What If It Wasn't PPC

[Tron2k2]

Transmeta.  They had a chip which could be a chamelion, supposedly, and be reconfigured to emulate x86, PPC, etc.  It never worked right :-(  At least not at any respectable speed (and this was 'respectable' in 2002, mind you..)

[Hammer]

quarkx wrote:
I haven't been keeping up on PPC, so forgive this if it sounds dumb, but isn't the cell processor multiple PPC cores?

On PS3, it's 1 PPE + 7 SPE. PPE code doesn't run on SPEs.

Xbox 360’s Xenon has 3 PPEs @3.2Ghz, each CPU core issues two instruction per cycle and it’s equipped with VMX/Altivec with MS’s Direct3D dot product instructions. 3 PPEs shares a 1.6Ghz L2 cache.

[Lorraine]

/

[Hammer]

AeroMan wrote:

dammy wrote:

Which magic in ia32 and amd64 are you thinking about ?

Does quad core with direct connect architecture for under $200 USD count?

Dammy

Freescale has an 8 core chip running @ 1.5GHz. The QorIQ P4080.
It also has loads of on chip peripherals that ia´s and amd´s doesn´t.

On “many cores” front, AMD’s Radeon HD 4850/4870 (RV770)has 800 scalar processors.

Anyway, each of QorIQ P4080's e500 cores issues two instructions per cycle. A total of 16 instruction issues per cycle.

P4080 use e500mc variant. E500v2 variant includes a double precision floating point. e500's vector units are 64bits wide i.e. 2X 32bit. This is like AMD's 64bit 3DNow SIMD.
 

But the focus for PPC market is not desktop PCs anymore. So we should not expect these beasts in our desktops

Hardly a processing beast i.e. it's like gluing 8 PPC440 with 64bit SIMDs.

[dammy]

by itix on 2008/11/29 19:49:51

Quote:

    Quote:


        And not to forget... HP released their OS 3.5 in 1999. That was quite late, wasnt it? Now how long it would have taken to port the OS to another CPU? We have got real life example...


    We certainly do. It took Dr.Schulz about seven months, doing it part time (full time job, wife with newborn plus two very young children) to port AROS to SAM440, and that was a crap load of stuff being ported or fresh code. Had he been full time at it, I bet he could have done it in less then 12 weeks.



AROS is written portability in mind. OS 3.1 wasnt and according to an interview of Olaf Barthel it seems that it was quite mess:

They could have easily used AROS code for their own as MOS did.  Then there is AFA, there is no reason why the project couldn't have been done by a couple of great coders in a very reasonable time period. Ben and Evert already had a deal with Olaf for the source code and they pitched a six month time period so they had to know the status of the source code for a port project for a contract with AI.

Now given the capabilities of portable devices of that time period, why couldn't it have been done in a pretty tight time period?

Dammy

[itix]

@dammy

They could have easily used AROS code for their own as MOS did. Then there is AFA, there is no reason why the project couldn't have been done by a couple of great coders in a very reasonable time period.

Maybe Amiga Technologies was just badly managed.

Now given the capabilities of portable devices of that time period, why couldn't it have been done in a pretty tight time period?

Who would have done that and who would funded that project?

[dammy]

by itix on 2008/11/30 4:10:27

Quote:


    They could have easily used AROS code for their own as MOS did. Then there is AFA, there is no reason why the project couldn't have been done by a couple of great coders in a very reasonable time period.



Maybe Amiga Technologies was just badly managed.

AT wouldn't have been involved, it would have been AI since they were the ones authorized a PPC port.

Quote:


    Now given the capabilities of portable devices of that time period, why couldn't it have been done in a pretty tight time period?



Who would have done that and who would funded that project?

I couldn't tell you back then who would have had the skill to do it, but there certainly some great talent out in the Amiga community that could have done it.  AI had funding back then, they could have easily thrown some of funding from all the millions they burned through on a couple of decent coders to do the port, in house.  They had Ray at the time, he could have been their internal project manager or just done a bounty.

Dammy

[Golem!dk]

dammy wrote:
If AI went against the idea of using PPC, but went with a mobile friendly arch, where would they be today?

Exactly where they are now.

Could we be busy trying to purchase a new generation aPhone this Xmas?

No.

[itix]

@dammy

AT wouldn't have been involved, it would have been AI since they were the ones authorized a PPC port.

Ah well... But Amino Developments bought Amiga in 1999/2000 which again more or less collapsed in the year 2001.

I couldn't tell you back then who would have had the skill to do it, but there certainly some great talent out in the Amiga community that could have done it. AI had funding back then, they could have easily thrown some of funding from all the millions they burned through on a couple of decent coders to do the port, in house. They had Ray at the time, he could have been their internal project manager or just done a bounty.

I think the results would have been the same as they are now. Amiga in the bin and Amiga developers -- including Ray Akey -- left unpaid.

[dammy]

I think the results would have been the same as they are now. Amiga in the bin and Amiga developers -- including Ray Akey -- left unpaid.

I'll disagree as there were probably a good 100,000 amiga users back then.  If a quarter bought the new product and AI got $50 before any upgrades, that $1.25M may have kept AI alive and employees, like Gary P, in health insurance.

Dammy

[Golem!dk]

@dammy

Sure, with a different AI things might have been different, or do you really think they were ever competent enough to succeed?

Anyhow... doesn't really matter, and didn't you move on already? It's hard to let go I guess

[uncharted]

dammy wrote:
If AI went against the idea of using PPC, but went with a mobile friendly arch, where would they be today?   Could we be busy trying to purchase a new generation aPhone this Xmas?

Dammy

aPhone? Sounds a lot like aHole :-)

[AeroMan]

Hammer wrote:

On “many cores” front, AMD’s Radeon HD 4850/4870 (RV770)has 800 scalar processors.

Yes, but I was comparing with the statement of "quad core x86" to clarify that multiple core PPCs exists and they even outnumber the "quads"

I agree with you that the RV770 is wild and amazing), but it is not x86

Hardly a processing beast i.e. it's like gluing 8 PPC440 with 64bit SIMDs.
 

Ain´t that a beast? Each core is twice as fast as a SAM and there are 8 of them and SIMDs also. It may not be as fast as a top of the line x86, but it is faster than any PPC machine we may find on the market

[dammy]

Sure, with a different AI things might have been different, or do you really think they were ever competent enough to succeed?

If the Sheep Lord didn't have a a hand in it, maybe. If Ray was the project manager, it could have successful IMO.  Key would have been something people could see a future for and getting the product out within six months, not six years like OS4.

Anyhow... doesn't really matter, and didn't you move on already? It's hard to let go I guess

I moved on from AROS, not the Amiga community.

Dammy

[BillE]

> Who can live without a phone theese days?

Well I have a real one connected to the phone line - hardly use it for phone calls at all, mainly just my internet connection. If it were not for the fact I need ot for the internet connection, I would get rid of that phone too, they are just a nuisance.

I just cannot understand this obsession with mobile phones at all, who wants to stare into a screen the size of a postage stamp.

Phone calls at home are bad enough but if I am out I just do NOT want to be contacted by phone  !

Therefore no need nor desure for one of the devices from hell, the people that use them seem to have no manners either.


Bill.

[itix]

@dammy

I'll disagree as there were probably a good 100,000 amiga users back then. If a quarter bought the new product and AI got $50 before any upgrades, that $1.25M may have kept AI alive and employees, like Gary P, in health insurance.

Ha! Only if a quarter of Amiga users bought new Amiga in 1993...