? Double glazing, maybe.
My point is that you can't reduce the requirements for making something an 'Amiga' to being the capacity to run an emulator, as it means the term has lost its meaning.
A computing device is most strongly defined by its hardware and by the operating system that runs on top of it. Applications like UAE do not define a platform in a useful sense, as they're platform agnostic. Attaching a label of 'Amiga' to something does not automatically make it a better computing device, the label alone is meaningless.
Natively running AROS on it would make it an Amiga for me.
That's about as close as you could get to calling it an Amiga.
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@HenryCase:
So what's the difference between a Mac and a PC now, just the operating system? But if you install Windows on a Mac, which you can now do (and vice versa with the right combination of hardware), is it still essentially a Mac? Hmm... it's beginning to sound like a computer is whatever the manufacturer says it is.
I agree with you in principle but I still don't think we've got to the root of the matter. What if you build a computer (tablet or otherwise) with generic hardware, and installed some version of UAE that could boot straight up without any intervening operating system? In other words, UAE in the kernel. Would that be an Amiga? What if the hardware was supplied by Amiga Inc?
Or does the difference have something to do with the BIOS, or the ROM? What if a computer had a custom BIOS that showed an image of a hand holding up a CD when you turned it on? And you got into the BIOS utility by holding down both mouse buttons. What if the old EGA text mode were replaced by OCS graphics?
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@HenryCase:
So what's the difference between a Mac and a PC now, just the operating system?
Yes.
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Natively running AROS on it would make it an Amiga for me.
I'm totally with Nicholas here. AROS is built to the same design patterns that AmigaOS and even has 1.3 compatiblity (wierd BCPL stuff thanks to Jason and Toni)... It runs on x86, x86-64, PPC, ARM and 68k... It's hard not to like AROS, unless you have a severe learning difficulty :-/
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It's hard not to like AROS, unless you have a severe learning difficulty :-/
This is not the way to promote AROS. I would suggest you refrain from making such statements in the future.
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Unfortunately there will never be an ARM Amiga, as Hyperion will never allow the OS to run on it. They're too far gone.
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Am I theo nly person who's not particularly interested in ARM? Way underpowered (even ppc looks powerful in comparison) for starters. People already complain about the weakness of ppc hardware, and ARM is another step down the ladder. Yes, its cheap, but so is x86. ARM does have very low power consumption, but its no wonder given the low specs (the frequencies mean nothing,... a dual core 1.6ghz arm chip is still slower than a 1ghz g4 in most circumstances).
Basically gimme x86 over arm anyday. As most of the IT industry is aware getting x86 to the sorts of power consumptions levels of ARM is a heck of a lot easier then getting ARM to reach x86 raw grunt levels. AMD/ATI/Intel/Nvidia/etc all agree on this (eve in the light of Denver).
Each to thier own, but I have no interest in an Amiga system that's so weak. We already have that. The whole, "x86 is monopololistic evil" thing is, quite simply, a crock. Gimme raw power, nicely designed, cheap cpus anyday over the latest fad (which ARM is).
Do I dislike ARM, no. Im probably more experienced with it than most of its Amiga advocates, and it has some things that are nice. But I really dont want another architecture not suited well to the desktop to be more than an option. To make it the prominent arch is just giving amiga yet another thing to worry about a few years down the track when the fad starts waining.
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I stand behind my teammates on the NatAmi project. The N68070 will kick butt when it comes out. The N68050 will be the best softcore until then once it comes out.
I used to use an 800 MHz Pentium III with the basic performance of a Raspberry Pi. If you don't need it to fit in small places I'll sell it to you gutted with parts removed for $5 + shipping. :)
What made Amiga fun to work with was that you could tinker under the hood with the Hardware Reference Manual as a guide. No need for drivers because they all had the same chipset. No need for emulation layers because they all had the same processor series.
I personally think the next stage is a compile-time VM that uses AROS as the runtimes. Then it will run full-speed on any platform that AROS runs on. This included hosted AROS on Linux, Mac, Windows, Android 2.2+, PPC Linux, and ARM Linux. The catch is just designing everything to fit together.
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Never happen, but a table Amiga would be awesome.
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Can't resist my 2 cents here...
yea but too bad:
1> aros has absolutely nothing to do with real amiga's..other than being a native pc wanna be copy.... and now arm aparently.
2> doesn't take advantage of all the existing 68K amiga software out there
3>doesn't run amiga games
4> doesnt run on real amiga hardware(and i don't mean the crap that has boing ball stickers all over it).
5> oddly aros is to be done for the real amiga? what a joke. so a old,real amiga is supposed to run aros apps written for a 3ghz+ pc? yea that will work really fine.
its the same problem now,we have people coding bloatware for 68K amigaos written on a emulator with 32MB chip ram,and crazy speed,so it crawls and is useless for real 68K machines. its contaminating aminets code base.
Aros is just another fork in the road to take amiga developers off real machines that won't be any use to anyone(except people who dont have a clue what an amiga really is).
Without getting everyone on the same page(remember when we all furthered real amiga's along),i dont think there is much hope of getting anywhere if putting licensing and copyright issues aside.You just cant make good progress when you are split in 6+ directions.
-Mech-
You've obviously never used AROS, so let me set the record straight because your comments are just plain wrong.
1. AROS runs Amiga games quite will under emulation.
2. AROS runs most 68K Amiga software just fine, games, office, audio, etc.....
3. AROS has quite a bit to do with "real" Amigas. It uses the exact same programming API that's available under OS3.x, so most 68K Amiga code can be compiled under AROS with little or no modification.
No one is writing applications on AROS for backporting to 68K systems to my knowledge. That would be ridiculous. But plenty of programmers are taking 68K code and compiling it for AROS. And since you like to refer to AROS using absolutes, what Amiga system out there takes advantage of "ALL" 68K software? The answer is simple, none of them. I have quite a bit of classic Amiga software that isn't compatible across all variations of my 68K Amigas.
4. I'd like for you to explain how and why you think AROS is "contaminating" the 68K code base because I don't think you have a clue as to what you're talking about.
5. What "real" machines are you talking about? There are no more "real" 68k Amigas being produced to develop on. And people buying Minimigs use them primarily to run old software, not develop new 68K software. You might find less than 5 programmers world-wide who still develop on a 68K Amiga. And the newer PPC based Amigas are just as alien to the 68K world as an Intel box running AROS, so your arguments sound very lame.
I suggest you actually download and install AROS and use it for a few days before you get on a forum and display your ignorance.
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Am I theo nly person who's not particularly interested in ARM? Way underpowered (even ppc looks powerful in comparison) for starters. People already complain about the weakness of ppc hardware, and ARM is another step down the ladder.
Yes, but that's increasingly less true as its popularity grows and more development effort is put into it. (And hey, development dollars from popularity in commonplace crap computers were the only reason x86 didn't stay a poky little 16-bit chip forever.)
And anyway, I honestly believe we're reaching a saturation point for CPU power, at least for everyday tasks. In fact, I think we reached it quite a while ago. I'm typing this on a seven-year-old 1.33GHz PowerBook G4 running TenFourFox, and while it's got its problems for CPU-intensive tasks, basic web browsing is responsive enough that I have a hard time noticing a difference between it and newer x86 boxes.
Each to thier own, but I have no interest in an Amiga system that's so weak. We already have that. The whole, "x86 is monopololistic evil" thing is, quite simply, a crock. Gimme raw power, nicely designed, cheap cpus anyday over the latest fad (which ARM is).
I don't think it's evil, but I do think it's boring as hell. x86 computers are the unflavored yogurt of computing - sure, it'll work with anything and there's nothing wrong with it per se, but you wouldn't want it for enjoyment purposes. I already have it doing a perfectly satisfactory job of powering my generic machines - why would I want it in an Amigoid system?
(Also, if there's one thing it isn't, it's "nicely designed." The x86 architecture is an ugly mass of kludges accumulated over 32 years of continual slapdash upgrading. It works, largely thanks to compilers abstracting away all the ugliness where most people don't have to look at it, but that doesn't make it nice.)
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Just throwing an idea into the wind here, but with NVidia's Project Denver desktop ARM based CPU threatening to mop the floor with Intel (yeah believe it when you see it), perhaps an ARM implementation of AmigaOS would be a prudent move. I've waited for so long for x86 to bite the dust, it's kind of amazing how they've managed to keep the 680x0's arch enemy propped up for so long. Plus a surprise victory from the good old Acorn Archimedes, or to my mind the "British Amiga"!
Any thoughts?
I think one of the problems is "Who is going to build it?" If you paid the Natami team as much as engineers get paid, how much money would you need to raise? If you were to pay a team of engineers to put the Amiga on ARM, I would welcome it but how much would you need to raise to pay some engineers?
I remember from the 80's that some things worked well on the Amiga and other things worked well on the MAC or the IBM. If you are porting things to ARM then they really need to be redesigned to be hardware specific and that might mean re-writing the Amiga Operating System.
I can't speak for Hyperion but supporting multiple platforms may or may not be worth it to them. And if some things work better on different hardware, would everyone be happy?
There are different people here who already are heavily into their niche that I bet most won't support moving to ARM due to cost, they are already invested in another system or they have enough they are involved in. It was the same boat I was in as I put all my money into Amiga instead of Eprom burners, the required books on different chips, surface mount soldering irons and equipment. The Do It Yourself Movement with computers went broke in the 80's because normal people couldn't keep up with the big companies because it cost too much.
There are a handful of home made or private companies that make their own computers these days but there already isn't enough support. I think that Amiga.org should consider an electronics forum should there be ARM, microcontroller support, FPGA experimentation or other stuff and then you could recruit some users to get involved but I think you need to reinvent Amiga and be satisfied with what you can do with the current available hardware out there. Because there won't be support and because we can't compete then there will be SAMs, AROS, emulation, etc. You can't really expect non-engineers in this forum to learn geek stuff written by engineers for engineers so that they can make an Amiga like computer, can you?
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How we think about ARM has an awful lot to do with what one thinks of as "An Amiga" in the first place as well as about future hopes.
To my mind the Amiga was more than just an OS. It was about fun and accessibility, knowing what the files are on your drives, and about knowing where to find them. It was also about clever and elegant design from PCB upwards. The CPU was a huge part of this and the custom chips too. They didn't just provide processing power, they gave us a level of compatibility that PCs didn't and couldn't match. I knew every game I bought for my 'miggy would run as long as it said AGA on it (my first 'miggy was the brand new 1200), it was as easy as a console. All of these things played a part in my Amiga experience and many other things too, being able to plug the sound directly into my HI-FI for games of Xenon 2 and the video compatibility for example.
Well, now is another age. So given complete choice over the direction Amiga should take I would make Natami official, make an add-on ARM board for OS4 and also develop a more powerful ARM based machine incorporating the Natami chips.
Denver plus Natami sounds like a good start for a wedge with a cpu expansion slot that could take a board with a second ARM and GPU combo (another denver )to run in parallel with the motherboard.
Well I know that would cause some issues but that's the only two cents I'm giving today because I'm off to bed. :) G'night Amigoids! I'll come back to this thread tommorow as it's getting interesting.
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Never happen, but a table Amiga would be awesome.
Probably a "typo", but I agree that an Amiga computer built into a glass topped table would be much more interesting than an "Amiga tablet" computer.
Tablets are so over-hyped!
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Sure, its maybe not as elegant at heart as 68k or even ARM, but when I say "nicely designed" I wasnt really talking about instruction sets, but rather the manufacturing perspective. And x86 of today is a far cry from x86 from yesteryear anyway.
And as you mentioned development software takes a lot of the "quirks" away from a coder (except asm, but that's far from a prominent language these days). Theory and practice are pretty different things. (ie. asm will in some places be faster, but not many people code in asm).
Now in regards to raw power, I think a lot of people disregard hpw useful it can be. Necessary, no, but noticable, absolutely. While its true that for Joe Public raw performance for things like Web Browsing, watching videos, using facebook, etc. is sufficient, it doesnt stop the fact that it is a nicer eexperience, even for those tasks when more power is available. Multitasking for one thng. Joe Public is inclined to "double click this, double click that, do this while thats loading", and so on. Better performance obviosly helps things here. Things like compressing/decompressing files happens often on a computer, and that is much quicker with faster hardware.
Graphics are popular these days. Oviously 3d is much quicker with faster hardware, but even filters for gfx apps (photoshop/paint shop pro/gimp/etc.), not to mention things like flash. All can benefit massively.
It's not so much that its always necessary,but rather its nice to have for when it is.
The Amiga, with its legacy of being great for media centric things isnt a machine well suited to "getting by". Yes the OS runs nicely on lower spec gear, but Id rather all software I want to run has the potential for running in a way Im happy with rather than using a less friendly system, just because its hardware is better suited to the job.
If amiga was a games console, or a netbook, or a slate device, etc. then Id be happy making do, but its not. It's a great desktop OS for being creative with, which requires raw power at times.
All in my opinion/from my perspective of course.
@mechy
There's a good chance youre not actually interested in "truth" here about AROS, but you was so far off the mark I cant refrain....
AROS has nothing to do with amiga you say? How about the fact it runs on 68k Amigas and runs 68k amiga software without emulation? (does OS4?). It also runs on Sam boards. It uses gfx.lib and cgx. Is api compatible with os3.x (compatible, not restricted to as some ppl like to throw around). Uses poseidon as its USB stack. Uses effectively amitcp (albiet upgraded) for tcp/ip stack? Software written for os3.x needs to simply be recompiled to run (you know, like OS4 unless its using emulation for 68k (like aros does when not running on 68k cpu)). Uses MUI/Zune. It's pretty fair to say it has as much to do with amiga as os4.x, the only thing missing is the trademark. To say a system whose purpose for being created was as a compatible re-implementation of amiga os is not just naive, its somewhat bizarre. Its pretty much like saying ReactOS has nothing to do with Windows, or Zeta having nothing to do with BeOS.
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Sure, its maybe not as elegant at heart as 68k or even ARM, but when I say "nicely designed" I wasnt really talking about instruction sets, but rather the manufacturing perspective.
Well, sure, Intel has the best fabs and processes, but that's not a virtue of x86, that's a virtue of Intel. Any architecture would benefit from their technical capability if it were available. But conversely, using all that manufacturing might to prop up an architecture like x86 is kind of a waste of potential.
(Especially since they don't even do x86 in hardware anymore, the instruction set is all microcode on proprietary RISC sub-architectures anyway, since that was the only way they could get such a kludge of a CISC system to run at decent speeds - and that was all the way back in the Pentium Pro era!)
Anyway, my point wasn't that more computing power is bad or frivolous, it's that I don't see why Amigoid systems should always have to be cutting-edge (or, as happens in practice, trailing-edge.) If I need raw power it's simple enough for me to drop a few hundred bucks on a no-frills i7 system; for pleasure computing (i.e. Amiga,) I'd much rather have something that's elegant from the ground up.
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Heh, again I dont specifically mean the fab processes, more just that the progress of x86 is a well oiled machine. PLentiful, cheap, powerful and with nothing really stopping it being the cpu of choice for a desktop system. Even power consumption and heat disappation are very good these days, especially when one considers the raw power packed inside.
Given the choice of somethig 10x as powerful for the same price, whose main downside is an instruction set that I very rarely deal with directly (ironically as x86 became more risc like ppc became more cisc like for similar, albiet opposiing reasons), I'd take that any day over the weaker option with an advantage I seldom directly use.
Sure, AmigaOS runs ok on low powered gear, but give it something even trailing edge and it really shines. Perhaps ironically though I probably favor ARM vs PPC for the sole reason that its a lot more practical (cheap/available/etc) than ppc. X86 to me though makes the most sense given the limited resources available to the amiga world. Surely it makes more sense to utilise what is readily available than to spend time and money developing niche systems that offer no advantages? To each thier own I guess, and this is all purely from a hypothetical perspective.
I personally favor no-one or nothing but my personal experience.
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Heh, again I dont specifically mean the fab processes, more just that the progress of x86 is a well oiled machine. PLentiful, cheap, powerful and with nothing really stopping it being the cpu of choice for a desktop system.
Well, yeah, with the force of the entire PC industry behind it, it has to be...
Surely it makes more sense to utilise what is readily available than to spend time and money developing niche systems that offer no advantages?
Plenty of people already doing that, though. Heck, x86 is one of the few general platforms AROS runs native on (general as opposed to specific boards, that is.) Niche systems might not offer any advantages, but they can be fun.
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Heh, again I dont specifically mean the fab processes, more just that the progress of x86 is a well oiled machine. PLentiful, cheap, powerful and with nothing really stopping it being the cpu of choice for a desktop system.
With the rise of the power of smart phones and tablets, I'd argue more people will use ARMs as the CPU of their main computing device in less than 10 years, probably less than 5.
ARM already outsells x86 CPU's by a massive factor. ARM licensees are slated to ship something on the order of 5 *billion* CPU's this year, and even though smartphones and tablets is a small minority of that, combined they are likely to outsell PC's if not this year then next year.
Even PPC and MIPS are contenders in terms of volume (hundreds of millions sold - MIPS licensed 500 million units last year) - they're just focused on other niches, and can't touch ARM even though MIPS has a stated aim of going after the Android market.
This translates into a massive investment in all these three architectures, in growing markets, while the niches x86 sells best in are at best stagnating.
With more and more phones and tablets becoming powerful enough to be comparable to the low end desktops and laptops that make up the vast bulk of the x86 market, and more and more of them sporting HDMI out and support for bluetooth keyboards and support for external storage (even my crappy, cheapest possible Android pad has support for being a host device for external USB storage), and people increasingly spending more money on their phone than their laptop or desktop (my phone outside of contract costs about 20% more than my laptop...), the traditional laptops and desktops are set for a sharp decline, and with it x86 is set for massively increased competition.
That's not to say that it's demise is in any way imminent, but x86 is already a niche market making up a small sliver of the CPU market, and has been for years.
It's just that it's an incredibly profitable niche and very in our faces because we've been so tied to our desktops and laptops.
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And while ARM doesn't seem to come in a desktop board (that I'm aware of anyway, perhaps I'm just ignorant), we could have them with similar difficulty/expense as we get our PPCs in.
I think a http://pandaboard.org/ would make a perfectly capable desktop machine for most everyday tasks.
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@Vidarh
None of which makes ARM a great choice for a desktop. The current mobile fad will subside in time. Already things are close to saturated and more and more people are getting tired of the fad all the time. This isnt to say it'll vanish, but there's not much more scope for extra customers. The market is already predominantely made up of trend followers and same people upgrading thier phones, etc.
The cheapest and most powerful (by a huuuge margin currently,.... despite what people like to claim, arm is a far, far way away from even the most budget of x86 cpus. Even Denver is, when being optimistic, aiming for P4 class performance, something I personally couldnt deal with) will always be best suited to a desktop machine. Currently that's x86.
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After 3 weeks using a laptop with a 4-core i7 processor and enjoying the speed with which everything happens, I can't see such low power processors having an advantage where a real computer is needed. Tablets, phones, sure, they need the battery life, but waiting for web pages to finish rendering due to wimpy processors is no fun.
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Just throwing an idea into the wind here, but with NVidia's Project Denver desktop ARM based CPU threatening to mop the floor with Intel (yeah believe it when you see it), perhaps an ARM implementation of AmigaOS would be a prudent move.
I'm all for it ("AmigaOS" for me being "MorphOS")! :)
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I agree that ARM would be a good platform for AmigaOS to run upon.
And many ARM SoCs are very Amiga-like in their methodology, having dedicated co-processors for specific functions (video decode, video encode, security acceleration, graphics, audio, etc) besides the ARM core(s).
In addition they are fairly cheap for even a fairly powerful SoC. They aren't on quad-core Intel i7 territory, but they're not half bad.
The Raspberry Pi will be a $35 computer (with ethernet, etc, the $25 variant is rather too limiting). However it is only an 800MHz ARM11 - two generations behind the ARM Cortex A9 used within something like the Panda board. The A9 is competitive on a clock by clock basis with Intel's Atom cores.
And at some point there will be quad-A9s (NVIDIA Kal-El, and others), and then A15s at 2.5GHz. By then we are at the 'enough CPU power' stage for a majority of users. And a dual-A15 at 2.5GHz will beat out a 1GHz PowerPC 460 by a long way.
By the time AmigaOS (or Aros) was fully ported, with the necessary drivers, we would certainly be into A15 systems. A core requirement would be sharing the development of the hardware with other projects (e.g., next generation Pandaboard, Raspberry Pi, etc).
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@Vidarh
None of which makes ARM a great choice for a desktop. The current mobile fad will subside in time. Already things are close to saturated and more and more people are getting tired of the fad all the time. This isnt to say it'll vanish, but there's not much more scope for extra customers. The market is already predominantely made up of trend followers and same people upgrading thier phones, etc.
I find this short sighted at best. Two reasons:
- Get used to a smartphone, and you can't live without it. I use mine to read books, to play games, as my music player, to take notes, as my camera and camcorder, to check bus and train times, for maps, to read my e-mail - sometimes even when I'm at my desk -, to watch videos when I'm traveling, and more. It has consolidated several functions I before used separate devices for (camera, phone, media player) into one and at the same time given me more functionality, cheaper.
This is why the smartphone market is set to overtake the PC market in unit sales *this year*. Last year there were 305 million sold PC's, vs. 296 million sold smartphones. The PC market is stagnant, while the smartphone sales have been continuing to accelerate wildly. This drives massive investment, particularly given that the smartphone market still have vastly higher margins than the PC market, meaning the smartphone manufacturers can already actually afford more R&D than the entire PC industry.
- Higher end smartphones have *already* exceeded the performance, memory and storage capacity of a proven successful market segment for PC's, which means that with HDMI out and a bluetooth keyboard, it is *already* a viable main computer for a segment of users, and this is before Kal El etc. start pushing smart phones and tablets further into this territory.
The *fact* is that the majority of the PC market is now driven by cost conscious users that don't see any point in buying a much faster machine, and so buy machines between $200-$600 and *dropping*. The average price per unit for PC's is around the $400 mark, to the despair of PC manufacturers.
For these users, it does not matter that the CPU's used can't compete with high end x86's, as high end x86's are way out of their price segment, and largely irrelevant to their needs.
The cheapest and most powerful (by a huuuge margin currently,.... despite what people like to claim, arm is a far, far way away from even the most budget of x86 cpus. Even Denver is, when being optimistic, aiming for P4 class performance, something I personally couldnt deal with) will always be best suited to a desktop machine. Currently that's x86.
CPU performance stopped being a big differentiator to the majority of PC buyers at least 4-5 years ago.
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After 3 weeks using a laptop with a 4-core i7 processor and enjoying the speed with which everything happens, I can't see such low power processors having an advantage where a real computer is needed. Tablets, phones, sure, they need the battery life, but waiting for web pages to finish rendering due to wimpy processors is no fun.
Yet the vast majority of users are unwilling to pay more than ~$500 for a complete computer, so they don't get to see how fast web pages renders on an i7. In the meantime, my 70 GBP (~$110) cheapo Android pad with a 700MHz outdated ARM renders web pages fast enough for casual use for me, and is already about 3 generations beyond the curve.
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And while ARM doesn't seem to come in a desktop board (that I'm aware of anyway, perhaps I'm just ignorant)
I think a http://pandaboard.org/ would make a perfectly capable desktop machine for most everyday tasks.
I think this (https://www.genesi-usa.com/store/details/11) is a much better working-out-of-the-box option than the pandaboard, and while perhaps a bit underpowered (about on par with/slightly faster than a Sam440) to be called "desktop", this doesn't stop me and many others from using it as such for everyday usage! :) And I certainly wouldn't mind this (http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6074/6158661162_e2d70fc1fc_b.jpg) turn into this (http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6167/6158632270_5f30ee7b9a_b.jpg)! :)
And these devices is soon to be upgraded to the i.MX53 CPU, still Cortex-A8, but much faster and more capable in many ways, and they are doing it *really* cheap (http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7867&forum=11&start=10) (which translates into *less* than $49 for the board, no idea by how much less, but probably considerably less; low cost seems to be the main focus of the development).
When it comes to Cortex-A9 (that we see in various products today, like iPad2, Tegra2 based devices etc), current chips performs on par with the PPC G4 processors, which is not bad at all, given the additional power and benefits of the on-chip support controllers and accelerators that boosts performance of many applications in a smart, resource friendly way. A lot of things will happen in this field soon though, both in clock speed (Tegra3 will be a faster dual core Cortex-A9, have better GPU, etc, and GlobalFoundries will demonstrate a 3GHz dual core (http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4219436/GlobalFoundries-charts-road-to-14nm?pageNumber=0) Cortex-A9 made with their 28-nm processes sometime in 2012, as well as a low-power 2GHz version), and in number of cores (Freescale recently announced (http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1576641&highlight=) their Quad Core Cortex-A9 based i.MX6, and also showed it off running (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0lkZlDTq8Q) in real silicon, here (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3284/5865539166_9a900f0c1b.jpg) it's being benchmarked by Konstantinos Margaritis/Genesi. It may get here sooner than many would expect).
Cortex-A15 brings a whole bunch of new features from the desktop/server world, and a whole new level of performance.
Then we have the partnership between ARM and nVidia, bringing real 64-bit Workstation performance, the "x86 killer", while keeping the ISA backwards compatible. I think others will follow.
ARM will be the only CPU architecture running on *everything* from phones to workstation/servers, with many interesting devices in between. :)
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By todays standards my PC CPU is far from leading edge, (it's an AMD 2800 X2) but I seldom get anything eating all of it's power, in fact I rarely use more than 50% of the CPU cycles. The simple fact is fast drives, RAM and GPU are far greater issues. Now before anyone asks I do a lot of graphics work so I'm not just web browsing.
All in all I favor fast throughput of data so I'll take elegant design with less bottlenecking over raw CPU grunt any day and it's in this direction that I would prefer to see a modern Amiga go.
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Tablets, phones, sure, they need the battery life, but waiting for web pages to finish rendering due to wimpy processors is no fun.
my 70 GBP (~$110) cheapo Android pad with a 700MHz outdated ARM renders web pages fast enough for casual use for me, and is already about 3 generations beyond the curve.
The key, and the philosophy in ARM, is to use "co-processors" in a smart way as much as possible, offloading the CPU. Why should the CPU have to bother with decoding images, audio and video? ;)
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And a dual-A15 at 2.5GHz will beat out a 1GHz PowerPC 460 by a long way.
You don't have to wait for the Cortex-A15; the Cortex-A9 is already on par with PPC G4 clock by clock, and AFAIK the G4 beats the 460, and faster Cortex-A9's are about to enter the stage... ;)
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I guess I havent really explained the perspective of my arguement very clearly. While youre right in that there's enough combined cpu/gpu resources in current higher end and upcoming ARM cpu's for thier intended content I still think for more of a typical desktop type environment (like amiga os and its derivitives are) whatever is most powerful and affordable is the way to go. It's not that I have a particular preference to x86, it's not as elegant in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day it's plentiful, cheap, and powerful.
People often comment how Amiga OS is fast on lower spec hardware, and Im not going to dispute this. Im a big fan of the system and have been for more than 2 decades. The thing is though imagine the potential for an amiga system based on the current cutting edge hardware, taking advantage of both cpu and gpu, physics acceleration, blah, blah,blah all taken advantage of (custom hardware) by the system. AROS, while quite nice, doesnt yet take this anywhere near the potential available. Maybe one day :)
At the end of the day though it all comes down to what person wants to do. For me the Amiga is the ultimate system for being creative on. The OS doesnt get in the way and you can just get down to business, not to mention the personal customisations a person can make to automate processes, or just make things more to youre liking. I like the potential for datatypes for video and gfx work (filter datatypes, being able to do video work with your favorite 2d art package if it uses datatypes, and about a billion other possibilities).
Anyway, end of the day I just favor raw grunt being available. Even in this day and age there's sill plenty of reasons more grunt is desirable, and even more places where it creates a nicer experience even when its not necessary. I want an impressive Amiga system again, and current high end x86 hardware + current end gpus can provide that. If in 5-10 years its ShadyBob'sSuperProcessingUnit then that's what I'll favor. Maybe 20 years though and it wont seem so important :)
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The current mobile fad will subside in time. Already things are close to saturated and more and more people are getting tired of the fad all the time. This isnt to say it'll vanish, but there's not much more scope for extra customers. The market is already predominantely made up of trend followers and same people upgrading thier phones, etc.
I agree completely that the current tablet/smart-phone boom is fad-driven and will subside as the novelty wears off, but it's my hope that thanks to it, with more R&D dollars and real, solid OS development work going into non-x86 architectures, we may finally see the end of the PC's formerly inextricable dependence on one particular architecture - and that's when things will really get interesting.
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I think this (https://www.genesi-usa.com/store/details/11) is a much better working-out-of-the-box option than the pandaboard, and while perhaps a bit underpowered (about on par with/slightly faster than a Sam440) to be called "desktop", this doesn't stop me and many others from using it as such for everyday usage! :) And I certainly wouldn't mind this (http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6074/6158661162_e2d70fc1fc_b.jpg) turn into this (http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6167/6158632270_5f30ee7b9a_b.jpg)! :)
And these devices is soon to be upgraded to the i.MX53 CPU, still Cortex-A8, but much faster and more capable in many ways, and they are doing it *really* cheap (http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7867&forum=11&start=10) (which translates into *less* than $49 for the board, no idea by how much less, but probably considerably less; low cost seems to be the main focus of the development).
When it comes to Cortex-A9 (that we see in various products today, like iPad2, Tegra2 based devices etc), current chips performs on par with the PPC G4 processors, which is not bad at all, given the additional power and benefits of the on-chip support controllers and accelerators that boosts performance of many applications in a smart, resource friendly way. A lot of things will happen in this field soon though, both in clock speed (Tegra3 will be a faster dual core Cortex-A9, have better GPU, etc, and GlobalFoundries will demonstrate a 3GHz dual core (http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4219436/GlobalFoundries-charts-road-to-14nm?pageNumber=0) Cortex-A9 made with their 28-nm processes sometime in 2012, as well as a low-power 2GHz version), and in number of cores (Freescale recently announced (http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1576641&highlight=) their Quad Core Cortex-A9 based i.MX6, and also showed it off running (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0lkZlDTq8Q) in real silicon, here (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3284/5865539166_9a900f0c1b.jpg) it's being benchmarked by Konstantinos Margaritis/Genesi. It may get here sooner than many would expect).
Cortex-A15 brings a whole bunch of new features from the desktop/server world, and a whole new level of performance.
Then we have the partnership between ARM and nVidia, bringing real 64-bit Workstation performance, the "x86 killer", while keeping the ISA backwards compatible. I think others will follow.
ARM will be the only CPU architecture running on *everything* from phones to workstation/servers, with many interesting devices in between. :)
Thanks for letting me know about these. I'll certainly be interested when the upgraded version becomes available.
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I agree completely that the current tablet/smart-phone boom is fad-driven and will subside as the novelty wears off
Personally I think that demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the long term appeal of these devices.
Don't think of them as phones. Think of them as computers that happen to have a small screen and touch screen and phone functionality built in, but that increasingly can be connected to screens and keyboards and all kinds of other devices.
Why would a consumer buy a large box desktop they'll never open and never expand when they can get a fast enough computer that fits in their pocket and that comes with a built in phone, camera and music player in a similar price range to what most people are willing to spend on a PC?
PC's have regularly shrunk in size. And the last few years the desktop market has collapsed as low end laptops have become powerful enough and cheap enough for people to prefer them to a bulky, stationary computer.
Why would this trend towards smaller form factors, that's been steady since the 80's, suddenly reverse?
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Personally I think that demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the long term appeal of these devices.
Don't think of them as phones. Think of them as computers that happen to have a small screen and touch screen and phone functionality built in, but that increasingly can be connected to screens and keyboards and all kinds of other devices.
I have thought of them that way, ever since they came out. I keep running up against the fact that a laptop has a built-in keyboard and doesn't need a special mounting case for it (like the one my brother has to turn his iPad and Bluetooth keyboard into a makeshift laptop,) even the smallest ones come with better specs for price than than a tablet, and they have a vastly better software selection. And if you really need a touchscreen there's laptops with them or adapter kits for other laptops.
PC's have regularly shrunk in size. And the last few years the desktop market has collapsed as low end laptops have become powerful enough and cheap enough for people to prefer them to a bulky, stationary computer.
Why would this trend towards smaller form factors, that's been steady since the 80's, suddenly reverse?
Didn't say it was going to, but I think it's fudging the argument to count laptops in with tablets, as they are in all regards much closer to desktop PCs. When tablet evangelists start counting laptops into the mix it comes off like they're desperately glomming onto anything that isn't a desktop PC in an attempt to support their argument. Arguing based simply on physical size is silly; even desktop PCs have been shrinking for decades. The real question is, what kind of concrete advantages does a portable computer with no keyboard have over a portable computer with a keyboard?
I'm not saying there's no legitimate market for tablets; maybe there is, I dunno. But I do believe that the current all-hogs-to-the-trough rush the industry is engaging in is just another fad boom, like that magical period in the mid-'90s when investors were throwing money by the fistful at anything with a .com on it. Booms never last forever - eventually they go bust, and what emerges from the wreckage will be a lot closer to what the actual market supports.
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Amiga = Daphne/Agnus/Paula and NOTHING ELSE.
I find it hilarious when people say OS 4.1 running on a SAM460 is more 'Amiga' than Aros running on a DELL PC.
And even if you don't have Daphne/Agnus/Paula exactly then there is still the issue if it is 'Amiga' then why are my original Amiga games like Rocket Ranger on 3.5" as useful as coasters if you don't own a Commodore Amiga sold in the 80s and 90s?
Now that that piddling little discussion is out of the way the second point is this....i7 processors have been around for nearly 4 years now...FOUR F^$£ING YEARS so a new 'Amiga' has to have a CPU that is SUPERIOR to the 2007 i7 2.8Ghz. I don't want ARM and I don't want washing machine controller type rubbish like SAM440 EVER AGAIN MENTIONED.
A new 'Amiga' needs to cost 1/4 of the cost of a PC gaming rig (excluding monitor cost) AND run a game like Battlefield 3 IN FULL 1080/1200p DETAIL.
Do you think Sony and Microsoft had it easy when this is exactly what they had to do in 2006/2007 when it came to CPU cost? Nope they had to be very cunning in their design to keep the costs down and performance 300-400% more efficient than Wintel PC gaming boxes.
680x0 is NOT Amiga, 680x0 = ANY not PC based machine from the 80s (Mac/ST/Amiga/Next/Unix workstation etc etc) so a damp fart of a CPU base on a 1000 MHz 68000 theoretical design is not what I want.
Amiga as you know it is dead, Amiga = custom hardware and non-industry standard CPU to shat all over PC price performance. If you added a USB mouse and keyboard to a PS3/360 and they had a bespoke desktop OS that did everything XP/Vista/7 or OS X does but smoother and more responsively they you would have had a spiritual successor to the Amiga 1000. But this never happened and we are back to our non-choice of either a bloated Mac or PC crappy OS that thinks nothing of dumping terrabytes of temp files WHEN IT FEELS LIKE IT or a games console that has all the spiritual successor advantages of Amiga 1000 running the equivalent of Amiga Marble Madness/Defender of the Crown vs DOS/Mac versions BUT none of the equivalent of advantages of a more productive OS and a more creative audio visual computing experience (making samples/mod tunes/dpaint pictures/digiview images/anim brushes from 16 second realtime grabs of buck rogers/BSG etc etc)
Like I said nobody will ever do this because Nintendo has no interest in producing a non standard desktop alternative OS computer, nor does Sony, and Microsoft are busy selling you that $hit called Windows/Office to finance Xbox R&D
Nobody else has the money, and it is obvious that we are dead in the water now with nowhere to go. Unless a new machine in the next 12 months is designed costing no more than a top end PS3 AND can technically run Battlefield 3 in 1080p and maximum details settings THEN YOU MIGHT AS WELL FORGET ALL THIS NEXT GENERATION AMIGA HORSE FEATHERS. ANYTHING LESS THAN THIS TODAY IS A DISGRACE TO CALL IT AN AMIGA OF ANY DESCRIPTION WHEN THE GAMES ARE WORSE AND THE OS DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A FIREFOX/CHROME QUALITY BROWSER.
And unless that happens Amiga will remain a tiny fraction of the size of Apple (already a tiny fraction of the worldwide % of PCs sold) and hugely expensive and not very useful. Sure Natami and Minimig are nice but they are just a means to play top end 90s Amiga games like Quake. The world has moved on....and Amiga didn't because Commodore went bankrupt and every successive owner pillaged the IP and improved on nothing!
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I have thought of them that way, ever since they came out. I keep running up against the fact that a laptop has a built-in keyboard and doesn't need a special mounting case for it (like the one my brother has to turn his iPad and Bluetooth keyboard into a makeshift laptop,) even the smallest ones come with better specs for price than than a tablet, and they have a vastly better software selection. And if you really need a touchscreen there's laptops with them or adapter kits for other laptops.
Those would be a big deal if you only ever want to use your computer as a laptop. If on the other hand you sometimes wish to use it on the go, sometimes as a laptop, sometimes as a desktop, a smartphone that can connect to a larger screen suddenly becomes a vastly more interesting choice.
And most laptops today are sold for home use where a tablet is sufficient: Sofa surfing, watching movies or fiddling around with things where people don't care about a physical keyboard. "Power users" that "need" a physical keyboard are a tiny minority.
As the same time, even for many of us that do need a physical keyboard some of the time, a tablet and/or a smartphone are viable second or tertiary computing devices replacing additional PC's and/or can be a primary device with "extras" such as the Atrix or the EEE transformer.
By all means these solutions are highly unlikely to replace the laptop or desktop entirely in the short term, but frankly I can't imagine any situation where we won't eventually get to a product where the screen and keyboards are "dumb" and the computer stays in our pockets unless we want to use a phone sized screen - the appeal is to carry your desktop with you; walk up to a screen and it's all there instantly, with all your data and everything. Having state (data and/or running processes) in a stationary computer if one that fits in your pocket can hold it all just seems silly.
It's not about if, but about when, and personally I think we're very, very close to the cutover point.
Incidentally, it's that dream that gave us VNC back in the day, though of course that was coupled with centralized computers, - Oracle and Olivetti's research lab used RFID badges couples with VNC to bring up peoples desktops whenever they walked up to a workstation :)
Didn't say it was going to, but I think it's fudging the argument to count laptops in with tablets, as they are in all regards much closer to desktop PCs.
I wasn't counting laptops with tablets, but with desktop PC's - laptops is a tiny niche too. Both were outsold massively last year by smartphones, and this year they are being outsold *combined* by smartphones. Tablets are a curiosity in comparison - tablets are much less of a threat to laptops and desktops than smartphones are, at least for the foreseeable future.
Tablets are nice once they're cheap enough to throw around the house as extra screens to surf the net on, watch movies on or read books on - which is why I have a 70 GBP crappy tablet. Smartphones on the other hand are viable at a much higher price point because they are multi-function devices to a much greater extent and are more portable.
But I do believe that the current all-hogs-to-the-trough rush the industry is engaging in is just another fad boom, like that magical period in the mid-'90s when investors were throwing money by the fistful at anything with a .com on it. Booms never last forever - eventually they go bust, and what emerges from the wreckage will be a lot closer to what the actual market supports.
I don't think we're anywhere near the boom phase for either tablets or phones yet. In five years time we might begin to see that. Today we're just seeing smartphones take over the "dumb phones" market and eating moderately into the existing PC market, with tablets as a tiny little niche sibling that will continue to see good growth because of the symbiosis with smartphones (e.g. I signed in with my Google account on my new tablets and had it sync all the apps I had installed on my phone with a couple of key presses).
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Amiga = Daphne/Agnus/Paula and NOTHING ELSE.
So anything that came after first few 1000 A1000s ain't "Amiga" by your definition ?
Takes being "snobby" to whole new level....
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An Amiga is any machine with a physical Paula chip, anything else is just Amiga-like.
But seriously, who cares?
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Those would be a big deal if you only ever want to use your computer as a laptop. If on the other hand you sometimes wish to use it on the go, sometimes as a laptop, sometimes as a desktop, a smartphone that can connect to a larger screen suddenly becomes a vastly more interesting choice.
I'm just not seeing this, no matter how many times tablet evangelists repeat it. How is a tablet with a detachable keyboard that you have to lug around separately more convenient than a laptop which has it built-in?
"Power users" that "need" a physical keyboard are a tiny minority.
Since by "power users" you apparently mean "anyone who uses a computer for anything more than YouTube and AIM," I am going to have to vehemently disagree that they are a minority at all, let alone a tiny one.
As the same time, even for many of us that do need a physical keyboard some of the time, a tablet and/or a smartphone are viable second or tertiary computing devices replacing additional PC's and/or can be a primary device with "extras" such as the Atrix or the EEE transformer.
See, this is the difference between "can" and "should." Yes, it's possible to use a tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard in place of a laptop, but that doesn't make it a better option. Separate Bluetooth keyboards require a case like my brother has in order to not be a pain in the ass, and while snap-on keyboards like the Eee Transformer circumvent that, in either case you're just making it into a poor man's laptop.
Which raises the question, why not just a laptop, then? They're cheaper, they're nearly as compact, they have a better software selection, and you don't have to tote around a separate freakin' keyboard if you feel you might need it (or leave it behind thinking you won't and then find that you do after all.)
frankly I can't imagine any situation where we won't eventually get to a product where the screen and keyboards are "dumb" and the computer stays in our pockets unless we want to use a phone sized screen
I can. I recently acquired a 12" PowerBook to play with, and from the moment I switched it on I realized just how tiny an 8-10" screen like my Eee or typical tablets have. My nearsightedness doesn't affect anything at such a close range, and even then I had trouble switching back to my Eee; I can only imagine how older or more visually-impaired users would feel when confronted with a small screen like that.
the appeal is to carry your desktop with you; walk up to a screen and it's all there instantly, with all your data and everything. Having state (data and/or running processes) in a stationary computer if one that fits in your pocket can hold it all just seems silly.
Laptops already provide that, and often with a decent-sized screen into the bargain. (And they don't require a particular docking connector since any decent laptop will have VGA or mini-DVI out and USB or PS/2 ports for a separate keyboard and mouse, if you so desire.)
And while desktop PCs might not be as convenient generally as laptops or other portable computers, they offer full access to all the expandability the market offers, up to gigabytes of RAM, terabytes of hard disk space, and the best CPU and GPU horsepower out there, and that's something no portable computer can claim. Yes, that's probably not necessary for most users, but the set of people who can make significant use of more than what a laptop or tablet can provide is most certainly non-negligible.
Incidentally, it's that dream that gave us VNC back in the day, though of course that was coupled with centralized computers, - Oracle and Olivetti's research lab used RFID badges couples with VNC to bring up peoples desktops whenever they walked up to a workstation :)
You'll note, however, that the primary use of VNC in the personal-use computing world is to allow netbooks and tablets to access the storage capacity and computing power of desktop PCs.
Both were outsold massively last year by smartphones, and this year they are being outsold *combined* by smartphones.
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I don't think we're anywhere near the boom phase for either tablets or phones yet.
By your own claims, tablets and smart-phones have gone from their entry into the mainstream with the release of the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad last spring to the new Next Big Thing as far as the entire industry is concerned. That's a boom. They're selling like hotcakes, everybody's making them, and as far as the press is concerned they are Officially Hip. The question is, what happens when they're ubiquitous enough that they stop being cool, and the public frenzy is diverted to some new trendy gadget? They'll be left with only the people who really want them and are comfortable using them, and who knows what percentage of the peak market share that will be?
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and GlobalFoundries will demonstrate a 3GHz dual core (http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4219436/GlobalFoundries-charts-road-to-14nm?pageNumber=0) Cortex-A9 made with their 28-nm processes sometime in 2012
It's a bit vague but I think they have already built this.
BTW the 32nm SOI process AMD uses appears to be faster so they could make them even faster...
ARM will be the only CPU architecture running on *everything* from phones to workstation/servers, with many interesting devices in between. :)
Actually they go a lot lower already and will go higher than servers. I would say they're not in PCs but that's not true, you'll find several ARM cores in modern PCs - the HD has one, the WiFi, etc...
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To be honest I don't consider the "Amiga is dead so it needs to bring out something amazing in 12 months" approach at all valid. I've noticed this comment on this thread and others before. It's rubbish! The Amiga is no more or less dead in general terms (ie. to the masses) if it takes 5 years more for a new machine. Sooooo...
...maybe the best approach would be to get in early with future techs like Silicon Integrated Nanophotonics, Coriolis fans, MRAM etc... and build something truly astounding. Lets face it any new Amiga should have Thunderbolt as standard at least.
If your not familiar with the above techs just google them.
Sadly any approach is limited by cash first and foremost and without big investment the chances are Amiga will never catch up again. It breaks my heart to say it but I think one of us needs a big lottery win to throw at the problem. :/
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To be honest I don't consider the "Amiga is dead so it needs to bring out something amazing in 12 months" approach at all valid. I've noticed this comment on this thread and others before. It's rubbish! The Amiga is no more or less dead in general terms (ie. to the masses) if it takes 5 years more for a new machine. Sooooo...
...maybe the best approach would be to get in early with future techs like Silicon Integrated Nanophotonics, Coriolis fans, MRAM etc... and build something truly astounding. Lets face it any new Amiga should have Thunderbolt as standard at least.
If your not familiar with the above techs just google them.
Sadly any approach is limited by cash first and foremost and without big investment the chances are Amiga will never catch up again. It breaks my heart to say it but I think one of us needs a big lottery win to throw at the problem. :/
Sadly, throwing money at the problem without great ideas and vision behind it is a waste of money. Look at the amount of money claimed to have been spent by CUSA on marketing and developing a "knock-off" retro case and then look at the end product and what most people around here think about their chances for success. Only time will tell if the majority here will be correct about the long term success of CUSA, or if they will be proved wrong and Barry & company will still be in business and making a profit 3 years from now. It is going to take a lot more than money to ever bring the Amiga back into anything close to the mainstream of computing.
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Sadly, throwing money at the problem without great ideas and vision behind it is a waste of money. Look at the amount of money claimed to have been spent by CUSA on marketing and developing a "knock-off" retro case and then look at the end product and what most people around here think about their chances for success. Only time will tell if the majority here will be correct about the long term success of CUSA, or if they will be proved wrong and Barry & company will still be in business and making a profit 3 years from now. It is going to take a lot more than money to ever bring the Amiga back into anything close to the mainstream of computing.
I agree that cash alone is no answer but without it great ideas often die an undeserved death. Capitalism sucks in that respect. :(
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@Boudicca:
"biggest insults" oh come now let's not get petty! Or would you rather Amiga was beaten to death by IBM's little minions?
Although the irony does not escape me, but it doesn't stop there. Of course there was also the Apple Macintosh that also ran on 68k, migrated to PPC and managed to survive with a respectable share of the market only finally to admit that they had to migrate again to the dreaded x86. Now Microsoft has stated that Windows 8 will be available for ARM, and how willing will Apple be to put its customers through another platform shift? Apple will be out on a limb clinging to x86 while Windows jumps ship to the Neo-Archimedes!
Actually Mac OS X handles various processor technologies pretty well thanks to its NEXT heritage. The PPC to Intel switch was reasonably painless for users since they didn't have to figure out which executable binaries to download. That removes the burden from the user in having to figure out which version of an application to download. XCODE will compile universal binaries pretty seamlessly. The same is true for 32-bit versus 64-bit OS X software. Developers just compiles universal "fat" binaries and Mac OS X figures out which to run based on processor architecture. The same would be true if Apple decided to switch to ARM. Apple uses the same approach for both OS X and iOS.
There have been rumors for some time that Apple has been testing their Macbook Air with their "A-series" ARM processors that power the iPad and iPhone, but I think it'll be several more years before ARM is powerful enough to be a serious desktop contender. That doesn't mean they won't devote R&D resources and keep experimenting with it though.
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I'm just not seeing this, no matter how many times tablet evangelists repeat it. How is a tablet with a detachable keyboard that you have to lug around separately more convenient than a laptop which has it built-in?
Who is arguing that tablets are more convenient to lug around if what you need is a laptop? But the point is the vast majority of users don't need a laptop - smartphones already vastly outsell laptops and demonstrates what users really are looking for: a tiny, portable computing device that does the basics.
Since by "power users" you apparently mean "anyone who uses a computer for anything more than YouTube and AIM," I am going to have to vehemently disagree that they are a minority at all, let alone a tiny one.
Sales numbers disagree with you.
See, this is the difference between "can" and "should." Yes, it's possible to use a tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard in place of a laptop, but that doesn't make it a better option. Separate Bluetooth keyboards require a case like my brother has in order to not be a pain in the ass, and while snap-on keyboards like the Eee Transformer circumvent that, in either case you're just making it into a poor man's laptop.
You're back to talking about tablets when my focus have been smartphones. FACT is that more smartphones get sold than laptops. FAR more. At home, more and more newer smartphones can transform into a stationary computer by hooking up to a monitor or TV and a bluetooth keyboard. Same goes for tablets. The Transformer, Atrix and cases are workarounds for people who mostly just need a smartphone or tablet, but *sometimes* want laptop like functionality but not badly enough to want to buy both (or opt for the laptop instead of a smartphone). Those options will remain niche.
What won't remain niche is for the user that want a large screen stationary setup to instead of having both a smartphone and a desktop come home and plug their phone into their screen and have all their data accessible in one location but with a large screen as an option rather than paying for two computers and have to deal with shuffling data around.
Which raises the question, why not just a laptop, then? They're cheaper, they're nearly as compact,
They're nowhere near as compact or practical as a tablet, but I was talking about smartphones - tablets are a tiny niche - and my phone fits in all my pockets, my laptops don't.
But lets talk about tablets for a second: My tablet slips easily into my bag. My laptops don't. I could get a netbook, but it'd be as slow as my tablet, more expensive than my tablet, and it'd be far less convenient in the places where I use my tablet, such as while commuting, when what I want is a device I can easily hold with one hand while reading or surfing.
they have a better software selection, and you don't have to tote around a separate freakin' keyboard if you feel you might need it (or leave it behind thinking you won't and then find that you do after all.)
More users use smartphones than laptops, so clearly most users are perfectly fine not carrying a keyboard around, or not having the same application selection.
And while desktop PCs might not be as convenient generally as laptops or other portable computers, they offer full access to all the expandability the market offers, up to gigabytes of RAM, terabytes of hard disk space, and the best CPU and GPU horsepower out there, and that's something no portable computer can claim.
Most users *never* open their machine, so no extra RAM, no extra internal harddrives (ever wonder why the market for external harddrives is as huge as it is, and why network attached storage is so big?). Have you looked around your local PC shop lately? In most mainstream ones, you'll see most machines displayed are laptops, all-in-one PC's built into the monitor, or small form factor machines which are nearly impossible to expand. Ordinary users don't care about expandability, nor even know about the options.
Yes, that's probably not necessary for most users, but the set of people who can make significant use of more than what a laptop or tablet can provide is most certainly non-negligible.
I'm not saying it is, but of the 300 million sold PC's last year, I'd be shocked if it accounted for more than 30 million users. 10% of the market. A market that has already been surpassed in size by smartphones, and that is stagnant, while the smartphone market is projected to pass 600 million new units sold next year.
Tens of millions of users is still a valuable market, and a high margin one at that, and so there will remain plenty of options for those who need or want larger box computers, but it'll become a smaller part of the overall market.
You'll note, however, that the primary use of VNC in the personal-use computing world is to allow netbooks and tablets to access the storage capacity and computing power of desktop PCs.
Which is another reason why people don't need to carry high end computing power with them. My main machine is a low powered laptop. It can be even for someone like me who definitively fall in the power user category, because all the heavy lifting is done by a big server under the stairs.
The question is, what happens when they're ubiquitous enough that they stop being cool, and the public frenzy is diverted to some new trendy gadget? They'll be left with only the people who really want them and are comfortable using them, and who knows what percentage of the peak market share that will be?
My prediction is that it will *become* the majority of the PC market. It won't replace PC's - it will gain the capaibilities needed to *become* PC's for the large majority of PC users that today buy $200-$600 PC's and/or the users that have eschewed PC's for phones for years already (e.g. penetration of expensive phones amongst the <25 year age group is far higher than the penetration of PC's).
Desktops will keep becoming smaller, lessening the gap, with larger PC's remaining confined to enthusiasts as they have been for the last 10-15 years, but their market share will shrink as it has for years, only now it will lose sales to smartphones instead of laptops.
The laptop market will flatten out, and maybe start a slow decline, as people left buying laptops will increasingly be people who are business users who travel and power users who do serious work but want to do it from the sofa. The casual users who have driven the surge in laptop sales are users that moved on from desktops because laptops took less space and could be moved more easily, but that still have computing needs largely easily met by low end tablets and/or high end smart phones + screen / keyboard combo's.
Within 5 years, the majority of computing will be done on smart phones - already by end of 2013, the number of smart phones in active use is likely to have surpassed the number of desktops and laptops in active use with current projections - the PC market is growing at less than 4% year over year, while the smartphone market is growing at more like 40%-50% year over year.
Given the low price point of the low end of this market, the smartphone and tablet markets combined are likely to get far wider penetration into low income markets, which will drive the numbers to far higher totals than for PC's - About 3 times as many people in the world have cellphones as have PC's, and while most of those are simple devices, we've seen the capabilities of the lowest end devices rapidly increase as the cost gets low enough. E.g. even poor but large countries like Nigeria are one of the largest cellphone markets in the world because if people have to choose between buying a phone or buying a PC, the market shows that the phone almost always wins out. This will accelerate as the option to buy a phone with computing functionality tilts the benefit of even a mid range phone further towards picking the phone.
Feel free to hold me to this in five years time :)
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Well I agree with everyone. I know this sounds paradoxical, because everyone aren't agreeing with each other, but I can see everyone's point...
Here's the way I see it.
Nvidia and others think ARM has a future in the mainstream desktop/laptop market and are putting their money where their mouth is. Microsoft also agree and when ARM based PCs appear, Windows 8 will run on it.
Apple can migrate to ARM, but unlike Microsoft also build their own hardware and bundle the OS with it as a complete product. Even though OSX will run on a lot of generic PC hardware you can't just buy it for that purpose, you either get it pre-installed on the hardware or you get an illegal copy. As such Apple will migrate to ARM for their desktop/PC market when they have to, not just because they can.
So when Denver comes out there will be a gap of several years while Windows has essentially no competition in this corner of the market.
Nvidia are consciously aiming for the low end of the market, not high performance or gaming rigs. They will be better suited to HTPC. I see that Amiga has a chance here (if the financial backing were available, of course) to make inroads into the HTPC market at that point. It won't have the CPU "grunt" but let's face it Amiga never did, it was always a fairly competent CPU backed up by the custom chips. If you wanted pure grunt you got a PC, even in the Amiga's heyday. That's not what it was for. In 1987 even the Archimedes outperformed an Amiga in pure CPU terms, but the Amiga was better for games and other 2D graphics applications because of its custom chips. As someone else pointed out, "CPU as supervisor with specialised coprocessors to do the grunt work" is also the ARM philosophy!
I think if there is to be any next generation Amiga it will have to be what Amiga always was - a multimedia PC, and a console with an OS. There is a desire for that, people were installing Linux on Playstations until Sony put a stop to it for some reason. You don't need grunt to do that. Consoles don't have grunt, they have graphics chips (the Xbox 360 actually runs on a PowerPC chip).
And here is how it could work: Amiga as chipset. Essentially a Natami board with a Denver ARM socket, with the 68N070 coprocessor that monitors/controls the hardware. Old games will be able to run directly on the chipset (one is reminded of the Sega Megadrive, which had the same Z80 that powered the Master System as a coprocessor, and could run Master System games through it), AGA will replace the old EGA bios text mode, while an onboard (Nvidia?) graphics chip provides gaming performance at Playstation 3 levels. It will do everything your Amiga does (including running classic Amiga software), it will play games classic and modern, it will function as an HTPC, and it will also function as an entry-level desktop PC if you want it to (web browsing, e-mail etc).
If you want all that and grunt AS WELL, well, wait until the ARMiga 1200 works out, and the ARMiga 4000 might follow.
Are there any objections other than that it's all pie in the sky? If anyone else happens to have the money, I've got the ideas and the vision!
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ARM and X86 will fight it out for world domination whilst Power architecture will slowly fade into history. Power's mistreatment of Apple turned out to be their demise.
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Oh and for the record, I don't think x86 is evil because it's a monopoly. I think x86 is evil because it's absurd. The fact that it is also a monopoly is just rubbing salt into the wound.
I'm going to quote some things from the 1996 edition of Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (appendix D):
"The x86 isn't all that complex - it just doesn't make a lot of sense."
Mike Johnson
Leader of 80x86 Design at AMD,
Microprocessor Report (1994)
Concluding Remarks
As we have seen, "orthogonal" is not a term found in the Intel architectural dictionary. To fully understand which registers and which addressing modes are available, you need to see the encoding of all addressing modes and sometimes the encoding of the instructions.
Some argue that inelegance of the 80x86 instruction set is unavoidable, the price that must be paid for rampant success by any architecture. These authors reject that notion. Obviously no successful architecture can jettison features that were added in previous implementations, and over time some features may be seen as undesirable. The awkwardness of the 80x86 began at its core with the 8086 instruction set and was exacerbated by the architecturally inconsistent expansions of the 8087, 80286, and 80386.
A counterexample is the IBM 360/370 architecture, which is much older than the 80x86. It dominates the mainframe market just as the 80x86 dominates the PC market. Due undoubtedly to a better base and more compatible enhancements, this instruction set makes much more sense than the 80x86 more than 30 years after its first implementation.
For better or worse, Intel had a 16-bit microprocessor years before its competitors' more elegant architectures, and this head start led to the selection of the 8086 as the CPU for the IBM PC. What it lacks in style is made up in quantity, making the 80x86 beautiful from the right perspective.
The saving grace of the 80x86 is that its architectural components are not too difficult to implement, as Intel has demonstrated by rapidly improving performance of integer programs since 1978. High floating-point performance is a larger challenge in this architecture.
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Essentially a Natami board with a Denver ARM socket,
Well I mentioned Denver plus Natami back on page four of this thread and I'm pleased to see someone agree. If this could happen I for one would be very happy. Perhaps Hyperion should have a chat with Gunnar and co about it.....
....LMAO, no chance! it's just too much like common sense to ever happen.
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@Tripitaka: I've been thinking on similar lines for some time in fact, but now I've heard about Denver it seems a good deal more plausible. We've got a Beagleboard in the house, I wonder if we could get it to play nicely with a natami/minimig somehow...
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@Tripitaka: I've been thinking on similar lines for some time in fact, but now I've heard about Denver it seems a good deal more plausible. We've got a Beagleboard in the house, I wonder if we could get it to play nicely with a natami/minimig somehow...
In order to get MiniMig to play nicely with a BeagleBoard, you'll need a field programmable gate array chip to hold the graphics and sound core. I don't think the BeagleBoard comes with one.
The NatAmi is an FPGA-based SoC that will have both the CPU and graphics and sound cores all on one FPGA chip (someday, anyway). About all that we have in common with the Denver chip is that we're pursuing some of the same market space. I'd love to have an up-to-date chip fabrication process on a full-fledged FPGA but that's not the priority now. Getting the bugs worked out is the priority.
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Nice, an ARM 'Amiga' :( Not wanted, because Amiga is hardware, not software (680x0+chipset). My Amiga hobby is based on actual Amiga hardware, and not some non-Amiga hardware. The software just makes the machine useful. What Amiga really needs is a better OS (written from scratch, and for 680x0+chipset) and new software that's also written from scratch.
68k is pretty much the one constant in the Amiga universe, we just need them to be faster
For what? Running crappy ports of crappy (not crappy in a functional sense) peecee bloatware? I'd rather just use my peecee, even if it's just because it has better operating systems than the completely outdated Amiga OS (AOS sucks and needs a replacement badly).
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Nice, an ARM 'Amiga' :( Not wanted, because Amiga is hardware, not software (680x0+chipset). My Amiga hobby is based on actual Amiga hardware, and not some non-Amiga hardware. The software just makes the machine useful. What Amiga really needs is a better OS (written from scratch, and for 680x0+chipset) and new software that's also written from scratch.
I disagree about the OS sucking so bad. It's the compilers that suck. If we could get an up-to-date compiler for 68k, we could write software in C, C++, and (by extension) PortablE that didn't suck instead of twiddling around in Assembly for our larger apps. Also, since AROS is written in C we'll need the compilers to work better for that as well.
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I disagree about the OS sucking so bad.
The reason I say it sucks is because even 68030s can do a whole lot better (probably 68020 as well). The problem with AOS is that it's thoroughly stuck in the past. For example, not having memory protection as on option is one major gripe. Another is the completely antiquated GUI (not talking about just eye candy here). Also, all those damned patches just plain suck, and aren't needed on something new.
Our Amigas need something better, even if it's not a complete OS.
It's the compilers that suck. If we could get an up-to-date compiler for 68k, we could write software in C, C++, and (by extension) PortablE that didn't suck instead of twiddling around in Assembly for our larger apps.
Don't know about that, I dream of something like Visual Asm++ :D No, really, it would be awesome. Anyway, are Amiga C/C++ compilers really so bad? Just asking, because I haven't done much with them.
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@Thorham
The reason Exec and the other libraries are stuck in the past is that they were written in 68k Assembly. That just made them harder to bring into the 21st century when 3.5 and 3.9 were written.
As for the compilers, LLVM will soon be able to use a PBQP register scheduler that can store multiple small variables in one register. This would improve register loading and make it look more like somebody sat down and hand-assembled the whole thing. The GCC compiler could do similar things but doesn't because the 68k backend is so antiquated. Nobody will put the time nor energy into GCC 68k because it's thought to be a dead architecture outside of embedded controller use.
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@Thorham:
Hang on a minute... first you say Amiga is "hardware (680x0 + chipset)", then you complain that the OS is "stuck in the past!" With all due respect, the 680x0 and the classic Amiga chipset are obsolete hardware. Don't get me wrong, I love the classic Amiga, but if you insist that that is what Amiga is and always will be, the Amiga is a relic of the past, a museum piece used only by die-hard hobbyists. I can sympathise, but this is not a way forwards.
In fact I love the 680x0, and I'm about to code some asm in it this afternoon, but it's possibly the least Amiga thing about the Amiga. Why? Because it was a generic part. It was also in Macs and Megadrives and goodness knows what else. Even the floppy disk drive was more uniquely Amiga (who else got 880k on their floppy disks?). The OS and the chipset were specifically Amiga products. Both of these need updating for the 21st century.
@SamuraiCrow: I'm not talking about having the Bealgeboard and Minimig on the same board - perhaps some kind of serial link could be used at first. A sort of early proof of concept.
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@Thorham:
Hang on a minute... first you say Amiga is "hardware (680x0 + chipset)", then you complain that the OS is "stuck in the past!" With all due respect, the 680x0 and the classic Amiga chipset are obsolete hardware. Don't get me wrong, I love the classic Amiga, but if you insist that that is what Amiga is and always will be, the Amiga is a relic of the past, a museum piece used only by die-hard hobbyists. I can sympathise, but this is not a way forwards.
In fact I love the 680x0, and I'm about to code some asm in it this afternoon, but it's possibly the least Amiga thing about the Amiga. Why? Because it was a generic part. It was also in Macs and Megadrives and goodness knows what else. Even the floppy disk drive was more uniquely Amiga (who else got 880k on their floppy disks?). The OS and the chipset were specifically Amiga products. Both of these need updating for the 21st century.
@SamuraiCrow: I'm not talking about having the Bealgeboard and Minimig on the same board - perhaps some kind of serial link could be used at first. A sort of early proof of concept.
What if Commodore Amiga (http://www.commodoreamiga.ir) were to fund a port of AROS to the Beagleboard and sell them pre-installed and configured as an "Amiga 300"?
Would people be interested?
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@nicholas
The beagleboard has an expansion port. I wonder if a 68k emulator could be installed on it and an interface made to connect it to an A1200's trapdoor expansion port... 600MHz accelerator card for Classic Amigas, anyone?
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@nicholas
The beagleboard has an expansion port. I wonder if a 68k emulator could be installed on it and an interface made to connect it to an A1200's trapdoor expansion port... 600MHz accelerator card for Classic Amigas, anyone?
AROS on Rasberry Pi is what interests me tbh.
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AROS on Rasberry Pi is what interests me tbh.
+1
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I disagree about the OS sucking so bad. It's the compilers that suck. If we could get an up-to-date compiler for 68k, we could write software in C, C++, and (by extension) PortablE that didn't suck instead of twiddling around in Assembly for our larger apps. Also, since AROS is written in C we'll need the compilers to work better for that as well.
I agree. AmigaOS looks poor on paper but most of the lacking features are "nice" slow bloat that's not really needed. Compilers (biggest problem is 68k optimizing) are the big limitation to AmigaOS and AROS cumming back to the 68k classic which would unite AROS x86, classic 68k, fpga 68k and probably to a certain extent, UAE. That's the majority of Amiga users.
The reason Exec and the other libraries are stuck in the past is that they were written in 68k Assembly. That just made them harder to bring into the 21st century when 3.5 and 3.9 were written.
I don't think 68k assembler is so bad to work with with an assembler programmer that knows what they are doing ;). An assembler programmer needs to be more organized as there is no structure enforced like in C. A well written assembler program is easier to maintain and enhance than a poorly written C program. The Amiga lacks good compilers and a good source level debugger which would help C programming be easier and faster. I can write a little C code but the Amiga C programming experience is frustrating.
As for the compilers, LLVM will soon be able to use a PBQP register scheduler that can store multiple small variables in one register. This would improve register loading and make it look more like somebody sat down and hand-assembled the whole thing. The GCC compiler could do similar things but doesn't because the 68k backend is so antiquated. Nobody will put the time nor energy into GCC 68k because it's thought to be a dead architecture outside of embedded controller use.
I doubt you will gain much by using small variables in one register on 68040+ and N68k. The need to work on 32 bit values for efficient pipelining and register forwarding limits how much can be done. The fast bitfield instructions in N68k will allow more data per register as well as helping out GCC which likes to use them indiscriminately. You could store multiple Boolean values as a bit each in 1 register or memory address too. There wouldn't be any more overhead (vs GCC 16 bit BOOL) if the N68k bit instructions were enhanced (but not expanded) to be conditional bit instructions like...
bseteq #3,d0 ;set bit 3 of register d0 if CC Z flag is set
It's already easy to test a bit but it's not as easy to set, change or clear a bit based on a condition code. The N68k should be able to do it with predication in the same speed with 1 more word...
bne .skip
bset #3,d0
.skip:
The bne and bset will get combined into a conditional instruction also taking 1 cycle. It's a lot better than the 68060 could do where there would be some missed branches and a branch cache entry.
The 68k beats ARM hands down. It was a properly designed CISC instruction set with RISC core which ARM evolved into with Thumb-2 but with legacy instruction set growing pains worse than 68k. The 68k is easier to read, more logical and consistent and I think the N68k will beat Thumb-2 in code density once the compilers get good enough ;).
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@Thorham
The reason Exec and the other libraries are stuck in the past is that they were written in 68k Assembly. That just made them harder to bring into the 21st century when 3.5 and 3.9 were written.
Or is it just because of the OS design? Just read an old OS book from the '80s. That stuff goes far beyond AOS and much of it isn't particularly hard to implement in 68k.
@Thorham:
Hang on a minute... first you say Amiga is "hardware (680x0 + chipset)", then you complain that the OS is "stuck in the past!" With all due respect, the 680x0 and the classic Amiga chipset are obsolete hardware.
There's plenty of 'modern' things (read through an OS book, and you'll see why) that can be implemented in an efficient way on lower end 680x0 CPUs (but let's skip the 68000).
Even most of the current GUI features are functionally very simple and efficient to implement. The only thing that will be missing is the current eye candy, and some 3D features, and these aren't needed for a much more up to date user experience.
Don't get me wrong, I love the classic Amiga, but if you insist that that is what Amiga is and always will be, the Amiga is a relic of the past, a museum piece used only by die-hard hobbyists. I can sympathise, but this is not a way forwards.
A dead platform is never the way forward. The part of the Amiga scene that wants to move forward needs to forget about the Amiga and use alternative platforms. Obviously this has been happening for years already. It's just that people keep holding these systems back by sticking to Amiga OS compatibility (which I find quite ludicrous).
In fact I love the 680x0, and I'm about to code some asm in it this afternoon, but it's possibly the least Amiga thing about the Amiga.
Yep, but it's a damned nice CPU to code for from a programmer perspective.
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My view on this is that I like the ARM processors. They are power efficient and pretty darn spiffy for the money. I would be happy to see something using one.
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The part of the Amiga scene that wants to move forward needs to forget about the Amiga and use alternative platforms. Obviously this has been happening for years already. It's just that people keep holding these systems back by sticking to Amiga OS compatibility (which I find quite ludicrous).
So then how the hell would it be an Amiga? :/
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Aye, there's the rub, whilst Mac people have Apple to determine what is and isn't Apple, we don't have a similar thing, we're split into camps. Why Apple has a vision and direction, where everything is explained and scripted. We have XMOS because, well, the board's manufacturer stuck it on for a cheap price.
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you ?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ?
You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but know you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ?
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ?
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you'd better take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ?
Wow, does that describe Amiga or what?
So then how the hell would it be an Amiga? :/
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So then how the hell would it be an Amiga? :/
I think what he really meant was rather "backwards compatible"?
OS4 developers have been compromising backwards compatible in favor of new ways of doing things since the beginning of their endeavor, that's *one* view of evolution.
MorphOS developers have had Amiga compatibility as a primary design and development goal, and carefully evolved the OS in order to protect this, that's *another* view of evolution.
Then you can have a *clean slate* evolution (or rather "revolution"?), where the OS would look and feel the same, but with focus on backwards compatibility with old Amiga apps completely removed from the picture (The OS would be/feel kind of the same, but only/mostly new applications will work, the rest have to run under UAE or similar). That way you could quite easily migrate to ARM or x86, introduce things like true memory protection, true SMP, true multi-user, etc. Things that aren't really possible in an Amiga context without breaking... well, the "Amiga" part of it...
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I don't think it's impossible to have both backwards compatibility AND 21st century functionality. Intel-based PCs manage it, after all. You can still install Windows 3.1 on a modern PC, or even DOS. You can still run software from 1981. I'll repeat this: all modern PC graphics chips have legacy support for EGA graphics! And let's face it, the continuous demand for backwards compatibility is the only real reason we're still using x86 chips at all, it's not because there are any inherent advantages to the instruction set.
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@Mrs Beanbag
No, there are things that are completely impossible to implement in Amiga in a clean way without breaking the Amiga compatibility, but would be totally possible if you would say "fcuk the old, only new stuff from here on" and start with a clean slate, and create a new API that will incorporate functions like these but without the ambition of running old Amiga apps (or system components for that matter).
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If you had the resources to implement a 40nm graphics chip today, you would probably find AGA backwards compatibility would be 1% of the logic squeezed into a spare bit on the die. EGA was probably implementable in under 50000 transistors back in the day (I wouldn't be surprised if it was under 10000), and VGA in 100000. Even low-end GPUs are 100,000,000 now.
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I don't think it's impossible to have both backwards compatibility AND 21st century functionality.
With FPGA and UAE around I can't help but agree. The simple fact is of course that if a new Amiga was out tomorrow with very little or no backwards compatibility I would judge it purely on its own merits......
.....don't know what software I would run on it though.
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@Mrs Beanbag
No, there are things that are completely impossible to implement in Amiga in a clean way without breaking the Amiga compatibility, but would be totally possible if you would say "fcuk the old, only new stuff from here on" and start with a clean slate, and create a new API that will incorporate functions like these but without the ambition of running old Amiga apps (or system components for that matter).
Ahh... and that then begs the question:
Just what do we accept as "backwards compatibility"?
In the true sense of the term, you are of course correct. To some however (myself included) "invisible emulation" is a better way forward. This allows for a clean slate and my old games and apps.
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No, there are things that are completely impossible to implement in Amiga in a clean way without breaking the Amiga compatibility
Such as...?
You could run UNIX on a classic Amiga so a multi-user environment isn't impossible. It's not legacy hardware support that's holding us back here. Obviously Microsoft and Apple have changed their APIs a lot over the years, Windows 3.1 software won't run on Windows 7 anymore, heck even XP software needs to run through an emulation layer. If we need a new and radical AmigaOS then that's fine by me, but there's no reason it can't run old Amiga software through an emulation layer (although just running UAE on it is kind of cheating, it has to be integrated somehow so it doesn't "feel like" you're using an emulator). This kind of emulation causes me no ideological problems.
If the hardware at least is backwards compatible then at worst we would be able to dual boot it. As pointed out, an AGA chipset implementation would take up a small fraction of a modern chipset die, even if it included a 680x0 coprocessor.
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Have you actually tried to install Dos on an i7 or six core xeon?
I don't think it's impossible to have both backwards compatibility AND 21st century functionality. Intel-based PCs manage it, after all. You can still install Windows 3.1 on a modern PC, or even DOS. You can still run software from 1981. I'll repeat this: all modern PC graphics chips have legacy support for EGA graphics! And let's face it, the continuous demand for backwards compatibility is the only real reason we're still using x86 chips at all, it's not because there are any inherent advantages to the instruction set.
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Such as...?
Such as true SMP and true MP, like I mentioned...
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Have you actually tried to install Dos on an i7 or six core xeon?
I personally hadn't, but I had a few minutes...
i7:
(http://cbmvax.com/dos.jpg)
Not going to try for audio drivers!
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@persia: no but I've booted it from a USB stick on an Athlon II...
@takemehomegrandma: and what would be the barrier to that if we were running on a multi-core ARM processor? I don't see why this should be the thing to break backwards-compatibility. AmigaOS already multitasks, what difference does it make to an application exactly how it achieves it?
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Mrs Beanbag: It's not a hardware issue, it's a question of software architecture. The Amiga kernel was designed for hardware with no memory protection, so (in a less than perfectly forward-thinking move) they designed it to take advantage of the freedom that allows. Message-passing between processes, for instance, simply involves one process handing over a pointer to the message content to another and saying "have at it," and the other process freely accessing the first's memory. It's blazing fast, but it's also completely insecure.
Thus, there are actual software-architecture barriers to implementing something like memory protection - you'd have to figure out how to work around the existing API, and that's not necessarily easy. "Emulation layers" don't fix everything; it's entirely possible for one process to send another a whole handful of pointers and lots of wild, unprotected accessing of each others' data to take place without the OS knowing anything about it. (Granted, that's horrible coding practice, but when has that ever stopped anybody?) Thus, while I'm not convinced it's impossible, it most certainly wouldn't be easy.
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Such as...?
You could run UNIX on a classic Amiga so a multi-user environment isn't impossible. It's not legacy hardware support that's holding us back here. Obviously Microsoft and Apple have changed their APIs a lot over the years, Windows 3.1 software won't run on Windows 7 anymore, heck even XP software needs to run through an emulation layer. If we need a new and radical AmigaOS then that's fine by me, but there's no reason it can't run old Amiga software through an emulation layer (although just running UAE on it is kind of cheating, it has to be integrated somehow so it doesn't "feel like" you're using an emulator). This kind of emulation causes me no ideological problems.
If the hardware at least is backwards compatible then at worst we would be able to dual boot it. As pointed out, an AGA chipset implementation would take up a small fraction of a modern chipset die, even if it included a 680x0 coprocessor.
Haiku with AROS hosted and 68k emulation would be my preferred system.
ZUNE port to Haiku bounty perhaps?
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Mrs Beanbag: It's not a hardware issue, it's a question of software architecture. The Amiga kernel was designed for hardware with no memory protection, so (in a less than perfectly forward-thinking move) they designed it to take advantage of the freedom that allows. Message-passing between processes, for instance, simply involves one process handing over a pointer to the message content to another and saying "have at it," and the other process freely accessing the first's memory. It's blazing fast, but it's also completely insecure.
Thus, there are actual software-architecture barriers to implementing something like memory protection - you'd have to figure out how to work around the existing API, and that's not necessarily easy. "Emulation layers" don't fix everything; it's entirely possible for one process to send another a whole handful of pointers and lots of wild, unprotected accessing of each others' data to take place without the OS knowing anything about it. (Granted, that's horrible coding practice, but when has that ever stopped anybody?) Thus, while I'm not convinced it's impossible, it most certainly wouldn't be easy.
Back in the day I had high hopes for the MorphOS Q/Box, but sadly it never came to fruition. :(
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I personally hadn't, but I had a few minutes...
i7:
(http://cbmvax.com/dos.jpg)
Not going to try for audio drivers!
FreeDOS might have them.
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So then how the hell would it be an Amiga? :/
It wouldn't. Amigas ended with AGA, the other systems are alternative systems that users insist on holding back with AOS derivatives and dated software.
Amiga is a dead end in terms of hardware (and current old software), and users who want more need to realize that they need to break with Amigas and move on or they will be held back.
People who are truly interested in Amigas and still want more need to realize that it's only really going to happen with new software that's technically and functionally better than the, mostly old, programs that are available now. Chipset+680x0 can do much better, but only if high quality software is written from scratch for it (most of the time).
I think what he really meant was rather "backwards compatible"?
No, I mean that people who are not really interested in classic systems have to ditch Amigas and move on, after all, how good are things like AOS4 and MorphOs really? Or AROS? Why would you want to run AOS (or derivatives) on newer hardware anyway? So you can use old programs that are mostly superseded left and right? Not me, that's for sure (I can do that with my Amiga already and don't need a new machine for this).
Newer machines need to be their own platform instead of sticking to AOS (and Amiga itself needs to move away from this as well).
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Haiku is the best OS for the PC. But there's no software for it. I agree with Nicholas on the hosted AROS port to Haiku. That would allow lots of AROS software to run on Haiku.
As for the 680x0, it's only as much of a dead end as the NatAmi requires it to be. We'll be bringing up-to-date features to the N68050 but it will still be a softcore for quite a while.
@Thorham
While the 68020 is capable of better OS functionality, I doubt that it's going to help. Most of the extended addressing modes are slow on the '020 and '030. The '040 and '060 fixed that at the expense of some hardware compatibility particularly for floating point.
Also, memory protection would slow the real Classic Amigas to a crawl. Believe me, it's not needed. A better solution would be to build software on top of the PNaCl (Portable Native Client) sandbox that is going into the latest Chrome web browsers. It will allow 97% runtime speed compared to standard native compiled code on x86 and still be secure. All this without memory protection.
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@commodorejohn:
I see your point. There are two easy options that come to mind.
1. dual boot! I think we're all agreed at least that compatibility with legacy hardware isn't the problem, but rather maintaining compatibility with legacy software in an up-to-date OS.
2. run all legacy (i.e. 68k) software in a shared virtual address space. Legacy applications will still be able to interfere with each other, while new software can be completely secure. Obviously this is something of a compromise, but how much does it really matter and how much effort is it worth? In fact this should be possible even under Linux with a modified UAE, by which I mean, rewrite the functionality of AmigaOS in C and compile natively instead of emulating it, library calls could easily be trapped and Intuition windows and widgets mapped to X windows. I might look into doing this in fact.
I don't see why SMP should be a problem.
@Thorham: all your objection seems to come from the way you define "Amiga". You've defined it dead. Other people define it differently.
I'd love to see a new Amiga personally because I think of Amiga not as a thing so much as an ideology. Although it's also because I feel quite strongly that "the wrong side won", maybe it's just loyalty, but I can't accept that Amiga is dead and the prospect of a new market in ARM powered desktop/laptop/HTPCs makes me think that it has a real chance to get back on its feet again. If you don't want a new Amiga then, well, just don't buy one, fair enough.
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2. run all legacy (i.e. 68k) software in a shared virtual address space. Legacy applications will still be able to interfere with each other, while new software can be completely secure.
Not too bad of an idea, actually - that's how Classic on Mac OS X does it, it runs a whole OS9 instance as a user process. I don't know what kind of performance impact that might have on a 68k machine, though.
library calls could easily be trapped and Intuition windows and widgets mapped to X windows. I might look into doing this in fact.
That'd be a lot of work - X is a completely different approach to windowing than Intuition, as I understand it. Still, it would be pretty cool.
I don't see why SMP should be a problem.
I don't know for certain, but I'd guess it has to do with the lack of memory protection, as you can't be sure that two simultaneous processes wouldn't be clashing over memory they're intending to take turns with.
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It wouldn't. Amigas ended with AGA, the other systems are alternative systems that users insist on holding back with AOS derivatives and dated software.
Amiga is a dead end in terms of hardware (and current old software), and users who want more need to realize that they need to break with Amigas and move on or they will be held back.
People who are truly interested in Amigas and still want more need to realize that it's only really going to happen with new software that's technically and functionally better than the, mostly old, programs that are available now. Chipset+680x0 can do much better, but only if high quality software is written from scratch for it (most of the time).
No, I mean that people who are not really interested in classic systems have to ditch Amigas and move on, after all, how good are things like AOS4 and MorphOs really? Or AROS? Why would you want to run AOS (or derivatives) on newer hardware anyway? So you can use old programs that are mostly superseded left and right? Not me, that's for sure (I can do that with my Amiga already and don't need a new machine for this).
Newer machines need to be their own platform instead of sticking to AOS (and Amiga itself needs to move away from this as well).
OK, I see what your saying and believe or not I think you make some valid points. If we take a cold hard look at what we have got we find the Amiga name itself is split (CUSA "Amiga", Ainc "Amiga", Hyperion "Amigaone"). The software is mostly old and out of date (not all of it of course, but mostly). The OS is fractured and the derivatives are just that, derivatives. The hardware is old but awesome or new(ish) but generic and not outstanding. So, yes, you have a point.
So what does that leave us with?
FPGA solutions for classic clones are fine as stand-ins for old hardware running classic software we may wish to run, so is UAE however.
Natami will be, to my mind at least, probably the greatest hobby machine ever but is at the end of the day just that, a hobby machine, Gunnar has made this quite blatantly obvious on many occasions. I must say I look forward to Natami, it looks like a great solution for classic Amiga and adds power to a classic piece of computer history that will, I don't doubt, create a vibrant hobby community enjoying new games and apps whilst learning about the real fun that computers should be.
If however your desire is for powerful and efficient modern hardware, designed from the ground up to be a joy to use for end users and programmers alike with strong graphics and multi-media capabilities as well as an OS that is logical in it's implementation in such a way that the end user actually knows what all those damn files are for (rather than the dll shotgun splatter that is a windows C: drive), then, my friend ...
....please let me know when you find it.
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@Thorham
While the 68020 is capable of better OS functionality, I doubt that it's going to help. Most of the extended addressing modes are slow on the '020 and '030. The '040 and '060 fixed that at the expense of some hardware compatibility particularly for floating point.
If Amigas are going to go anywhere, then a new OS+software is needed.
Also, memory protection would slow the real Classic Amigas to a crawl.
Depends on how it's implemented ('030 MMUs can do some neat things), and whether or not it's used for everything (it would be great to turn it on just for programming).
A better solution would be to build software on top of the PNaCl (Portable Native Client) sandbox that is going into the latest Chrome web browsers.
Two problems: 1) This doesn't run on Amigas, 2) What fun is it to write for a browser?
@Thorham: all your objection seems to come from the way you define "Amiga". You've defined it dead. Other people define it differently.
My definition of Amiga is hardware, namely chipset+680x0, and sadly this is dead until someone buys or licenses Amiga hardware and starts building the things, and that's most likely not going to happen :(
I'd love to see a new Amiga personally because I think of Amiga not as a thing so much as an ideology. Although it's also because I feel quite strongly that "the wrong side won", maybe it's just loyalty, but I can't accept that Amiga is dead and the prospect of a new market in ARM powered desktop/laptop/HTPCs makes me think that it has a real chance to get back on its feet again. If you don't want a new Amiga then, well, just don't buy one, fair enough.
My problem is this: Take the C64 and it's OS, now the Amiga comes along, and they put a C64 like OS on it. This is what's happening with the new alternative machines that superseded Amiga hardware. Those alternative machines are stuck in the past if they stick to the Amiga legacy, instead of just running an emulator.
Want an Amiga? Use/get one. Want newer hardware? Then move on, and do better (because there's room for a lot of improvement that won't happen by sticking to AOS).
And yes, I want a new Amiga, but no one will make one :( I'll probably get an alternative machine after Amigas die physically (hopefully that won't be for another 10+ years...).
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Why would you want to run AOS (or derivatives) on newer hardware anyway?
The two major reasons I am developing AROS are from the amiga architecture:
- The Amiga shared libraries that does not need load time linking (reason also why I don't like OS4' .so objects)
- Message passing by pointer passing. Contrary to what most people think this should not make memory protection impossible. See SASOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_address_space_operating_system).
I don't mind if I am using such an OS not running on m68k.
greets,
Staf.
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@commodorejohn:
In fact this should be possible even under Linux with a modified UAE, by which I mean, rewrite the functionality of AmigaOS in C and compile natively instead of emulating it, library calls could easily be trapped and Intuition windows and widgets mapped to X windows. I might look into doing this in fact.
This was one way of how early AROS versions worked, so you can probably save a lot of work by looking at AROS. Only don't think it will be easy
I don't see why SMP should be a problem.
- global SysBase and access to it's members like SysBase->ThisTask
- Forbid()/Enable() & Disable()/Enable(). Did you ever hear about the BKL (big kernel lock) of linux ? Amiga's counterparts are much worse for scalability as they are used throughout the whole user land code. E.g. SMP won't be a problem as such but will likely run slower than the on a single core.
greets,
Staf.
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Just throwing an idea into the wind here, but with NVidia's Project Denver desktop ARM based CPU threatening to mop the floor with Intel (yeah believe it when you see it), perhaps an ARM implementation of AmigaOS would be a prudent move. I've waited for so long for x86 to bite the dust, it's kind of amazing how they've managed to keep the 680x0's arch enemy propped up for so long. Plus a surprise victory from the good old Acorn Archimedes, or to my mind the "British Amiga"!
Any thoughts?
I think ARM would be well suited for mobile Amiga. Who knows, perhaps 2013 might be the year of the Commodore Amiga, or not. It seems so long ago I was bending BBRV's ear about using ARM instead of PPC prior to them actually going with ARM in their EFIKA-MX series.
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And yes, I want a new Amiga, but no one will make one :( I'll probably get an alternative machine after Amigas die physically (hopefully that won't be for another 10+ years...).
Ahh... ahhhhh... I think maybe you and I aren't quite so different afterall. The difference is that I never did live in the real world; it's what gives me my edge.
When I have an idea, my thinking tends to progress something like this:
1. WHAT it should be, and WHY
2. HOW it could be done
3. IF it will ever happen... I've never yet got this far. But the aim is not to back the winning horse. If the idea is good and possible, "it won't happen" is no reason to refuse to support it, because that is self-defeating. If nobody else will do it, maybe I should do it.
WHAT in this case is an ARM powered HTPC/console with OS, because I think there is a market for it, and because I think it fits well with the Amiga's original ethos. (The CDTV and CD32 were blatantly aiming in the HTPC direction, ahead of their time maybe.)
Now we can ask HOW it could actually be an Amiga as well. Or in the first instance at least, how it could be an "Amiga alternative" or "Advanced Amiga Substitute" if you will; I don't think we're at the stage of worrying about licensing the name just yet.
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Ahh... ahhhhh... I think maybe you and I aren't quite so different afterall. The difference is that I never did live in the real world; it's what gives me my edge.
When I have an idea, my thinking tends to progress something like this:
1. WHAT it should be, and WHY
2. HOW it could be done
3. IF it will ever happen... I've never yet got this far. But the aim is not to back the winning horse. If the idea is good and possible, "it won't happen" is no reason to refuse to support it, because that is self-defeating. If nobody else will do it, maybe I should do it.
WHAT in this case is an ARM powered HTPC/console with OS, because I think there is a market for it, and because I think it fits well with the Amiga's original ethos. (The CDTV and CD32 were blatantly aiming in the HTPC direction, ahead of their time maybe.)
Now we can ask HOW it could actually be an Amiga as well. Or in the first instance at least, how it could be an "Amiga alternative" or "Advanced Amiga Substitute" if you will; I don't think we're at the stage of worrying about licensing the name just yet.
No need to worry about the name, I own both trademarks and I offer very favourable licensing terms for them. :)
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Two problems: 1) This doesn't run on Amigas, 2) What fun is it to write for a browser?
1) It will run on AROS. 2) It can be hotwired. :)
My definition of Amiga is hardware, namely chipset+680x0, and sadly this is dead until someone buys or licenses Amiga hardware and starts building the things, and that's most likely not going to happen :(
Perhaps you've never heard of the NatAmi nor the MiniMig? There are some flaws/shortcomings in the Amiga chipset that need to be addressed and so a total backward-compatible rewrite of the chipset design would actually be preferred. Case in point: The DMA scheduler doesn't take advantage of sequential memory bursts so it's going to need to be changed in future hardware. Fortunately, the NatAmi is being redesigned to use DDR2 memory instead of fast-page and does exactly that.
And yes, I want a new Amiga, but no one will make one :( I'll probably get an alternative machine after Amigas die physically (hopefully that won't be for another 10+ years...).
http://www.natami.net (http://www.natami.net)
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WHAT in this case is an ARM powered HTPC/console with OS
I honestly don't care for the ARM aspect of this debate, but pholosphically speaking, I agree with you.
The AMIGA 500 was cool because it was, basically, a console, but with the following perks: a keyboard, an OS, cool software for graphics and music, developing toolas and, for the daring ones, an hardware manual.
I think that this was what set the AMIGA apart, made it such a special machine and formed the condiiton for the rising of the "amiga scene", or whatever we want to call it.
I also think that, when Commodore was dying, it would have been very interesting if the Sony (or Sega or whatever) had launched its console with a keyboard, OS, RAM expansion, hardware manual, etc... most of us would have jumped on this hypotetical product in a second!...
(Eventually, Sony launched the "Yaroze" kit, but it was a costly joke, in my opinion...)
As for the birth of a new Amiga, I think Natami is the only hope.
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I think there was always space for a console like computer, or a computer like console, and I think there still is.
Consoles have slowly taken on more computer like functions, and the pc's have now become small enough, and with windows8, have an OS that is quite console like.
I think that middle ground would always have existed, and commodore could have kept living there, I mean, consoles still can't run proper apps, and PC still don't have co-op ;)
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Amigas ended with AGA, the other systems are alternative systems that users insist on holding back with AOS derivatives and dated software.
I'm amused by this statement, if your "amiga" is only the old hardware then you've had the option to run netbsd, linux, minix, or whatever experimental open source with whatever features you've wanted to port to it for all these years, or to just ignore it completely like the game or demo developers who just followed the Amiga hardware reference manual to make a bootable floppy and ignored the whole multi-tasking Amiga operating system user experience for their area of interest. One wonders what "m a g i c" you think could/should be developed now for m68k aga or ecs machines?
Its the user experience, that other non-amiga-like OSes (even with their faster than m68k-CPUs, memory protection, multi-core, hardware accelerated 3D, office and adobe software support) commercial or open sourced, which has driven people to pursue the "AOS derivatives" for an alternative that seems more Amiga-like to them. Its the lack of funding for full time development staffs, that has held back development of these alternatives, not the demanding an Amiga experience like one is familiar with.
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I think there was always space for a console like computer, or a computer like console, and I think there still is.
Consoles have slowly taken on more computer like functions, and the pc's have now become small enough, and with windows8, have an OS that is quite console like.
I half-agree. I definitely think there is room for a console-like computer; PCs have always had trouble because the PC standard completely neglects A/V hardware and everybody mostly follows industry standards and consensus but varies just enough to cause problems, and consoles have been edging towards being computers since the Dreamcast but none of the manufacturers have ever had the nerve to actually make the jump because they're worried about the loss of licensing fees. A truly integrated hardware platform with consistent multimedia capabilities but lax software restrictions would be the best of both worlds, like the Amiga or the MSX, and I could see that being a good solution for a lot of people.
However! I hope to God that "console-like OS" is not a design goal here. Console software is a glorified control panel at best. The Amiga didn't settle for anything like that, it had a real, full-fledged desktop operating system but booted game disks transparently, so that gamers didn't have to bother and anybody who got tired of gaming and wanted to use their computer for productivity purposes wouldn't find themselves hampered by a simpleton OS designed more to not scare console gamers away than to provide a quality user experience. Any platform that attempts to follow in its footsteps should settle for no less than that.
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well, I don't want it for us of course ;) but it's definitely the way OS vendors seem to want to head. All this talk of 'the post PC age'...i've been living that dream since 1988 ;P
They are trying to turn windows and my Xbox into a glorified phone OS :(
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A truly integrated hardware platform with consistent multimedia capabilities but lax software restrictions would be the best of both worlds, like the Amiga or the MSX, and I could see that being a good solution for a lot of people.
However! I hope to God that "console-like OS" is not a design goal here. Console software is a glorified control panel at best. The Amiga didn't settle for anything like that, it had a real, full-fledged desktop operating system but booted game disks transparently
I'm thinking more of a sort of "two-tier" OS, a small OS instead of the PC's BIOS that's enough to boot a game straight from disk instead of having to install everything (i.e. Kickstart) and perform basic multimedia functions like playing DVDs and audio CDs. The real OS (i.e. Workbench) would boot from HDD of course. Or a live CD.
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@Mrs. Beanbag
Would a conventional Kickstart with ROM switcher built-in do the trick for you? The NatAmi has that already.
DVD playing is a problem due to region-locks on the copy-protection. Also there are licensing issues on the copy-protection as well.
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With SSDs becoming relatively cheap, what's the point? Booting a full OS from SSD is pretty darn quick, my office MacBook Air boots in 15 seconds to a full Lion experience.
I'm thinking more of a sort of "two-tier" OS, a small OS instead of the PC's BIOS that's enough to boot a game straight from disk instead of having to install everything (i.e. Kickstart) and perform basic multimedia functions like playing DVDs and audio CDs. The real OS (i.e. Workbench) would boot from HDD of course. Or a live CD.
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I'm thinking more of a sort of "two-tier" OS, a small OS instead of the PC's BIOS that's enough to boot a game straight from disk instead of having to install everything (i.e. Kickstart) and perform basic multimedia functions like playing DVDs and audio CDs. The real OS (i.e. Workbench) would boot from HDD of course. Or a live CD.
There is absolutely no reason to have a standard OS install boot from a live CD in the era of dirt-cheap mass storage, let me say that. It'd cost all of $10-30 to include some kind of built-in boot volume (less in quantity,) whether that be a 128MB flash device or a small hard drive. (It'd be useful to have it on a separate volume than the user's hard drive, anyway, as you could set it to write-protect by default and keep the non-technical users from screwing things up.)
However, I think a built-in control-panel applet would certainly be useful for the DVD/game side of things; perhaps there could be a setting in the configuration NVRAM to select whether it boots into dashboard mode or computer mode by default, and easy access to either from the other. Mainly I'd just want to make sure that the OS proper isn't "hidden" for fear of scaring off users with anything that looks like it belongs on a computer.
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Maybe the topic should be: ARM based AMIGA-Like computer.
The way hardware has developed since 1994 it's clear that nowadays you can buy a lot of cpu/gpu power at a low price point, especially when this hardware is also used in many (embedded) systems. It's clear that ARM based processors and SOC (system on a chips) are very affordable (i don't know about MIPS for example, they might have a good offering too). Take for example the Sony VITA, you could base an AMIGA-like computer on such an architecture and have a very powerful machine.
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I'm glad I've gotten over this trademark issue.
Personally, I'd love to see an ARM port of MorphOS.
And yes, that would only be 'Amiga-like'.
But then, that's kind of the point.
Why would I want to lock myself into total compatibility with obsolete hardware/software?
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What I don't get is why people want faster hardware (read: hardware that performs worse than peecees from five years ago) and hold the systems back with obsolete operating systems (yes, AOS and derivatives are obsolete, and I don't much enjoy working with AOS3, especially not seeing how 68K can do MUCH better). It makes no sense, especially if people then call interest in 68k+chipset being stuck in the past.
It seems to me that those people don't really like Amiga, and what they should do is forget about Amigas and buy a ridiculously fast peecee and be done with it.
Why would I want to lock myself into total compatibility with obsolete hardware/software?
Amigas are computers from the 80's and 90's, so they are by definition obsolete.
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I guess it depend what you see as "being Amiga", either you see it as being purely the m68k machine and custom chips or it is the look and feel of a machine pushing the boundaries (as it was at the time). its going to take a heck of a groundbreaking device to appear to make a mark like the amiga did... and good software to back it up.
ARM-based Amiga, fine... if it can capture the "wow" that made me buy my first Amiga 20 years ago. I love the fact that I can browse the web on my "classic" which was around before the web as we know it but I think I'd rather see hardware that will attract developers and new users than something that satisfies a vigorous checklist about what an Amiga "should be".
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I guess it depend what you see as "being Amiga", either you see it as being purely the m68k machine and custom chips or it is the look and feel of a machine pushing the boundaries (as it was at the time).
The look and feel of something that pushes the boundaries, but doesn't, and is years behind, is a very poor substitute for Amigas :(
if it can capture the "wow" that made me buy my first Amiga 20 years ago.
And everyone knows that that is not going to happen.
I love the fact that I can browse the web on my "classic" which was around before the web as we know it but I think I'd rather see hardware that will attract developers and new users than something that satisfies a vigorous checklist about what an Amiga "should be".
Amigas are what they are (whatever anyone says), and I'd rather see new Amigas (keep dreaming), then some underpowered thing that's supposed to be next gen. If I want next gen, I'll just buy a peecee.
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I think a http://pandaboard.org/ would make a perfectly capable desktop machine for most everyday tasks.
Posted that one months ago on MorphZone.
The successor to the TI processor on that is due out soon.
We should plan ahead.
PPCs > Freescale T5020 or T5040.
ARM > Virtually anything 2GHz and above.
BTW - Custom chips are so yesterday.
Programmable logic and well written OS/driver code is what drives modern computers.
Even the Natami is not based on custom chips (but rather on this more modern idea).
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Staying with the AMIGA-like computing experience and the idea that this could be an ARM based one I would like to make things a little more concrete.
The Pandaboard is a step in the direction I was thinking about ARM-wise, and so are consoles custom chip-wise. Merging these together in a small keyboard form factor with specs like these:
CPU: 2x ARM Cortex-A15 Quad-core
GPU: Power VR SGX543MP8 / 8-core ARM Mali T658
Direct hardware access is a must, as is hardware uniformity, so code can always be optimized. The hardest part would be the OS, it would have to be of BeOS quality in its ability to effectively use the hardware, keeping it clean and simple.
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BTW - Custom chips are so yesterday.
Programmable logic and well written OS/driver code is what drives modern computers.
Then get a new computer and forget about Amiga (the hardware is old and the software is too).
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Then get a new computer and forget about Amiga (the hardware is old and the software is too).
I'd be mildly tempted by a flashable 68k/PPC/AGA emulator that can be used to boot amigaos & which also makes the usb & pci cards appear like their amiga counterparts.
Basically amithlon on steroids with a pinch of uae.