bloodline wrote:
I think you have confused the XScale with the StrongARM... The XScale has very good FP poerformance, MP3 and DivX seem to run fine on the 400Mhz version. The Xscale even has some DSP instructions in there :-)
My point is, that if you wanted to make a new Amiga you would have to sell it on the original strengths of the amiga brand, Cheap, small and versitile... not something which a PPC board with standard PC components is able to provide.
Nope, not confused ... the XScale has no floating point support, go over to the Intel site and you can read all about it. Even Google brings up heaps of answers if you enter in "Xscale floating point".
Developers have to either do their stuff with fixed point routines or use emulation.
I know DivX and MP3 run great on the 400Mhz devices ... but you can't do much elese while they are doing it, users would whinge and moan if their home computer ground to a halt while playing, what they think, is a simple movie or music file.
If you wanted another "new" and "cheap" Amiga based around something like an Xscale, you'd have to load the motherboard with other DSPs and processors to take away the load from the main CPU, you'd need a graphics processor, sound processor and maybe a DSP for other odds and sods ... in the end it's cheaper to go for a general purpose CPU and use cheaper less intelligent graphics processors etc ... provided you can do the volume .. which is where the Pegasos and Amiga1 are having problems, not enough users means higher prices.
Regards
