ARM based Amiga?

[fishy_fiz]

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.

[fishy_fiz]

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.

[fishy_fiz]

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.

[fishy_fiz]

@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.

[fishy_fiz]

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