A-EON Technology & Ultra Varisys sign $1.2M agreement for new PowerPC hardware

[WolfToTheMoon]

It's great news;  Significant new investment, new hardware and continued development in OS4.

Clock speeds are largely irrelevent.  A modern 2GHz CPU is going to do a lot more per cycle than a 2GHz CPU from 8 years ago.  It looks like the P5020 has only been available since late 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QorIQ#P5

I'd be interested in seeing some real performance figures.

Either way, this is all good news for OS4.

Unfortunately, the QorIQ P5 is not a modern desktop CPU speed-wise.
Based on the MIPS rating, it's about as fast an an Athlon FX-57 from 2005, but it still lacks a dedicated SIMD unit(it's got no Altivec)

[WolfToTheMoon]

The P5020 is a recent design CPU; for most tasks it will probably be overkill.   For CPU intensive tasks (for example 3D rendering) it may not be as great as the latest x86 but then when you're talking 10 hour render times, a ~25% difference isn't such a huge deal.   Plus, much of this is moving to the GPU too (CUDA, OpenCL, Cycles render engine).

it's not 25%... its more like 500% compared to modern midclass x86.
Also, there is no SIMD so it would be even slower in compared to AVX optimized x86 CPUs that have up-to 256-bit wide vector units.

I guess my point is - the CPU is a significant (?) step up from the PA6T, it provides a future roadmap and will probably cost less than the X1000.  Comparing a new gen Amiga to a PC or games console is pointless..

It's about 20-30% faster than PA6T, but uses more power. Also, PA6T has Altivec.

[WolfToTheMoon]

But please point out any dual core PPC consumer board currently on sale to individuals and not military or sever type. That is the "same class"

Here




tens of thusands of these are available, for much less than an X1000 or Cyrus will be. There are also quad core versions.
The funniest part is that this is still the fastest PowerPC desktop and will remain even after P5040 Cyrus :juggler: