ARM or x86 with FPGA emulator

[psxphill]

This makes them ideal for use in an Amiga accelerator... But they also tend to have a graphics core included (much better than AGA), also they have high def audio outputs, and they have USB as standard now... So why bother making all that effort to mate it up with an Amiga motherboard, the only parts you would probably use are the keyboard and disk drive...

I sort of agree, but the phase 5 boards had a graphics card option too.
 
I quite like the idea of being able to run a 68k & PPC emulator on a fast ARM processor and being able to use either AGA or the accelerators graphics output.
 
Pure cpu emulators designed to run full speed should be able to run quicker than one designed to emulate AGA etc as well.
 
I guess you'd boot from AROS for ARM and have it so that could select between booting an ARM workbench, which could run 68k apps in AROS using headless mode (like juae) or startup a 68k task that just booted from a 68k kickstart. Quite what the hard drive of a dual boot system would look like is another matter, ideally if you disable the accelerator it would use the onboard 68000 (A500/A600/A2000), 020 (A1200) or 030 (A3000/A4000CR) and it would still be able to use the onboard 68k kickstart and the 68k workbench from the hard drive. A4000 is the odd one out, there is no onboard CPU.

[psxphill]

Why put an FPGA on it?

because emulating aga in software introduces lag.

[psxphill]

People who want a PPC Amiga-like OS with seamless running of m68k software can already use MorphOS or AOS4.

MorphOS and AOS4 aren't equivalent though. Doesn't the different padding also mean that PPC software that runs on MorphOS or AOS4 can't ever be compatible with AROS either?
 
It seems that decision marginalises AROS PPC.

[psxphill]

x86/x64 OS roots are from 640k system, so OS can evolve, better not limit the HW too much.

What are you trying to say?

[psxphill]

We Amiga users use powerpc because it is the fastest and COMPATIBLE solution.

A decent PowerPC emulator running on a top of the line x86 will be cheaper and faster than any Amiga hardware available.
 
 I'm not so convinced that ARM could do the same.
 
 For old school Amiga users who never used a PowerPC there is very little reason to be able to run PowerPC software.

[psxphill]

BeOS failed permanently when it switched from PowerPC, and dropped it for x86

Sounds an awful lot like history repeats itself.

BeOS switched to x86 because it had failed, it didn't fail because it switched to x86. The original BeBox was a PC with a PowerPC instead of an x86, there was no real advantage to them fitting a PowerPC except you had to buy their computer.

History could therefore easily repeat itself. Avoiding x86 will give you a long drawn out death, switching to x86 may or may not pay off but it will play out much quicker.

The only sane decision is between ARM or x86, which is why they own so much of the market between them. The ARM is considerably slower than x86 though, I'd prefer an Atom because it competes pretty well against the ARM but you can also go to the top end with Core I*.

Sorry, I phrased that poorly:

To read/write 64 bits of data from or to the main memory:

AMD Phenom: 33-40 cycles on average
MIPS R16000A: 11-15 cycles on average.

I apologise for the confusion.

That is pretty vague, the R16000A is 200mhz while the Phenom starts at 1.8ghz.
I'd take 40 cycles at 1.8ghz over 15 cycles at 200mhz.

The cycles increase because ram speed lags behind cpu speed, but that is what large caches are for.

If you underclock that Phenom then the average number of cycles would decrease, but it wouldn't get faster.
 
 Your metric is irrelevant.

OlafS3,

Tekmote.NL sells some for €200-400, mostly due to import tariffs. If there was more demand I'm sure the cost would drop.

Where is the demand going to come from? How many people want such a slow computer? The netbooks have appalling battery life.

[psxphill]

This article was comparing the 1GHz version to some AMD Phenom, I don't know AMD nomenclature so I'm not going to try looking the exact model up.

Ok so I got the MIPS speed wrong, it doesn't change that the metric you've provided is meaningless on it's own (and it highlights that you didn't provide enough information about what cpu & ram speeds were in use and what other chipset etc). You could easily produce a CPU that has an average of 1 cycle for each ram access, just clock the CPU at 1mhz and use 1mhz ram.

Where is the article? It shouldn't take you too long to find out the speed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Phenom_microprocessors#.22Agena.22_.28B2.2FB3.2C_65_nm.2C_Quad-core.29

I personally wouldn't have bought an AMD chip when the Phenom was out, the Intel core 2 was much better.