Ideas: The new Amiga. Yes, it's inevitable!

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dammy wrote:

WHO will recode AOS and make the new x86 versions of SW?

You already know that answer, AROS is already x86 and x86_64 native.

The only answer for desktop/laptop is x86/x86_64.  ARM is the only real answer for small portable devices.  I find these threads rather amusing as if people have not gotten a clue that a new hardware is never going to be released that can make any tech dent in the current marketplace.  I find it even more amusing that people could even think the Amiga market is economically viable for any corporation to invest money in to make that dent.

Dammy

I would strongly argue there.  ARM is not the only real answer, even among portable makers.  The Intel Atom, VIA Nano both make solid x86-capable portable CPU's which are making inroads.  New MIPS CPU's are arriving that put the ARM in for a run for it's money.  Even the ancient 68k with ColdFire is starting to bring some excitement back to the field.  ARM might be 60% of the market, but that is not the "only real answer" any more than m68k was in the mid 1980's, where it was in the top half and Intel was the underdog.

Don't limit your vision, and really the sky is the limit.

Incidentally, to the guy proposing AMD CPU's, I'd actually look into that, but with the OS replacing the BIOS.  Keep it in straight 64-bit mode from the get-go.

My thought is, make the desktop raytraced.  Make it touch-friendly.  Even I, this hw-freak, am willing to concede that the era of the custom all-in-one solution is past.  But you can still get some fun stuff out there.

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SamuraiCrow wrote:

dammy wrote:

I would strongly argue there. ARM is not the only real answer, even among portable makers. The Intel Atom, VIA Nano both make solid x86-capable portable CPU's which are making inroads. New MIPS CPU's are arriving that put the ARM in for a run for it's money. Even the ancient 68k with ColdFire is starting to bring some excitement back to the field. ARM might be 60% of the market, but that is not the "only real answer" any more than m68k was in the mid 1980's, where it was in the top half and Intel was the underdog.

Last I saw, ARM was closer to 70%, but even at 60% it makes it a no brainer to port to ARM ATPIT.  If MIPS or any other CPU gets 40% or better of the portable market, I'll be happy to see a port to that as well.  Right now, it would be rather stupid to place any significant developer time on anything other then ARM. No one can  afford another PPC like fiasco.

Since nobody can afford another PowerPC-like fiasco then maybe we should be porting to a bitcode that compiles at install time like LLVM.  That's what Apple is doing.  In fact Apple is including LLVM in its 3.1 XCode presumably so it won't ever get stuck on one processor again.  (The fact that they're doing this now that they are on Intel's chips also seems to have escaped you.)  This way they can have Intel chips and PowerPC chips on the desktop and ARM chips on the handhelds without having to widen their universal "fat" binaries to produce all kinds of code simultaneously at compile time.

You got the thumbs up from me here!

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JuvUK wrote:
ok not wishing to start a fight, but why AMD, the old generation i agree kicked intels butt, but the current stuff it's intel all the way, until AMD get up to speed why use them?
 seriously i'm not picking a fight i'm just curious
cheers juv.u.k

For me it's a case of total solution.  Vendor lock-in is where a single vendor can hold a project hostage, say, Northbridge for PPC chips.  In this case, using the same vendor for as much as possible is a serious discouragement for such tactics.  "We play with their northbridge, wait, they stopped buying our GPU and CPU".  It's a solid tactic.  Intel does not offer this capability, with their sub-par GPU systems.  

AMD also is far friendlier in the licensing needed for producing custom BIOS's, as demonstrated with the LinuxBIOS and OLPC projects.  While they might not offer assistance, they won't hinder either.

Since we lack the ability to manufacture such chips ourselves, the fewer vendors we have to deal with that control critical systems, the fewer chances for some minor supply chain issue to completely derail us.  

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JuvUK wrote:
fair enough, but surely whichever cpu you decide on you are going to end up tied to it in one way or another, and as we've seen, intel is able to weather storms for longer than AMD could hold out, as for a GPU surely that should be a nvidea chip? yet another tie in, but surely the way to go?

No, now you have two vendors to worry about going under or causing issues with your supply chain.  AMD+ATI means 1 stop shopping, one vendor to worry about, one vendor to get license agreements with, one vendor to pay attention to.  AMD is going nowhere.  With 1/20th the cash of Intel, it has 20% of the market.  That is one hell of a return on investment.  That is also a sign of how solid the company underneath is.  

I personally wouldn't choose an x86, but if you insist on it, at least use the supply company with the most transparency and best total solution provided.  Intel cannot fill all pieces of the system, AMD can.  (VIA can as well, but they're not quite up there at this time)

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trekiej wrote:
Has anyone ever made a list of Hardware and software people?
Hardware: Dennis,Illuwatar,Yaqube

Jens, Jeri, myself....

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Belial6 wrote:
I am of a different mind.  AInc. has shown no interest in the Amiga for years.  Even if they decided to throw everything they could at the Amiga, and did start to make headway, we would never know when they would decide to make another about face and abandon it again.  I would rather see AROS turn it's attention to the MiniMig.  Dennis freed us from the shackles of AInc hardware dependence.  Yaqube is moving us forward at a remarkable pace.  The only thing that still makes AInc even a consideration is the KickStart and Workbench.  If AROS could free us from that, we would still be a decade and a half behind, but we would at least be free from dragging the comatose corpse of AInc behind us.  I have no doubt that if the MiniMig could be sold with an OS and a few basic apps pre-installed, we would see more interest.  With that interest, we would see not only more applications, but more improvements to the OS AND improvements to the hardware.

Hear hear!  I started such work, but then someone else said they were so I stopped else step on toes, instead worked on porting it to the SPARC, but now, no idea how the m68k port is going.  (SPARC is about 40% done tho)

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persia wrote:
They sell PC games, they claim to have a version of Tao Intent called Amiga Anywhere but no place to buy it and it doesn't appear to run on classic Amigas either.

No, they don't have Tao anymore.  Tao went out of business, and AInc lost their license when that happened.

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Belial6 wrote:

Hear hear!  I started such work, but then someone else said they were so I stopped else step on toes, instead worked on porting it to the SPARC, but now, no idea how the m68k port is going.  (SPARC is about 40% done tho)

I had not realized that someone took that bounty.  That is very good news indeed.  If bheron drops the ball (which I really hope he does not) please, please reconsider doing the 68k port.  The MiniMig is on a roll, and having I believe that having it's own, open source OS would help snowball it's success.

At the point that AROS runs on the MiniMig, we have an actual 'Platform'.  It is no longer technically a 'retro' platform.

Well, doing the SPARC is helping me learn, so quite possible to do.  Incidentally, SPARC CPU's have been successfully emulating m68k's since the mid 80's, which opens up other options as well.

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been a few SPARC laptops over the years.  Sun even developed a SPARC based PDA once.  I built myself a SPARC based MP3 player.