Bloatware AmigaOS?

[downix]

AmiGR wrote:

Exactly. Phase5 by not using custom logic was forced to pay far more per-board than if they had ASIC'd the parts together, to reduce the overall cost of production. That is why the VIC-20 could price-undercut the TI-99A so much, Commodore custom-made the chips, resulting in lower cost to produce. Yes, the R&D and initial cost is higher, but the end-price is far lower.

According to Laire, the licences to use the VHDL synthesis software were half a million. Plus R&D, they really would have no chance to break even, even if they used ASIC's. At the numbers they sold, the cost savings of the production would not outweight the R&D and setup costs.

Funny, at the same time I paid a lot less for my software.  For Eddas development, I shelled out approx $1200 for my software package

The MiniMig, don't forget, uses a "custom made" single chip to replace 4 chips, which themselves were custom made to reduce the cost to produce the original multi-thousand-chip Lorraine unit. Your arguement about cost is a paper tiger, the cost of producing is nothing when compared to the cost savings by having reduced the overall number of parts in the product.

That is true when we're talking about numbers but look at the post I replied to and tell me, what would be the chances of the AmigaOne, for instance, being cheaper had it not been based on off-the-self hardware? This market does not really have the numbers to allow companies to produce and sell enough to cover the cost of custom hardware and make profit.

Actually, very good chances.  I did a cost breakdown for a similar move at about the same time, by migrating to a fixed ASIC and integrating as much as possible, saved almost $45 on production costs.  The toolup would have cost approx $37000, mind you, so you'd have to sell 825 boards to break even.  But this would have eliminated the whole Mai-supply issue, and given you a faster chipset to boot.

[downix]

persia wrote:
Custom graphics chips were a bad idea.  First of all you are reinventing the wheel, companies like NVIDIA and ATI spend millions of dollars on designing video cards, don't tell me that a company that can't pony up an additional $7K for it's OS could possibly do what NVIDIA and ATI do.

Also, having the video on a card means that you are in control, maybe you by your system with a low end video card and then expand later or you replace an old card with new.  Either way you are in control.  

Of course if you make the computer then a custom video chip set can be a big dongle I suppose, but the bigger and better dongle is intel's trusted platforn technology, that's what Apple uses.

I admit speculating on what Amiga would have done had they survived is difficult and there was virtually zero chance of survival, but the point is that had Amiga survived, Amiga OS today would look abosolutely nothing like Amiga oS 4.

Who said graphics?  Above I said that the current crop of graphics chips do a fine job.  It's the cost of the rest of em that can drive you up.

My suggestion, if you were to take it, would be to license one of the GPU's out there (nVidia or XGI would be my suggestion) then design a chipset around that and the CPU, giving you a trifecta of performance.  GPU's are underutilized even under heavy loads in several cases due to bad system management thanks, in part, to the system chipsets under them.  A solid supporting chipset could cut production costs, and make a more powerful solution.

[AmiGR]

Actually, very good chances. I did a cost breakdown for a similar move at about the same time, by migrating to a fixed ASIC and integrating as much as possible, saved almost $45 on production costs. The toolup would have cost approx $37000, mind you, so you'd have to sell 825 boards to break even. But this would have eliminated the whole Mai-supply issue, and given you a faster chipset to boot.

And if you add the costs of hiring someone to design and test such a chipset? It's not as if Eyetech had anyone with the skills of doing that, they tried to hire Escena to design a custom chipset (on FPGA, iirc, but that's a different story) but failed.

[downix]

AmiGR wrote:

Actually, very good chances. I did a cost breakdown for a similar move at about the same time, by migrating to a fixed ASIC and integrating as much as possible, saved almost $45 on production costs. The toolup would have cost approx $37000, mind you, so you'd have to sell 825 boards to break even. But this would have eliminated the whole Mai-supply issue, and given you a faster chipset to boot.

And if you add the costs of hiring someone to design and test such a chipset? It's not as if Eyetech had anyone with the skills of doing that, they tried to hire Escena to design a custom chipset (on FPGA, iirc, but that's a different story) but failed.

Quite correct.  Don't forget, I'm talking as a guy that does know VHDL and Verilog, and finds hardware a fun thing to play with.

Note, I can make as good a case for using commodity chipsets in such a solution as well.  I just don't like seeing both sides of any arguement dismissed so casually, as most likely the best solution would be a mixture of both.

[AmiGR]

Note, I can make as good a case for using commodity chipsets in such a solution as well. I just don't like seeing both sides of any arguement dismissed so casually, as most likely the best solution would be a mixture of both.

Agreed. I won't pretend to have any real-world experience with chipset design or that I've produced any at any point myself anyway. ;-)

[downix]

AmiGR wrote:

Note, I can make as good a case for using commodity chipsets in such a solution as well. I just don't like seeing both sides of any arguement dismissed so casually, as most likely the best solution would be a mixture of both.

Agreed. I won't pretend to have any real-world experience with chipset design or that I've produced any at any point myself anyway. ;-)

Well, how about I present the proposal I made to one of the guys awhile back.

Xilinx offers free cores for a few functions, including a HT module and PPC bus.  Take those, add a DDR2 controller, and viola, you now have a fully functioning module that can substitute for an AM2 Athlon on a motherboard.  Using the CPU fan mount for support, you can even fit it into an existing socket.  Now, the performance wouldn't be worth the work, but if you swapped out the BIOS with an OpenFirmware, you'd have a fully functional PPC based machine w/o needing to develop a new motherboard beyond custom making the firmware, which would limit you to a specific motherboard or a limited selection of motherboards, which you retail for a slight markup.

[AmiGR]

Xilinx offers free cores for a few functions, including a HT module and PPC bus. Take those, add a DDR2 controller, and viola, you now have a fully functioning module that can substitute for an AM2 Athlon on a motherboard. Using the CPU fan mount for support, you can even fit it into an existing socket. Now, the performance wouldn't be worth the work, but if you swapped out the BIOS with an OpenFirmware, you'd have a fully functional PPC based machine w/o needing to develop a new motherboard beyond custom making the firmware, which would limit you to a specific motherboard or a limited selection of motherboards, which you retail for a slight markup.

I like the idea and I'd be willing to bet that the performance, worth the effort or not, would be better than any ArticiaS machine. ;-)

[downix]

AmiGR wrote:

Xilinx offers free cores for a few functions, including a HT module and PPC bus. Take those, add a DDR2 controller, and viola, you now have a fully functioning module that can substitute for an AM2 Athlon on a motherboard. Using the CPU fan mount for support, you can even fit it into an existing socket. Now, the performance wouldn't be worth the work, but if you swapped out the BIOS with an OpenFirmware, you'd have a fully functional PPC based machine w/o needing to develop a new motherboard beyond custom making the firmware, which would limit you to a specific motherboard or a limited selection of motherboards, which you retail for a slight markup.

I like the idea and I'd be willing to bet that the performance, worth the effort or not, would be better than any ArticiaS machine. ;-)

Um... yeah, you could say that again.  

The beauty about the design was that it was made to support up to 4 CPU's.  A single CPU would have been a waste of memory bandwidth.  But, still, the cost for the unit would have more than offset the cost savings on the motherboard.  But performance would have been better I'd have bet.

[itix]

Too bad this scheme did not continue on Amiga series. I wonder why Commodore was selling Amiga 1000 with such insane price tag.

Hrm? $1000 for a machine that beat $4000 workstations, graphically?

Amiga 1000 sales were struggling while cheaper (yet still expensive but technically inferior) Atari ST was selling like hot cakes here in Europe. Consumers simply could not afford an Amiga 1000.
 
But of course they got it finally right and inexpensive Amiga 500 made Amiga successful. I just wonder why it did not happen with Amiga 1000 when they are based on the same chipset.

[downix]

itix wrote:

Too bad this scheme did not continue on Amiga series. I wonder why Commodore was selling Amiga 1000 with such insane price tag.

Hrm? $1000 for a machine that beat $4000 workstations, graphically?

Amiga 1000 sales were struggling while cheaper (yet still expensive but technically inferior) Atari ST was selling like hot cakes here in Europe. Consumers simply could not afford an Amiga 1000.
 
But of course they got it finally right and inexpensive Amiga 500 made Amiga successful. I just wonder why it did not happen with Amiga 1000 when they are based on the same chipset.

but they're not.  Actually your arguement is a perfect example of Commodores willingness to cut costs by the use of Custom Chipsets.  The A1000's chipset was just the three main chips + CIA's.  While the A500, they migrated logic that previously was on the board into Agnus, making the Fat Agnus, *AND* consolidated yet other logic to make the Gary chip.  In short, they cut the cost to produce by almost a third through the use of custom chip logic, consolidating chips from the previous design into newer, cheaper units.

[A6000]

Every day our community shrinks, for the amiga to survive we need new users or when we die the amiga will die.

We need to pursuade new users to buy a 3rd gen amiga ( when they become available) instead of :-
1. pc
2. games console
3. mac
4. linux box
5. anything else

To do this the new amiga must be as far ahead of the pc as it was in 1984, and be reasonably priced.
This can only be done by a manufacturer with a business plan to make, market and sell a minimum of 500,000 units a year.
The cost of designing a custom chipset will be amortised over 500,000 units and production costs will allow the amiga to compete on price.
The major costs come in persuading people to buy the machine (marketing).
The amiga does not have to replace the pc, simply! carve out a niche for itself.

[downix]

A6000 wrote:
Every day our community shrinks, for the amiga to survive we need new users or when we die the amiga will die.

We need to pursuade new users to buy a 3rd gen amiga ( when they become available) instead of :-
1. pc
2. games console
3. mac
4. linux box
5. anything else

To do this the new amiga must be as far ahead of the pc as it was in 1984, and be reasonably priced.
This can only be done by a manufacturer with a business plan to make, market and sell a minimum of 500,000 units a year.
The cost of designing a custom chipset will be amortised over 500,000 units and production costs will allow the amiga to compete on price.
The major costs come in persuading people to buy the machine (marketing).
The amiga does not have to replace the pc, simply! carve out a niche for itself.

Quite right, and it is more than doable.  I would even strongly suggest partnering with nVidia, as they have a GPU and chipset design with some merit, but need to utilize it on a non-PC.  Some smart development, custom ASIC for the CPU, maybe a better memory controller, we'd have something.  Imagine a true legacy-free system paired with a super-thin OS embedded into the mobo.  

[A6000]

Our saintly OEM could participate in the opensource openGL graphics processor projects, Nvidia's processors are discontinued after 2-3 years, we don't want that pain again.

[koaftder]

Quite right, and it is more than doable.  I would even strongly suggest partnering with nVidia, as they have a GPU and chipset design with some merit, but need to utilize it on a non-PC.  Some smart development, custom ASIC for the CPU, maybe a better memory controller, we'd have something.  Imagine a true legacy-free system paired with a super-thin OS embedded into the mobo.  

Or you could just focus on the software, which is what really matters.

[downix]

koaftder wrote:

Quite right, and it is more than doable.  I would even strongly suggest partnering with nVidia, as they have a GPU and chipset design with some merit, but need to utilize it on a non-PC.  Some smart development, custom ASIC for the CPU, maybe a better memory controller, we'd have something.  Imagine a true legacy-free system paired with a super-thin OS embedded into the mobo.  

Or you could just focus on the software, which is what really matters.

And wind up on a dead end as you sink 18 months into developing "only software" just to have the one hardware piece you relied on dry up, with no alternative?

Have you not learned the lessons of the A1 and Pegasos?

[koaftder]

downix wrote:

koaftder wrote:

Quite right, and it is more than doable.  I would even strongly suggest partnering with nVidia, as they have a GPU and chipset design with some merit, but need to utilize it on a non-PC.  Some smart development, custom ASIC for the CPU, maybe a better memory controller, we'd have something.  Imagine a true legacy-free system paired with a super-thin OS embedded into the mobo.  

Or you could just focus on the software, which is what really matters.

And wind up on a dead end as you sink 18 months into developing "only software" just to have the one hardware piece you relied on dry up, with no alternative?

Have you not learned the lessons of the A1 and Pegasos?

Where they went wrong was tying down to a custom board. Stuffing some CPU core on an asic and having NVidia roll out a chip doesn't do anything but make it cost more. Heres an idea, do what apple did, float your platform on standard pc hardware. Nobody cares what chips are in the box. Advances in hardware don't impress people anymore. This is the late 1980s.