ARM for the future?

[TheBilgeRat]

Yes I absolutely agree with you. X86 has evolved. Personally, I had no use for the original PC processors, but by the time the '386 came along their evolution was progressing nicely. Todays X86-64 processors are a completely different animal when compared to older products. X86 is cheap, powerful, and unarguably the best product currently available for most computer users.

It is the only choice for most computer users.  That does not mean it is the best.

Interesting from TFA (even if its shmoo):

Denver frees PCs, workstations and servers from the hegemony and  inefficiency of the x86 architecture.  For several years, makers of  high-end computing platforms have had no choice about instruction-set  architecture.  The only option was the x86 instruction set with  variable-length instructions, a small register set, and other features  that interfered with modern compiler optimizations, required a larger  area for instruction decoding, and substantially reduced energy  efficiency.
 Denver provides a choice.   System builders can now choose a  high-performance processor based on a RISC instruction set with modern  features such as fixed-width instructions, predication, and a large  general register file.   These features enable advanced compiler  techniques and simplify implementation, ultimately leading to higher  performance and a more energy-efficient processor.


I remember when RISC was going to be the next big thing before the Pentiums came out.  It is funny to see that it has taken another 15 some odd years to come back to this.  x86 is good because that is what has been crammed down our throats by a business model bent on dictating to us what we need.

[TheBilgeRat]

Then again, the 111 Euro license fee is a little steep.

You win one understatement :lol:

[TheBilgeRat]

The phenomenon is purely market economics in action. No great corporate conspiracies are involved here.

None other than the normal type of corporate behavior that involves destroying the competition by any means necessary and delivering the least amount of innovation at the maximum price point that the market will bear.

[TheBilgeRat]

http://www.menuetos.net/

Just goes to show how much bloat is in ANY modern hardware system, and that you can still touch the switches (if you're really demented that is )

a 64 bit OS that fits on a floppy.  This project sums up the laziness of the last 20 years to me nicely.

[TheBilgeRat]

...with today's resources at hand, completely irrelevant

wow.

[TheBilgeRat]

Just because you see no value in the optimization of code for an application doesn't mean the rest of the world shares your view.  In other words, Wolf, I do not share in your ignorance and frankly am shocked by it.  I will chalk it up to either a poor upbringing or youth.

[TheBilgeRat]

The reason you got the response you did was because what you wrote read like an excuse to code poorly as well as a complete blanket dismissal of asm.

This.

[TheBilgeRat]

I'm shocked you would consider writing an entire OS or any application in asm as a guarantee of better performance or more optimized code.

There are no "guarantees" in anything.  The performance is demonstrably better.  An OS that will run a DVD on a 386.  Display 16M colors.  Play MP3s

I also doubt many programmers could manually write more optimized code then today's compilers. And ultimatively, spending resources of doing so is questionable in most applications(while I agree it's mandatory in some others). I never said I'm anti-asm in general.

Which compiler?  GCC? SAS/C?  I hope you aren't including Java in your list.  It is already obvious you didn't even bother to read WHY the project was doing what they were doing.  If you aren't anti-asm, what are you?  If you are going to speak to technical things you know nothing about, spend the 45 seconds to read what its all about before jumping in the deep end with your inanity.

[TheBilgeRat]

Are you sure on this? Menuet/Kolibri run on a 386, but the site doesn't seem to say what kind of hardware those screencaps were from...

not even remotely the point I was trying to convey, but since you asked:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010722211251/http://www.menuetos.org/

they have obviously set their sights higher, to P1s with 90Mhz, if you browse their forum.  It seems none of the current batch of users have tested the modern arch on a 386.

DOUBLE EDIT:  Wolf is right on the current pics - link I provided was to an earlier arch running on a 386.

DOUBLE DOUBLE EDIT:  It also seems that they are only posting specs for their 64bit version anymore.

[TheBilgeRat]

Don't think so. Classic Amigas have just not enough computing power to be a serious competition for MorphOS and AmigaOS 4. Natami (if ever released), won't help much.

I may be wrong, but I think that aros68k will also run on PPC machines, so maybe the OP was referring to this fact (ie, AROS will run on anything from classics to the X1000 to an I7).

[TheBilgeRat]

I'm impressed by the graphics... nearly Geforce2 speed. Run a resource lean OS like Amiga on it and you have a late 90s era gaming rig.

If we can concentrate on the essentials: web browser and plenty of driver support. Photo and video editing. You've then got the basic appliance which passes as a modern computer. Minus the resource hogging Windows. btw my Ubuntu 9.04 install uses about half the resources of even Windows XP.

If you think Ubuntu 9.04 is resource light, give Arch a whirl