What are the advantages of the present/future Amiga?

[downix]

I'd strongly disagree on going Intel for the same reasons I gave against PowerPC: Vendor Lock-in.  Intel you're tied to Intel, period, the end.  Intel doesn't support your efforts, too bad.  

I would instead look to one of the licenseable architectures, whereby if a vendor does not deliver, well, you control your own destiny and can change fabs, vandors, etc with minimal issues.  ARM, MIPS and SPARC all qualify.  ARM is expensive to license, but quite popular.  MIPS is less expensive to license, and with the new Chinese Loongson CPU's shipping are making a strong comeback.  SPARC tho, least expensive to license, and with the strongest reputation among them all.  Hell, I made a SPARC based mp3 player for myself a few years back.  Tried to do that with Intel anytime lately?  

What would the Amiga offer?  Look at the newest trends in computing, for lighter weight, faster operating machines weither they have the CPU power or not.  Netbooks, tablets, e-books, cell phones, that is the target for a new Amiga.  The Amiga's instant-on capability, ideal for this market.  Desktops and workstations would be mainly for support of the real market, the portables.  That would be my ideal.  

So, what would I do?  Make a SPARC based System on Chip for the netbooks, with a HT bus for expanding into a full fledged desktop and workstation CPU.  PowerPC is a dead end.  ARM and MIPS are too expensive.  Intel is proprietory.  AMD is not mobile.  VIA cannot handle the desktop.

I have plans for a MiniMig based PDA, to demonstrate this.  Plans I likely will never finish because I don't think anyone here cares about playing to the Amiga's strengths, only in focusing on some pipe dream.  There is nothing stopping us from reaching our dream of a new Amiga save ourselves.

[downix]

cicero790 wrote:

Nobody is debating if a Mac is a Mac because of the Intel chips. Why should Amiga be any different?

This was one of the few things AInc did hit right on the head, make the CPU irrelevent to the equasion by simply emulating it from the get-go.  Their issue was that they began re-inventing the horse, new OS.  If they'd taken Tao's system and simply ported the AmigaOS to it, who knows what could have been accomplished.  Add in a fast emulation for the classic hardware, and then we'd be talking a solid, powerful and flexible platform that would scale down or up as needed with a solid knowledge base.  Heck, could still do this with an optimized 68k emulation system, as shown with Amithlon.  Then wouldn't matter what CPU you ran on, would it?

But AInc's focus on a CPU agnostic system that only runs on one CPU and with little legacy support... just not worth it to me.  

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DavidF215 wrote:
Then market the computer to China, because they have plenty of people to buy and to help develop for it.    

Which leads into my comment above, if you want to go to China, you'd better be running a MIPS CPU rather than an x86.  They are doing a huge push for "home grown" solutions, and the key to breaking into China right now is to make a solution compatible with their home made CPU, the Loongson, which is a MIPS compatible CPU.

You try and emulate Apple without understanding why, you will wind up like Be.  You want to compete, change the rules.  Make a $100 portable (more than doable... so long as you don't go x86) and people will take notice.

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Piru wrote:
@Georg

if MorphOS development had started today (not x years ago) - or maybe put differently: if cpu situation when MorphOS development started back then would have been as it is now - which CPU family would in your opinion have been the best choice?

Assuming that there would be no backwards compatibility issues to consider, clearly x86 (or x86-64 probably).

I'm still leaning more for keeping the software as 68k and emu it, a la Amithlon, thereby eliminating the whole native issue.  *shrug*

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mdwh2 wrote:

kolla wrote:
Are you crazy?!

MorphOS would then be in *direct* competition with Windows.. oh, and MacOS! _Noone_ would use it!

Hahahaha....  :-D

Btw, after having read this entire thread - I just realized that it is September again. Is this... :idea:

This is a common anti-x86 argument that I've never understood. By this argument, no one should use MacOS X, because it's now in "direct competition with Windows". Moreover, MorphOS was in "direct competition" with MacOS for years when it used PowerPC.

But none of this is true in any case - platforms are in just as much competition with each other whether or not they use the same CPU.

See, here's the confusion.  Mac's might run Intel CPU's, but they are not IBM compatible, missing several key 8-bit components.  Hence why the Hypervisor mode to enable Windows to run, emulating the missing pieces.  But whenever anyone mentions an x86 Amiga, they figure on bog standard boards.  That will not work.  At the minimum we'd need a custom boot loader, Kickstart embedded in the mobo you could say.  

[downix]

mdwh2 wrote:

downix wrote:
See, here's the confusion.  Mac's might run Intel CPU's, but they are not IBM compatible, missing several key 8-bit components.  Hence why the Hypervisor mode to enable Windows to run, emulating the missing pieces.  But whenever anyone mentions an x86 Amiga, they figure on bog standard boards.  That will not work.  At the minimum we'd need a custom boot loader, Kickstart embedded in the mobo you could say.  

I see nothing in Piru's reply that implies porting to standard PCs - the question was about CPUs. I don't see why adding those things is hard - it's no harder than making your own custom motherboard with any other CPU.

The issue of making your own custom motherboards vs using other companies' motherboards can even apply to other CPUs (e.g., when BeOS wrote their OS to run on PowerMacs for a while). This issue shouldn't be confused with CPU choice.

So basically - yes, I agree that being a software only OS company and writing software to run on other people's hardware is a risk, but using x86 as a CPU whilst producing your own hardware is still an option, as Apple have shown.

Oh, I was not referring to Piru's comment in specific.  He has shown himself over the years being fully logical in his arguements even when he and I did not see eye to eye.  I am referring instead to the masses of others I've argued with that seem to feel that Intel is a gee-whiz-fix-it-all solution, giving uber-cheap everything by running on bog standard PC's.  

A proposal I made a few years back was this:  Find and test a specific lineup of motherboards, GFX cards, etc, and select a subset from that group.  Example, if it were me calling the shots, I would be picking the J&W series of AMD chipset motherboards, the 740G, 780G and 790FX based models.  That gives a great range of options, ranging from MiniITX to full sized workstation motherboards, and even offering up laptop options using.  You can even have pre-built systems and put our logo on it, from companies such as ASUS and MSI which operate as suppliers for 3rd party companies.

Still say a crying shame about Amithlon, the ideal base for such a platform.  Embed the kernel into the BIOS, (LinuxBIOS baby) along with the kickstart, and we'd be cooking with gas...

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persia wrote:
Surely if you go to all the trouble of converting to X86 you can get rid of Kickstart!  There's no point in a system rom image in this day and age.

Absolutely untrue.  Infact, manufacturers (Dell + HP) are migrating TO an onboard OS.  Jump ahead of them and define the market now I say.

[downix]

persia wrote:
AmigaOS 5 = Tao Group Intent

Taos Intent Os
Tao Intent

No, it's not.  AInc lost their license for Tao's technology.  (Tao is also out of business to boot)