Was PCI for Amiga a good choice?

[Thorham]

I don't like it one bit, because it turns awesome Amigas into nothing but glue logic. I don't have an Amiga for that.

[Thorham]

ECS is definitely *not* awesome. AGA is *not* awesome either

No, Amigas are awesome :p Best retro hardware ever :p If I was stinkin' filthy rich I'd buy Amiga and produce new A1200s without improving the chipset :p

which is 300-500 times the gfx performance of the old Amigas.

I have a peecee for that :p

I want a modern Amiga without the "glue"!

Amiga won't become contemporary again, especially not through an FPGA computer like Natami :p

[Thorham]

Damn, Amiga purists can be such flat earthers.

Really? Then tell me, what's the point of an Amiga with a graphics card, sound card and PPC cpu? Where's the Amiga in that?

Want a practical machine? Use a peece, it's the only thing that makes sense. Amigas need to retain their retro value, and they don't retain that if you start using them as glue logic.

So, yes, I like to use the old chipset in the old computer I like. When I need something more powerful, I'll use my peecee.

[Thorham]

So you prefer OCS over ECS or AGA and a 68000 over a 68030?

AGA+50 mhz 68030 is my preferred system. 68040s and 68060 are too fast, while 68000s are too slow. The 68030 is just right.

I understand that the old classic Amigas are cool in the same way a vintage car is but they aren't as useful or convenient as a modern daily driver.

Which is why I use a peecee. Very powerful, and lots of up to date, and often free, software. Lots of nice games, too.

[Thorham]

I prefer a slower clocked CPU which is easy to  program and has consistent real world performance than a high clocked  CPU with high theoretical performance but lots of pipeline bubbles and  performance bottlenecks.

That may be so, but apparently the  current complex CPUs are the only way forward performance wise, and  performance is the only thing anyone cares about these days.

IMO, the 68060 maintains good real world performance

Not compared to current machines.

Sure, but do you program your PC

Not as much as I should.

or power use your PC?

What do you see as power use?

Windows  is the lazy man's brain dead OS and Linux is a pain in the butt geek's  OS. AmigaOS is freedom in comparison.

Compared to AOS,  Windows and Linux are awesome powerhouses of might and magic AOS is thoroughly stuck in  the past and it will always remain in the past. If only I could replace  it with a better, faster OS on my A1200.

[Thorham]

Complexity adds cost and heat. Performance per clock is more important than maximum clock speed ever since the Pentium 4 days

Yes, but isn't that where increased complexity comes from?

Using many programs at once while maintaining responsiveness

All you need for that is RAM on contemporary systems.

communicating between programs at my request (ARexx), advanced scripting without a book sized manual, etc.

Right, no, I don't do a lot of that on the peecee.

So the slow old Amiga hardware is still good but the fast old AmigaOS is bad today? You are strange indeed .

You misunderstand. Amiga hardware is cool because it has a high retro coolness factor. AmigaOS isn't bad, it's just not as good and fast as it could be for 68k.

[Thorham]

Some processors have better performance per clock, have less complexity and/or use less logic because of their design. CISC processors have a higher complexity and logic cost for a base CPU implementation but then they generally have good performance per clock and take less resources to improve this. RISC processors are cheaper to implement but require lots of resources to make powerful per clock and avoid bottlenecks (big caches, strong OoO, adding some CISC like features, etc.). RISC was originally designed to outperform CISC by out clocking it and by moving complexity from the CPU to the compiler but it lost both of these battles. Most modern powerful RISC processors have added some CISC features and are now RISC/CISC hybrids. Most modern CISC processors have adopted some RISC features and are now CISC/RISC hybrids.

Thanks for explaining.

AmigaOS has a lot of good features and ideas which were not fully developed or implemented.

Which ones?

The AmigaOS is still fast and responsive by design even if compiler optimization has always been lacking. Most 68k processors are forgiving of poorly optimized code. I believe the 68k AmigaOS could be 20%-40% smaller with better optimization but this would probably only give 10%-20% better performance.

I'm talking about a hypothetical new OS that's not compatible with AOS, so that you could do everything exactly right. You can certainly do better then.

Good algorithms are more important to performance.

Indeed. They're the most important. Proper use of CPU features comes in second.