Sony's Cell chip for a New Amiga

[Hattig]

...do you think it's possible? Discuss!

It's not the most impressive chip unless you make use of the SPUs - and these days you would be better off getting a port of OpenCL going and using a standard GPU.

The actual CPU is quite slow per clock, only made up in part by it's high clocks. It might run at 3.2GHz but it performs like a contemporary 1.6GHz CPU. It does have the ability to run two threads at the same time however, but that's not much use for AmigaOS currently.

One thing that isn't considered is that the chip has gone through several shrinks, so it may be able to run at significantly more than 3.2GHz now.

[Hattig]

ARM processors aren't particularly impressive, they are low power but they are also slow. I prefer Intel Atom. A trapdoor atom card would be awesome.

Atom - now that's a true bit of junk.

Anyway, Hyperion haven't got the resources to port AmigaOS to another platform, so x86 and ARM are currently out of the question.

[Hattig]

The ARM uses less power and achieves more work per clock, but the atom can be clocked higher. Software compatibility on the atom more than makes up for it's drawbacks, especially on a desktop machine where power the power is less of a concern. Even on battery my atom netbook lasts 10 hours, which is more than enough.

Software compatibility? For AROS, sure, but not for AmigaOS! Other operating systems - Linux is on ARM and x86, Android is ARM and soon x86.

Samsung will have their 2.0GHz ARM Cortex A15 dual-core out early next year - that will outperform even the fastest Atom (event the 2.13GHz ones). The ARM ecosystem is simply far more interesting at the moment.

[Hattig]

The sad thing is that the Atoms that have on-die graphics are using some pretty old tech - PowerVR SGX535s or 540s I believe - think iPhone 3 but running a bit faster.

The PowerVR 6 series is far more advanced, as is the ARM Mali T604. You might even get drivers for the latter, good luck getting open source drivers for the PowerVR on Atom chips.

As regards to next year's Atoms ... Cedar Trail is next year's Atoms now, delayed several months already because Intel can't get the graphics drivers right.

Nah, I'll stick with the proven ARM tech myself. I don't need x86 for anything. Windows 8 will come in an ARM variant if you really want to run that.

[Hattig]

Unfortunately mutual respect 'aint going to make you rich.  People don't want to be in for the long hall and a big R&D investment. Quick return is the way to go.

The Amiga isn't going to make anyone rich these days. The best bet is to make specific hardware for a certain market and to also make it run AmigaOS as a side-benefit. Hence Linux PowerPC boards that can also run AmigaOS.