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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: ElPolloDiabl on April 24, 2013, 08:32:39 AM
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Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
If so did you have no problem buying an ARM device?
If you take into account the latest IBM PowerPC it is only marginally better than an x86 Xeon.
It is also getting a little confusing nowadays with all the SIMD and the reprogrammable graphics units.
The CPU could be very different in 5 years from what it is now.
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I think that the Central Processing Unit will still be that, unless some one comes up with a computer, where every chip can do the same thing.
Imagine a computer, where all the chips can do the same things equally good, the OS has to take care of what does what, and when one chip becomes overburdened, the OS simply takes the needed resources, from what ever chips has free resources.
There would be no dedicated cpu, gpu, IO controller, memory controller and so on.
The Xeon, isn't that a server CPU?
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I don't hate it because PowerPC was better, I'm disinterested in it because it is and has always been an uninteresting and vaguely icky design. Less so now than in the 8086 days, but still, bleah.
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Even if it has a "icky" design, who cares. I am developing software on Windows in normal life and never be confronted with assembler. Even on amiga (as long as you develop software using system routines and not directly hacking hardware) you are not confronted with the "icky" design. And users are not confronted anyway. And system programmer mostly use C (and assembler only on rare cases). So finally it is not important if "PowerPC" "could" be better because it is not. It is slower, it is more expensive and so on.
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Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
No, just on principal of x86 being horrible. It should have died in a ball of fire. Much like M$ in fact...
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the world has moved on. Most "real world" today uses X86/X64 or ARM (tablets...). PowerPC is simply dead. When are you really confronted with the "icky" or "horrible" design when you use a computer or program on it?
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Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
If so did you have no problem buying an ARM device?
Coming from 6502 I didn't have a major problem with x86, especially as it paid he bills.
I never got into PowerPC & if Apple hadn't chosen and promoted it, then nobody else would have done either. Also if commodore had survived then they wouldn't have chosen it & we'd have all loved hombre.
I wouldn't buy an ARM based computer, but in an embedded device they are fine (same as MIPS).
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Hate might be a bit strong for me, not happy would be more accurate:).
I'm somewhat numb to it, like windows. Have to use it every day, typing this message in windows 7 right now...
Where is my PB G4 when I need it (running MOS) when I need it...
Like many would have liked to see Amiga be the standard that everyone used today. Sigh...
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Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
I don't like x86 because it's a turd that was made to fly while the 68k was discarded like a piece of trash without even trying to upgrade it properly. PPC is better than x86 but then what isn't?
If so did you have no problem buying an ARM device?
ARM is ok but there is way too many variations to categorize it in one group. The original RISC ARM is innovative and interesting. The 68k should have been enhanced and brought back instead of Thumb 2, not that it's bad either. The 68k is still better.
If you take into account the latest IBM PowerPC it is only marginally better than an x86 Xeon.
Power or PowerPC? The U.S. Government subsidizes IBM's Power research for defense purposes. They must have wanted alternative servers to the easy to take down x86 M$ targets with endless exploits that every hacker knows.
Even if it has a "icky" design, who cares. I am developing software on Windows in normal life and never be confronted with assembler. Even on amiga (as long as you develop software using system routines and not directly hacking hardware) you are not confronted with the "icky" design. And users are not confronted anyway. And system programmer mostly use C (and assembler only on rare cases). So finally it is not important if "PowerPC" "could" be better because it is not. It is slower, it is more expensive and so on.
What's "icky" about the 68k and the Amiga? The x86 processors are fast and compilers and develop tools are good enough on the x86 that low level (icky?) knowledge isn't as necessary there. Then again, look at the bloat and slow down from the multitude of abstraction layers and lack of programmer knowledge of what it actually going on inside. If you have a problem, you call tech support instead of even considering assembler and system level debugging. On the Amiga, you just step right on into the Amiga OS function and see why it's causing a problem. In a perfect Amiga world, more processing power, better compilers and developer tools and better tech support would be nice though.
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You name Win 7 but it is not about OS but Hardware. I do not care about hardware anymore and in most cases you are never confronted with it (except low-level/driver development). I would like to have something "amigish" as standard too because it has nice concepts.
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I don't like x86 because it's a turd that was made to fly while the 68k was discarded like a piece of trash without even trying to upgrade it properly. PPC is better than x86 but then what isn't?
ARM is ok but there is way too many variations to categorize it in one group. The original RISC ARM is innovative and interesting. The 68k should have been enhanced and brought back instead of Thumb 2, not that it's bad either. The 68k is still better.
Power or PowerPC? The U.S. Government subsidizes IBM's Power research for defense purposes. They must have wanted alternative servers to the easy to take down x86 M$ targets with endless exploits that every hacker knows.
What's "icky" about the 68k and the Amiga? The x86 processors are fast and compilers and develop tools are good enough on the x86 that low level (icky?) knowledge isn't as necessary there. Then again, look at the bloat and slow down from the multitude of abstraction layers and lack of programmer knowledge of what it actually going on inside. If you have a problem, you call tech support instead of even considering assembler and system level debugging. On the Amiga, you just step right on into the Amiga OS function and see why it's causing a problem. In a perfect Amiga world, more processing power, better compilers and developer tools and better tech support would be nice though.
I only used this phrases from others. I personally do not care about it. If the hardware runs circles around PowerPC who cares about the concepts behind?
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I think all these "Intel outside" rhetoric is past. "Amiga" (68k, AROS, MorphOS, AmigaOS) should run on the fastest available and affordable hardware and that is X86/X64 right now. One of the reasons why Amiga in the 90s declined was that it lost the hardware race with A500 and two disk drives as standard for gaming even at the beginning of 90s whereas PCs already had HD and VGA. So when we want some kind of rebirth we need it on competitive hardware.
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Most people don't give 2 craps about what chip powers their machines these days as long as it gets the job done. I don't need to know what chip is in my tablet or phone to know that it can still do far more real world tasks these days than any of my "NG" systems can.
I love the 68k series chips for what they are, but the plain facts are the competitors left them behind nearly 20 years ago. The x86 chips were simply progressing technologically far quicker and were the dominant chips, love it or hate it.
Blind hatred of a chip or OS always staggered me - it did in the 90's and still does now.
Example - I've got a friend, complete Amiga purist. He even despises my SAM and MOS boxes, only like the old C= stuff. He dropped by after I finished building my main Miggy box and he was just stunned how nice it was to use, praising it for being the fastest Amiga he'd ever used. I bs'ed him, told him what it supposedly had under the hood, etc. Other than the mouse and keyboard, he couldn't see the physical box.
He was quite stunned to find out, when I pulled the tower out from under the desk, that it was an AMD powered Amithlon rig that comprised of not much more than about $50 worth of late 90's commodity hardware.
He spent the next hour screeching about the evils of "Big Brother x86", but didn't take his hand off the mouse for a moment he was enjoying it so much :)
If it feels good, do it - don't sweat the small stuff with petty rivalries that were dumb 20 years ago, they are still dumb now.
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I love the old 68k stuff too :-). You can run it by using UAE on pretty much every hardware now (including Android) and it is really fast and you have plenty of resouces and options (including running it on Windows, Mac and Linux). So why not combining "old" technology with modern hardware :-).
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Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
You might want to rethink your opinions there. The PowerPC had/has its share of problems that were never going to be addressed. The most important for portable, consumer products is PPW. The same issue Apple saw in the product roadmap and one of the reasons they jumped ship.
Jobs talked about Performance Per Watt and whether you like Apple or not, he was correct. If you look at the Apple presentation when they announced the Intel move you can see the stats he talks about. Those are correct BTW.
Rumors were that Jobs begged IBM to reduce PPW so that a G5 could be in a notebook but IBM either wouldn't or couldn't and it forced Apple to move to Intel. The smartest move they could have done IMO.
Even if you don't care about a PPC notebook, just look at it consumption in a desktop package. It is a hot and power hungry chip.
ARM is a great portable chip but it is anemic on computational power. Floating Point is it Achilles heel.
I'm not an Intel Fanboi, I just try keep up with this stuff. Intel -to me- has to be a tablet CPU with desktop performance. I'm saying, that people want the power of their notebook or desktop CPU in a backward compatible, power sipping, battery loving CPU that can run their tablet for 15 hours a day.
That is no small task. Personally, I think Intel has done a great job. They are not perfect but when you look at what they have done, I think it is very respectable.
-P
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In the 80s and 90s, it was a valid thing to hate x86, it was nasty back then.
But 68k withered away, and x86 became a complex nasty instruction set running on a nice RISC CPU core hiding behind a rather complex decoder.
Later on, x86 lost a lot of the instruction set nastiness and gained registers and 64-bit capability, and a decent (non-stack based) FPU implementation, and decent vector implementation. And performance++. And since then, performance per watt has been improving massively. The nasty decoder logic is an increasingly small portion of the CPU. Shame about the ISA, prefix bytes, etc, but fewer and fewer people really care about that.
For the PowerPC purists, 64-bit ARMv8 looks like it will take on a lot of the things that are nice about 64-bit PowerPC. Hopefully ARM will take on a bigger role in mainstream PCs in the next few years.
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Being an Apple ][ Fanboy. I used to have indifference to 68k family we should have been using 65c832's instead of those nasty closed unexpandable mackintoshes. But right now even though I work for Intel. At home the Non x86 machines outnumber my x86 machines (even including my retro x86 machines). But the thing I don't get is why people say the x86 architecture is "icky". The reason why 6502 was replaced by 68k was 68k could run faster and ppc replaced 68k for the same reason. It is also why Apple dropped ppc. and now Arm might do the same to x86. (I hope for my jobs sake it doesn't)
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Are you all kidding me? x86, ARM, and motorola/PPC ALL were crap!
It should have been MIPS and SPARC that won!!!!11111111oneoneone
:D
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I can't say I ever hated x86 "on principal." What I hated was the rise of monopolies, of which Intel was a part. As Intel (and M$) ascended, other options, like the Amiga got squeezed out. In Amiga's case, it didn't help any that Commodore had no real clue what it was they possessed, trying to sell cutting edge hardware as a commodity item. No. I'm in the "if it gets the job done" category and would have been happy with an Amiga powered by x86 as long as I could still choose.
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I can't say I ever hated x86 "on principal." What I hated was the rise of monopolies, of which Intel was a part. As Intel (and M$) ascended, other options, like the Amiga got squeezed out. In Amiga's case, it didn't help any that Commodore had no real clue what it was they possessed, trying to sell cutting edge hardware as a commodity item. No. I'm in the "if it gets the job done" category and would have been happy with an Amiga powered by x86 as long as I could still choose.
100% agreed. I couldn't put it better myself.
They chose 68k for the price to performance factor. Had Arm or x86 been the best bang for the buck, we'd have been using those all this time.
The CPU doesn't matter if it's not abandoned like 68k or dare I say PPC. It's just another off the shelf component.
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+1
Back in that time hardware was very important and defined what you could do with your computer. Today all components are cheap and off the shelf so OS and software make the difference. What hardware is underneath is not important anymore.
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Even if it has a "icky" design, who cares. I am developing software on Windows in normal life and never be confronted with assembler. Even on amiga (as long as you develop software using system routines and not directly hacking hardware) you are not confronted with the "icky" design. And users are not confronted anyway. And system programmer mostly use C (and assembler only on rare cases). So finally it is not important if "PowerPC" "could" be better because it is not.
If you don't find yourself using assembler and don't know or care what goes on under the hood, that's perfectly fine for you, but it doesn't invalidate the opinions of people who do know and care about this stuff. (It does make you less credible on the subject, though.)
When are you really confronted with the "icky" or "horrible" design when you use a computer or program on it?
Any time I do assembler, that's when.
I think all these "Intel outside" rhetoric is past. "Amiga" (68k, AROS, MorphOS, AmigaOS) should run on the fastest available and affordable hardware and that is X86/X64 right now. [...] So when we want some kind of rebirth we need it on competitive hardware.
Oy, again with the "BECOMING THE COMPETITION IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE WAY TO TAKE BACK THE MARKET WE NEVER DOMINATED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!" garbage...that attitude is the exact thing holding the community back.
Back in that time hardware was very important and defined what you could do with your computer. Today all components are cheap and off the shelf so OS and software make the difference. What hardware is underneath is not important anymore.
Not to you, maybe.
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I never got into PowerPC & if Apple hadn't chosen and promoted it, then nobody else would have done either.
Debate the merits and demerits of PPC all you like, but that's really not true. For a while there, PPC was going to be the Next Big Thing. IBM was counting on it to help them make a comeback in the PC market that they'd lost to the clone manufacturers, and Microsoft was on-board as well with Windows NT. It never caught on, but that's not because they weren't trying.
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I don't like x86 because it's a turd that was made to fly while the 68k was discarded like a piece of trash without even trying to upgrade it properly.
This.
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Why becoming emotional? I only said my view (that is propably shared by many others, obviously not by you). You program in assembler? Fine. When you program in 68k assembler then you can use UAE or you do it on real hardware or FPGA based system (two I can think of). The last two options are for geeks and certainly not for a broader userbase. And UAE runs (almost everywhere). And where is my view the community holding back the community? I do not understand what you mean?
When you program in assembler on other platforms and directly hit hardware than you are rather exotic today.
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Are you all kidding me? x86, ARM, and motorola/PPC ALL were crap!
It should have been MIPS and SPARC that won!!!!11111111oneoneone
:D
A True Amigan (TM)(C)(R):dancingbanana: would only worship at the alter of PA-RISC!!!111oneone!eleventyone! ;)
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But the thing I don't get is why people say the x86 architecture is "icky".
Because it's a CPU from 1978 (complete with a tiny register file, lack of orthogonality between the registers, and horribly awkward addressing scheme) that's been progressively kludged up into a modern processor, and even on the new models you can still see the surgery scars. 68k was a pleasant 32-bit architecture right from the get-go.
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It is also why Apple dropped ppc. and now Arm might do the same to x86. (I hope for my jobs sake it doesn't)
Both PPC and ARM have outsold x86 CPU's for many years (as does MIPS, and possibly even 6502 derivatives if the numbers on WDC's website are to be believed). ARM's are expected to ship in more than 3 billion units this year....
x86 gets all the attention because Intel's and AMD's CPU's are big hulking high cost beasts...
It will keep getting attacked on all fronts, not least because ARM's are rapidly getting to the "fast enough" level where most ordinary consumers don't care about performance any more. And then competing with ~40 GBP ARM computers slightly larger than a credit card becomes an unpleasant proposition (my "media centre" is one of those powered via micro-usb, and streaming files from my file server.
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And where is my view the community holding back the community? I do not understand what you mean?
The view that x86 is The Only Way Forward for the Amiga is holding the community back because many people are so shackled to this notion that a "new Amiga" has to compete with, outperform, and eventually (obviously) overthrow the PC clones that they aren't interested in anything else the Amiga hardware world has to offer.
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Personally I like the Alpha architecture a lot. Shame it never took off really.
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The view that x86 is The Only Way Forward for the Amiga is holding the community back because many people are so shackled to this notion that a "new Amiga" has to compete with, outperform, and eventually (obviously) overthrow the PC clones that they aren't interested in anything else the Amiga hardware world has to offer.
Is it not the case that this attitude is due to x86 being commodity* hardware rather than it's performance merits?
*More users == more developers == more users == cheaper and more plenty hardware.
The lower the barrier to entry the better for all regardless of CPU architecture.
In theory at least....
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I never said that X86/X64 is the only way forward. I do not care about processor type, be it INTEL/AMD, MIPS, ARM or a future SUPER-DUPER processor. But I would never program any of these processors direct in assembler (or it would be run in UAE and then the environment is not important). So "Amiga" should run on the best available hardware and not make bets again who will win (Amiga-Companies are obviously losing all bets :-) )
BTW the thread is "Anybody still hate X86 in principal?" and I answered Me not.
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Because it's a CPU from 1978 (complete with a tiny register file, lack of orthogonality between the registers, and horribly awkward addressing scheme) that's been progressively kludged up into a modern processor, and even on the new models you can still see the surgery scars. 68k was a pleasant 32-bit architecture right from the get-go.
The 68000 was a CPU from 1979 but by 1996 the 68060 was effectively dead as a desktop CPU.
Just because it didn't live long enough to have kludges doesn't make it worth using for more than retro computing today.
I'll agree that the design of 68k was better, but that doesn't help me in any way today, where it actually matters.
This thread is nothing more than nostalgia vs. logic and it's degrading fast.
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This thread is nothing more than nostalgia vs. logic and it's degrading fast.
Isn't that "The Amiga Way"? ;)
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Isn't that "The Amiga Way"? ;)
:-)
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Isn't that "The Amiga Way"? ;)
lol, what was I thinking?
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It will keep getting attacked on all fronts, not least because ARM's are rapidly getting to the "fast enough" level where most ordinary consumers don't care about performance any more. And then competing with ~40 GBP ARM computers slightly larger than a credit card becomes an unpleasant proposition (my "media centre" is one of those powered via micro-usb, and streaming files from my file server.
AMD can see the writing on the wall, they're designing ARM based 64-bit APUs for the future. Intel's stuck on the x86 train though.
Personally I don't care about AmigaOS on x86, maybe a few years ago I would have been.
Instead port it to run on a Beagleboard ($45) or similar ARM SoC board first, this has a single-core ARM Cortex A8 so Hyperion don't need to worry about that issue with AmigaOS. Binary incompatibility means that they can just push through memory protection and all those other things that AmigaOS is just a bit crap and un-modern at.
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I never said that X86/X64 is the only way forward. I do not care about processor type, be it INTEL/AMD, MIPS, ARM or a future SUPER-DUPER processor.
Sadly, it seems to me that, rather than having a boat with no sail, some people would have a sail with no boat. "Hoist them sails, people! What do you mean we're sinking? You're just not hoisting them high enough!"
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Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
I do not think PPC is anyway better and I do not hate x86. x86 is doing it's job and ten times more...in fact I love my PC (x86) a lot. The real question, what are you going to do about it?
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Nope, don't hate x86, I just like the 68000 family because it's fun to program on.
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[youtube]qpMvS1Q1sos[/youtube]
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x86 isnt going away in the nearest future, but the top is a cold and lonely place, and others are compeeting for the top.
But going for x86 now, would IMHO be a wrong move, especially since ARM is now moving forward, plus PPC is far from gone.
If there were to be a move to an other architecture, such a decision has to be based on extensive research and good foresight.
So personally I think, that sticking to PPC for NG would be a good move, and as for classic, then FPGA would be the right choice.
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PPC is far from gone.
bit of topic but it struck me as funny... earlier tonight I was gutting a working G4 based PowerMac... removing it's motherboard/cpu and all other insides to be dumped... as I plan to use the case as a rather nice side-table
So... my PPC is gone soon :p
peace !
Tom UK
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Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
If so did you have no problem buying an ARM device?
If you take into account the latest IBM PowerPC it is only marginally better than an x86 Xeon.
It is also getting a little confusing nowadays with all the SIMD and the reprogrammable graphics units.
The CPU could be very different in 5 years from what it is now.
It's just a CPU to me. I don't care very much about how they work unless I have to do low level programming on them. The fact remains that however inefficient and complicated the x86 design is, a cheap x86 based PC is still much faster than any Power architecture PC available.
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x86 isnt going away in the nearest future, but the top is a cold and lonely place, and others are compeeting for the top.
But going for x86 now, would IMHO be a wrong move, especially since ARM is now moving forward, plus PPC is far from gone.
If there were to be a move to an other architecture, such a decision has to be based on extensive research and good foresight.
So personally I think, that sticking to PPC for NG would be a good move, and as for classic, then FPGA would be the right choice.
I don't get this ARM thing. What is it? Is it a new hole CPU like PPC is for 68k and x86? Are you saying ARM is going to take over x86 and ARM is not backward compatible to x86?
I am a little confused here in this whole thing.
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I don't get this ARM thing. What is it? Is it a new hole CPU like PPC is for 68k and x86? Are you saying ARM is going to take over x86 and ARM is not backward compatible to x86?
I am a little confused here in this whole thing.
...uh, no. No, ARM is not backwards-compatible with x86, because it's not even part of the same line or based on a remotely similar architecture.
Wikipedia can enlighten you, grasshopper. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture)
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I've done a lot of programming on X86 since the early 90s, and have programmed lots of other architectures at low levels since then.
Yeah, when I think back to what X86 was back then ... frightening ... 16-bit programs with segments ... DOS extenders ... X87 stack based FPU programming... limited registers that seem to have different restrictions for each instruction ... indeed ... really it's pure hell when you think about it. 25 years ago I'd bow down and worship 68k and curse X86.
I used to look at 68k way back then with great envy. Dabbled enough to know it was very nice.
Worked on MIPS, PowerPC and lots of custom CPUs since then. Some were very nice with 32 registers that can be used in any way. It made ASM programming a breeze and actually understandable since you didn't have to constantly re-purpose what each of the 4 pathetic X86 registers you have available to you was for as your algorithm went into ASM.
Oddly I didn't have a huge pile of love for the PowerPPC ISA, I found even basic things like calling a function were a tad awkward.
However, when you get into modern computing, I think you would have to be nuts to write anything more than 0.01% of your code in ASM for scalar (non-SIMD) code. Visual Studio C++ for example is an incredible compiler these days, good luck beating it in a meaningful way. Compilers for other platforms are generally not as good, but going away from C++ for scalar stuff is still a bit crazy.
So the only code that typically needs non-standard programming is vector (SIMD) programming, or taking advantage of some other things a compiler can't figure out (branch hints, cache control, etc.). And even here, sane people don't use ASM programming anymore, they use intrinsics to achieve basically the same thing but let the compiler handle all the ugly register allocation.
I'd also say that most CPU's SIMD instruction sets are pretty darn similar to each other these days. These are instruction set extensions that have been added in later years, and I think designers had things figured out enough that they all look pretty similar to each other. And again, modern programming sees these accessed via intrinsics which abstracts the differences even more - no more worry about what registers allow what or what or if the left operand is read or write or whatever.
From my experience X86/64 is also more robust and forgiving than other architectures. More often you can get away with unaligned reads/writes, the memory coherence is more robust, etc. Stuff that you can get away with on X64 may require special programming on other architectures. I haven't really found that to be the case the other way around though.
So now it's X64 I bow down and worship to. I'll take my excellent Visual Studio and easily write and debug some amazingly fast code with little effort and see it run ridiculously fast on my Core i7. What the heck is not to like? It's other new platforms that I have to program that now fill me with a sense of dread.
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In principle, yes. But only in principle.
A whole bunch of posters go on about "hardware doesn't matter" and stuff, and to a great portion of the public that has always been true. But to a smaller segment of the populous the quality of the engineering matters, you might even know some of them. Heck, you might have even been one yourself. VHS vs. Beta anyone?
It's not because PowerPC is better, and like some other posters have chimed in, most other CPU architectures are better, The Itanium with its EPIC paradigm, the CELL BE, and the latest SPARC T4's and T5's are worth salivating over.
It's the principle, one of my core beliefs; The enemy of the 'very good', is the 'good enough'.
This is why I will always hate x86, even though I use it. No need to point out the irony.
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In principle, yes. But only in principle.
A whole bunch of posters go on about "hardware doesn't matter" and stuff, and to a great portion of the public that has always been true. But to a smaller segment of the populous the quality of the engineering matters, you might even know some of them. Heck, you might have even been one yourself. VHS vs. Beta anyone?
It's not because PowerPC is better, and like some other posters have chimed in, most other CPU architectures are better, The Itanium with its EPIC paradigm, the CELL BE, and the latest SPARC T4's and T5's are worth salivating over.
It's the principle, one of my core beliefs; The enemy of the 'very good', is the 'good enough'.
This is why I will always hate x86, even though I use it. No need to point out the irony.
Don't you find it ironic that you hate the x86 but yet you still use it?
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Only seen a few responses here that seem to have grasped the actual question. x86 is a 32 bit processor architecture. Looking at some of the responses you'd think it was a Microsoft product some way linked to Windows and not an Intel one or AMD Copy.
Mac, Linux and some other Unix variants all use this CPU architecture or the newer X64.
The simple purpose of a CPU is to process instructions. As to which CPU is better my measure would be outcome based (The target of architecture). The more arithmetic, logical and I/O outcomes produced per second and the holistic functional result of that would be my measure of a good architecture. For example a super fast processor that requires specialist cooling and is unreliable or unstable couldn't be considered "better" simply because it was faster.
Some of the logic in this thread on what is a better processor looks like a discussion from a Mac forum from 10 years ago. (Sorry Mac users)
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Only seen a few responses here that seem to have grasped the actual question. x86 is a 32 bit processor architecture. Looking at some of the responses you'd think it was a Microsoft product some way linked to Windows and not an Intel one or AMD Copy.
Mac, Linux and some other Unix variants all use this CPU architecture or the newer X64.
I guess I should have specified when I said X86 I meant Intel.
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To answer the question directly, no I don't hate Intel x86 on principle any more than I dislike Craftsman hammers or Snap-on ratchets.
It's a tool to be used when appropriate, not a sports team to rally behind.
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Agree and the more situations of appropriate use the more useful the tool.
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To answer the question directly, no I don't hate Intel x86 on principle any more than I dislike Craftsman hammers or Snap-on ratchets.
It's a tool to be used when appropriate, not a sports team to rally behind.
I'd rather use a better tool. I have an old dependable fine tooth Snap-on ratchet and it blows away every Craftsman ratchet I've ever used. I don't hate Craftsman ratchets but I love Snap-on ratchets. There is even a difference in a hammer. I kept 3 different hammers with different purposes at my wheel rolling station. A big heavy sledge hammer does not in any way replace a lightweight brass hammer. Some hammers have better balance and grip too. The x86 architecture is like a big heavy sledge hammer. It uses brute force to crush everything in site but it's not elegant, it's wasteful and it's overkill for most jobs. x64 is an improvement but I could have a nice processor+memory with the logic used in an i7 caches alone. If you like crappy made in China tools, then I won't stop you. Sometimes they are good too. I do use Craftsman sockets with my Snap-on ratchet because they are good enough especially with a lifetime guarantee.
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I don't get this ARM thing. What is it? Is it a new hole CPU like PPC is for 68k and x86? Are you saying ARM is going to take over x86 and ARM is not backward compatible to x86?
I am a little confused here in this whole thing.
ARM's not new - it's been around since 1985. It was used in the Acorn Archimedes, the Apple Newton, the 3DO console. Since then the architecture has taken over the mobile phone market, the tablet market (iPad, Android tablets, etc), and is encroaching on the netbook and low-end laptop market. Never mind the billions of embedded ARM cores integrated into thousands of different types of chip.
ARM claims that there were around 2.5 billion ARM CPUs shipped in the past quarter alone. That should give you an idea of just how much ARM is used.
And it's cheap, unlike PowerPC chips, and typical application processors integrating ARM also include decent graphics and video acceleration.
What the SoCs often lack is PC features like several SATA ports, PCI Express, etc - but that's not the case with every product.
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It uses brute force to crush everything in site but it's not elegant, it's wasteful and it's overkill for most jobs.
That is why they created the Atom. They've even got some smartphone manufacturers to use it.
It'll be interesting seeing how ARM cope with Intel in the long term.
ARM don't make anything, all they do is license the design to others for them to build, they have less influence on the pricing. While Intel can afford to not make a return on their investment for a while.
If they are as quick or quicker than ARM for the same battery life then they will start eating ARM's lunch.
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I don't hate x86. Having worked with Sparc, MIPS, PowerPC, ARM, Alpha, and of course M680X0, I do have ones I am fond of (Sparc, M680X0), but I don't go out of my way to avoid x86 wherever possible.
Personally, I think Intel's dominance is coming to an end along with Microsoft's.
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I'm not you sure that you can hate a CPU ;)
But anyway, in the context of Amiga's it has be 68k for me.
An overclocked 060 + modern memory + modern RTG graphics could still do an impressive job with more modern software and of course it would also be 99% compatible with the wealth of older software.
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I guess I should have specified when I said X86 I meant Intel.
I don't like Intel (I do own an Intel based laptop) on principal, I tend to buy AMD when I can. My bias against Intel only goes so far, if it's the best deal, I'm going for it.
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The most enjoyable moment I've ever had from intel was watching a Pentium Pro overheat and fall through its own motherboard. Priceless (as was the look on my bosses face).
If the next Amiga was Memristor based perhaps we would never see threads like this ever again......
...I can but dream. :/
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Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
If so did you have no problem buying an ARM device?
If you take into account the latest IBM PowerPC it is only marginally better than an x86 Xeon.
It is also getting a little confusing nowadays with all the SIMD and the reprogrammable graphics units.
The CPU could be very different in 5 years from what it is now.
I don't like x86 much, but hate is of course a much to strong word. But x64 is a pretty different story (AMD/Intel have made their homework!). I would welcome a port of MorphOS to x64 very much and encourage the developers to do so.
x64 will at least dominate the "classic" computing market for the next couple of years and will definitely not fall into oblivion for the next 25 years - word!
Generally I like Power even more and would be happy if there would be useful Power based products availble for our scene. But unfortunately they aren't. And it's probably easier to change OS ISA than to provide appropriate hardware. Hence, move to x64. If some useful ppc hardware pops up out of the sudden - no prob, as support for ppc is already there.
ARM is mostly for closed devices. I think it will continue to penetrate the market but x64 is the better target for our niche.
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I don't like Intel (I do own an Intel based laptop) on principal, I tend to buy AMD when I can. My bias against Intel only goes so far, if it's the best deal, I'm going for it.
I'm the opposite, but I decided AMD were bad when their stuff stank. Even when P4 was expensive and not as quick, AMD always seemed to have chipset stability issues.