Is Amiga NG underpowered?

[agami]

Is Amiga NG underpowered and that is why I don't want to buy one?
I hate to troll, but the new PowerPC systems are getting old or seriously old.
Any chance of us moving to an ARM platform?

Questions: What is power? How does one judge what is powerful and what is underpowered in this context? Is it purely subjective or can it be measured objectively?

For some it's simply speeds and feeds, numbers on paper; GHz, TFLOPS, Gbps, IOPS, Cores/Socket, Threads/Core, etc. In essence, the potential of the hardware. There is a good reason why this is the case; It is simple math, the kind most people can understand. And a lot of the time when more of these things are added people see improvement.

But this simple 'hardware potential' to 'calculation performance' equation is only practical when the environment dynamic is normalised. The reality of this is seen in cases when more potential is added and little or no improvement is seen.

For me it is the principle of Empowerment
In the computer HW/SW relationship, HW is predominantly the enabling factor, and software is the empowering factor.
Think back to the Amiga of yore, was any Amiga really powerful in terms of hardware? How many people bought an Amiga for the sheer MHz, or Mbytes of RAM or the amount of storage or the bandwidth of the Zorro bus? When compared to its contemporaries there were obvious reasons why it cost less; Apart from the custom chipset every other off-the-shelf component was for the most part a 'lesser-than' option.

But it was the software that tapped the hardware potential that empowered users to dream and turn those dreams into reality. That is what I call powerful.
Since then the only similar thing I have seen is the iPhone/iOS platform.

So is the the current ilk of Amiga NG systems underpowered? You betcha. Both by ways of hardware potential and empowerment factor. And maybe you're not buying one because on some level you know this already.
PowerPC or Power ISA has become old hat, and most of the major players are predominantly concerned with supporting legacy momentum.
Yes, ARM is the new enabler for all sorts of hardware and is outpacing other architectures in terms of technical and market growth. But as others have already said, a porting effort based on the existing person-hour commitments of any of the Amiga NG operating systems would take way too long.

[agami]

I thought we were discussing how under powered the PPC CPU and its architecture were...   Not the price.

Your attempt at witty subterfuge is poorly veiled. It's not about PPC it's about Amiga NG systems. And they are underpowered by many measuring standards. But if you prefer a better term for it then call them 'underwhelming'.

ARM is more "powerful" than the Amiga NG PPC CPUs in terms of price/performance ratio. And there's a lot more buzz at this end of the SKUs.

If people don't know it already they should; The Power 7, 7+, and now 8 are some of the most powerful socketed CPU ICs ever to come off a wafer production line. The only other things in this area of sheer performance per watt are the Intel Xeon Phi and the Nvidia Tesla cores, though the latter two have more specialist architectures and applications.

But as it has already been stated, these things have high price tags attached to them, and none of the Amiga NG OSs could take advantage of them anyway.

[agami]

IF opinions were noses, then everyone would sneeze in your face as if only they had that the right to do so.

And if lame parables were lemonade we'd all find a different use for our lemons.

[agami]

Eh, I'm sure if you ran into a bar you'd have a pint with him.  :pint:   :pint:

I'd have to run into it pretty hard :p
Just kidding. I've found that despite their opinions on certain matters most people are good drinking company. That said, any of you see me in Mountain View for Amiga 30, I'll buy you a drink.

[agami]

you mean by the time OS is ported to ARM, most AMIGA fans will spend their last days in a nursery home?

Sure you meant nursing home.
I tell you though, if I had the choice I'd rather go out in a nursery. Nursing homes are too depressing.