Cell was never meant (or suitable) as a general desktop CPU, not then, not now.
Not strictly true.
"The Cell Broadband Engine—or Cell as it is more commonly known—is a microprocessor designed to bridge the gap between conventional desktop processors"
Lets not forget that most of the Amigas commodore ever sold were powered by processors designed to go in Washing Machines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)
In fact Cell has a lot in common with PPC and in fact the CPU in the Xbox 360 albeit with only 3 cores actually has some common heritage with the Cell.
Cell can run a desktop operating system - there were versions of Yellow Dog Linux and Ubuntu running on PS3. Sadly along with memory limitations these were crippled by Sony's efforts to sandbox other operating systems from using the GPU. I always thought someone should have made some efforts to porting AROS or tried to get AmigaOS running instead. It would have run so much nicer on the PS3 as a desktop OS! alas that never happened, and the hacks to open up the system eventually led to Sony disabling the "OtherOS" feature from the console.
With its PowerPC heritage its already proved that Cell can work as a desktop processor if it is given the right resources.
Still - as many have already noted - Cell has a question mark hanging over its head in terms of future - although PPC looks like it still has some sort of roadmap for the future.
IMHO a new Amiga needs to look at whats happening with games consoles in terms of architecture. This kind of design is just like what the Amiga was all about. Custom chips helping out the Processor all in a dedicated , targeted platform enabled commodore to produce a computer that was both cheap and blew away the competition at the time. Thats the philosophy a new amiga needs to embrace.
In all honesty - if i had plenty of cash i might pony up for an X1000 but i dont really get what that Xena chip is all about or what kind of niche its all about?
So I pose another question..
Forget the CPU for a moment - What Custom chips should a new Amiga have that could make it stand out from other platforms on the market. Ill throw one into the mix .
Howabout a chip that can specialise in encoding / decoding / transcoding Video / audio at many times faster than real time?
Any other ideas?
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