Blasphemy (I know, I know ...... but ?????)

[SamuraiCrow]

@melgross

Amigas have always run on embedded controller versions of the 680x0 series so why would embedded PowerPC models be any different?  They don't have anything missing from the desktop models except that they are more frequently multicore and less frequently involve out-of-order execution.

With the Cell processor being used in game systems and a triple-core PPC in Microsoft's own XBox 360 and the Nintendo Revolution it would seem that all of the most computationally intensive applications (games) will be running on PowerPC.

It seems, then, that Intel is getting relegated to the desktop in a market where embedded systems and consoles are taking over.  Which one's the dead end?

[SamuraiCrow]

Speaking of not changing, the Playstation 3 will probably not change for the life of the product for compatability reasons.  The Commodore 64 also followed that same pattern.  The C64 was the best selling single-model computer in history.

Just because the chips change less doesn't mean they'll be any less competitive in the console market than they are today.  If anything, that gives IBM the incentive to be more creative as the Cell processor and the Kilocore processor indicate.  IBM is making great strides since Apple forced them out of their comfort zone.

[SamuraiCrow]

melgross wrote:
It doesn't matter much what Sony, or IBM wants. There are no tools available to work with these chips. And just what OS is going to be used with them, other than a Linux implementation, which, so far, hasn't succeeded in getting any of the SPE's to work? So, they have one in-order two thread enhanced (sotra) G4, with a truely wonky memory model that no one has ever used before, that can only handle 512MB of RAM without the SPE's.

Great!

So, you want the Amiga OS to be re-written for that, rather than for x86?

The memory model has been used on the RAM expanders for C64s and 8086-based IBM PCs before and works.  The reason it works so well is that interleaved memory is really fast when accessed sequentially and a DMA-based approach delivers that kind of sequential access.

As for being rewritten for the x86 I'd be cheering for the AMD64 if it weren't for that funky little-endian byte ordering.

[SamuraiCrow]

RAMBUS memory isn't the only memory that will work with the Cell processor as Mercury Semiconductor is trying to make DDR memory work with the Cell as well using a custom northbridge.