PC still playing Amiga catchup

[TheMagicM]

I think you'll find that MS-DOS only equals AmigaOS in shut down time i.e., instant. While I do think anyone saying their classic machine beats any modern PC at anything other than reading Amiga floppies is nuts, I will say that the "average" PC experience of myself and everyone I have contact with in the real world is one of waiting - waiting for the list of apps to appear in the Start menu, waiting for a window to minimise so they can access the window open behind it. This is an everyday thing that everyone I work with just accepts, but does my head in because I know it doesn't have to be like that. True, they're not cutting edge machines, but they're all only running XP OTOH which is now 7-ish years old. This is most definitely a Windows thing rather than a hardware thing, and maybe with some better programming of the Windows task and memory handling it could be much better. But as it stands, the average Windows machine that people use every day can't hold a candle to a top-end machine running Linux, or even AmigaOS4 in terms of responsiveness. Responsiveness is really where it ends with AmigaOS though; a well configured, high powered PC can do it, but the average machines that most office workers in the world have to use simply can't, and that is actually the average experience.

My god man...you must be running XP on a 486.  Every machine I've had from my AMD 2200+ CPU based system to my Quad core system runnning XP to Vista, I've never had any issues like that ever.    

My "everyday office computer" at work is very responsive also.  Its a Dell core2duo laptop w/a 17" display, 4 gigs ram running XP.

The people I've run into that have slow systems are the same people who do not maintain it.  You throw garbage into Windows you'll get garbage out.  You take care of Windows, it'll take care of you.  Its not the most reliable OS but it works.

[Trev]

Four of those CPU processes are capable of being in the run state concurrently provided they aren't making atomic operations on the same area of memory. Which is highly unlikely because this is a virtual memory system. Most of the processes have no idea the others exist, let alone have the opportunity to lock something they own.

Let's not forget two threads in the same process attempting to access data in the same cache line, which one core will implicitly lock. Pad those data structures. NUMA systems, e.g. multi-socket AMD hosts, could see implicit locks on the memory bus as well.

[Karlos]

Let's not forget two threads in the same process attempting to access data in the same cache line, which one core will implicitly lock. Pad those data structures. NUMA systems, e.g. multi-socket AMD hosts, could see implicit locks on the memory bus as well.

Of course, you can't totally avoid situations where you are going cause cores to wait on each other for access to some exclusive resource. Still, I wouldn't trade my Q9450 for a single core processor

[Trev]

True. But you can greatly minimize contention with creative use of pointers and padding. EDIT: (Unless you're using Java, in which case you're at the mercy of the VM's garbage collector to keep your data in order.)

[Methuselas]

Probably. I dare say it's all happening in a parallel existence right now.

Where do you think Red gets all his stuff from....... :laughing:

[amigaksi]

Well, AmigaOS generally tasks run for at least an exec quantum of time before being preemptively switched out. However, as Trev says, all kinds of other things can happen in unpredictable ways.

AmigaOS is most assuredly not a RTOS, however it is so damned efficient that for the most part it behaves as if it were one. Right up until it hits heavy CPU load.

But Amiga hardware supports real-time systems better than modern PCs.  Who cares about OS when OS easily allows you to take over the machine and use cycle-exact coding unlike modern OSes which are bloated and hardly anyone knows what's happening internally.

[amigaksi]

Also, the argument was about "real-time OS", not what constitutes a real-time task in general. AmigaOS and Linux are in no way, shape or form "real-time" OS. You should probably look up the definition of what constitutes a real-time OS if you think differently.

A real-time OS guarantees that an event (an interrupt ot whatever) shall be dealt within a specified minimum time limit. A failure to do so is considered a complete failure of the OS.

No commonly used desktop OS makes this guarantee. You'll only see it in embedded hardware and mission critical systems.

Read what I wrote-- it depends on what you are doing.  Each real-time system has it's time constraints-- if you know the worse case time the OS takes (which is easier to figure out on Amiga than modern OSes), you can design a real-time system with OS.  Other option you have on the Amiga is that you can bypass the Amiga OS.  The fact that you have hardware support guaranteeing that you can trigger off IRQ or do regster modifications with accuracy of 558ns helps with real-time tasks regardless of whether OS supports it or not.

[amigaksi]

Then please do. I'm genuinely intrigued as to what this one example could be. And once you deliver it, I suppose you could look at it the other way around. I would suggest the amiga has been playing catchup to the PC for some time now. Or at least it would be, if it was even in the race still. Which it isn't and it hasn't been since the last hardware amiga rolled off the production line.
...

I already did-- you have a very shallow understanding of PC architecture so you did not even see it.  Reading joysticks on PC vs. reading joysticks on Amiga is a clear cut example where Amiga wins hands down.  Do you need exact numbers?  I have done the timing tests on PCs going from 90Mhz up to 2.8Ghz.  I have many more examples where Amiga wins over PCs, but if you don't understand this example others will be very difficult for you.

>There's no greater demonstration of how far behind the amiga is in hardware terms than a quick glance at the hardware upgrades that are available for it...

I have a PC hooked up to my Amiga so I guess my Amiga is better than your PC since I can consider the PC as a new hardware add-on.

>You are probably sitting there, p!ssed at me, thinking I'm some PC fanboy and that I hate the Amiga etc. The fact is, you couldn't be more wrong...

No, I'm not pissed off at anyone.  You are just wrong in stating that PC has surpassed Amiga in all respects and that's all I'm pointing out since some blind followers seem to be taking your views.  In fact, Amiga just surpassed PC in another catagory without even doing further research/development.  Parallel ports are no longer put on new PCs so Amiga has another thing that PCs don't have.  The ability to do parallel port based software projects.

[amigaksi]

First of all, it is a "real PC". The graphics card is no more out of place in this machine than any of the custom chips in my "real Amigas". This simulation runs on any PC that has a G80 or above based graphics card.

Secondly, there's nothing "specialised" whatsoever about the card. All current generation graphics cards tend to have fully programmable parallel arithmetic units.

Thirdly, I have run the same simulation entirely on the CPU. A naive single threaded implementation in the same "real PC" is about 250x slower than the GPU version on this machine. I can boost it significantly by optimizing it for four core execution and even further by using specific SSE3 vector operations. However, that naive version would still be 400x faster than my humble 040 could manage in a perfect world where memory bandwidth was infinite and all operations took one cycle. In the actual real world, it couldn't run it at all, there's not enough memory available to even hold the state information for this simulation.

Criticising the use of the GPU is also shooting your own argument for the Amiga in the foot. So far, you've extolled the virtue of using the custom chips for "realtime" performance, such as polling the joyport. If our experiment were simply filling flatshaded polygons on a 68000 amiga, would you be advocating the use of the CPU and not some "specialised graphics processor" ? Of course not.
...

My point is not that current graphics cards are NOT superior to Amiga graphics overall, but one of standards.  Unless your application runs on all the other graphics cards, it's of no use to me since I can build a custom PC w/souped up hardware that excels all other PCs but any software taking advantage of such hardware would only run on my PC.  Amigas custom chips are in every Amiga.  I have dealt with many different graphics cards installed in various people's homes and they range from doing 15MB/second to 200MB/second data transfers so if I wrote some application I can't just assume they have 200MB/second.

>Incidentally, do you really think a 2.6GHz CPU with 12MB of cache, even running the least optimized code in existence, isn't capable of polling a piece of hardware at 1kHz without missing a single iteration?

This is your shallow understanding of PC architecture.  I/O is not caches.  I/O has it's own clock way slower than processor clock.  In fact, even the memory doesn't even run at the processor clock and I/O to hardware is much slower than memory.  Only specialized AGP type buses can access memory mapped areas faster than I/O transfers but even in those cases their control ports for I/O are still slower than regular memory access.

[Karlos]

I already did-- you have a very shallow understanding of PC architecture so you did not even see it.  Reading joysticks on PC vs. reading joysticks on Amiga is a clear cut example where Amiga wins hands down.  Do you need exact numbers?  I have done the timing tests on PCs going from 90Mhz up to 2.8Ghz.  I have many more examples where Amiga wins over PCs, but if you don't understand this example others will be very difficult for you.

You still didn't clarify how you were doing this timing, or on which OS. Therefore your assertion cannot at this stage be solely blamed on the hardware. For example, if you disable speedstep in your application and wrote your delay loop in assembler, you can pretty much get it down to bus cycle level of accuracy.

If you were relying on OS level sleep()/usleep() type functions you aren't going to get accuracy any more than you get from a DoIO() on the timer.device, probably worse, in fact.

>There's no greater demonstration of how far behind the amiga is in hardware terms than a quick glance at the hardware upgrades that are available for it...

I have a PC hooked up to my Amiga so I guess my Amiga is better than your PC since I can consider the PC as a new hardware add-on.

If it makes you happy to believe that, carry on.

>You are probably sitting there, p!ssed at me, thinking I'm some PC fanboy and that I hate the Amiga etc. The fact is, you couldn't be more wrong...

No, I'm not pissed off at anyone.  You are just wrong in stating that PC has surpassed Amiga in all respects and that's all I'm pointing out since some blind followers seem to be taking your views.  In fact, Amiga just surpassed PC in another catagory without even doing further research/development.  Parallel ports are no longer put on new PCs so Amiga has another thing that PCs don't have.  The ability to do parallel port based software projects.

Well, you got me there. I don't have a parallel port. I'm really up the creek without a paddle now. I wonder whether or not USB would make a reasonable alternative for control applications? I have about 12 of those to play with.

FWIW, I don't have a joystick port either. Tragic, really.

[Karlos]

This is your shallow understanding of PC architecture.  I/O is not caches.  I/O has it's own clock way slower than processor clock.  In fact, even the memory doesn't even run at the processor clock and I/O to hardware is much slower than memory.  

You don't say...

Only specialized AGP type buses can access memory mapped areas faster than I/O transfers but even in those cases their control ports for I/O are still slower than regular memory access.

Good grief. AGP is obsolete, PCI Express 2 is the standard now and has been for some time. Devices talk to each other via high speed point to point serial communication, multiple devices can be using the bus at the same time. It's all a far cry from PCI and AGP.

[stefcep2]

@stefcep

I understand your need to feel like the 1985 Amiga is still as capable as a modern day PC or Mac.  I really do.  Everyone feels the need to justify why they're still running what they do, especially in light of overwhelming evidence to support the contrary.

Using an Amiga today is a hobby for everyone, and I mean 99.999% of everyone on the planet.  Aside from the strange car wash or local public television station, there are literally no more legitimate uses for an Amiga in a professional setting.  

Take away professional settings, and you're left with personal use, which -- when you consider there are better and faster alternatives out there -- means "a hobby".

There's nothing wrong with that.

For the record, I loathe Windows to my very core and even moreso when I have to use it at work.

That being said, there simply isn't any single way on the planet that you can compare a 2 GIGAhertz machine to a 7 (or even 14) MEGAhertz computer and have the latter come out ahead in ANY category on the planet.  Sorry.  You just can't do it.

I often laugh when some people trot out reboot times and "I don't have to shut my machine down".

What you, and every other stalwart defender of the faith always forget is that yes, Windows and Macs take longer to boot, but when they boot, they're loading up easily 100 times more active features than the antiquated Amiga.  

If you want a fair test on boot times, take your 14mhz machine, load it down with network stacks, font handling stacks, printer handlers, and everything else that a stock Windows box does by default.  Have it then automatically connect to everything from your printer to the network to.. well, everything that Windows does automatically, then time it from the moment you hit the power button until the time the hard drive quits gronking.

You *will* find that your precious little Amiga will take -- at a minimum -- more time to boot than even a mid-level Windows box.  That is, *if* you could get the Amiga to even load 1/10th the features that Windows has, and you can't do it because frankly, the features Windows has by base install don't even exist for the Amiga.

I don't say this to tear you down.  I really don't.  Like I said, I'm a Mac guy and I hate Windows as much as you do, but... You can't sit here defending the Amiga as being better because it boots faster and come out sounding the least bit credible.  It just makes you sound like a fanboy, which I'm sure is not your intent.

Also for the record, prior to the demise of my last Windows box, which I worked on 10 hours a day, 6 days a week professionally for an Internet Registrar doing everything from programming to tech support.  During that time, my average "up time" (between reboots) was well over 6 months between reboots for a matter of 8 YEARS.  

Most of those reboots caused by extended power outages which drained the UPS system I have in place.

Live well, Learn much, Love often,

Wayne

Sorry Wayne but you've got all me wrong.  

I' not a fanboy, I use an Amiga for fun and I know what year it is, but your post makes you sound like someone who doesn't really understand the core of the argument.  

Of course PC's load 100 more processes, but they have 1000 times the memory.  (We'll ignore the other advancements in RAM design and clock spec modern PC's have.).  Ofcourse the latest PC CPU can process numbers much, much faster than a 14 mhz 68020, thats because the PC's has several CPU's with clock speeds that are a factor of 200 times faster.  (We'll ignore the other advancements in cache design, hyperthreading blah blah etc.  We'll also ignore the blazingly fast graphics chips/gpu's, PCIE busses, SATA , USB2.   So 1000 times more RAM, 200 x 2,3,4 CPU speed increase, super fast GPU superfast SATA but I've gotta wait 2 and half minutes to boot.  I gotta put up with a start menu that stutters to open, because a web page loads, I've gotta search for the mouse pointer on screen beacsue its mysteriously teleported itself from one side of the screen to the other beacsue the OS doesn't have enough resources( !!!) to animate it smoothly because another app is loading in the background.

So you can't load vista on an 8 meg 68020 A1200?  No kidding.  That shows you just
'don't get it".  Let me put it this way;  Your PC has 1000 times the hardware specs to load and process 100 times the data, EVERYTHING ought to be 10 times faster.  Ask yourself : IS it?  Why not?

[amigaksi]

That's an entirely arbitrary statement. My PC boots MS-DOS in less than one second (after POST, which takes a bit longer--system firmware is quite complex these days, with more features than your average Amiga). That's much faster than any of my Amigas. Is it a useful measurement? No, because there's no direct correlation between the two systems, and ...

... here's where someone argues that no one uses MS-DOS. Well, no one uses AmigaOS, either. I'd wager there are more active MS-DOS users (millions, even) than there are active AmigaOS users. If you don't believe me, then you don't spend enough time in front of embedded systems.

Everyone really does need to straighten out their definitions of real-time. Karlos is talking computer science, everyone else is talking user perception. There is no "real-time" in user perception. Humans are neat, but we have lots of built-in latency. Milliseconds have passed before I know I've pricked my finger, for example.

Personally, I can do more useful work in a shorter amount of time on my Windows system (Core i7 920, 6GB RAM, GeForce 8800 GTS 512 (G92), blah blah blah). The Amigas are just for fun.

I use MSDOS still and I can state that Amiga boots up faster since it needs to load a 1024 byte boot block to be ready to accept commands.  It's main functions in ROM.  MSDOS on the other hand reads a boot block followed by the OS functions (MSDOS.SYS/IO.SYS/COMMAND.COM/etc.) before you can actually use the OS functions.  Actually Atari/C64 with cartridge based software boot up with software faster than both.  Boot-up time is useful in some cases where you just want to try testing some stuff.  I still use Atari 800 for testing external devices connected to joystick ports with simple PEEK/POKE 54016.  

Also useful for doing some simple math.  Don't we still use calculators because they boot up faster than booting up a PC although you can get the functionality of the calculator in a laptop/desktop.  I find Atari/Amigas retro-machines easy to analyze for video/real-time stuff and fun for games since their code is highly efficient and optimized and perfectly synched up to video rates.  And you know you are the only thing running and there won't be any viruses or any Wifi doing background bullcrap.

[stefcep2]

My god man...you must be running XP on a 486.  Every machine I've had from my AMD 2200+ CPU based system to my Quad core system runnning XP to Vista, I've never had any issues like that ever.    

My "everyday office computer" at work is very responsive also.  Its a Dell core2duo laptop w/a 17" display, 4 gigs ram running XP.

that my friend is the elephant in the room that you can't see:  you are running a 7 year old OS on hardware specs that are more or less 12 months old.  try running XP on a p3 600 with 256 meg ram, hey that was the average PC when XP came out.  And run Word 2003, a web browser an email client and see how much you enjoy it.  you might not even be able to open the start menu for all the hard drive groaning you'll get..

your system runs ok because you are using the "if its slow, then throw more hardware at it' philosphy.

[persia]

And of course a Vax has a punch card reader attached to it, which is arguably more useful that a parallel port, so Vax still rules!

That all depends on what the job is. My A1, for example would be dozens of times slower than my current linux box for the stuff I'm experimenting with at the moment and my classic machine many times slower again. My 040 manages say, what, 3.5 MFLOPS peak? Assuming I could write the necessary code in assembler to maintain that throughput (totally overlooking the complete lack of memory speed) that's about 101,000 times slower than my current PC manages. In reality it would be even slower given how slow the fsqrt instruction is (ie you'd never get the 3.5MFLOPS for these calculations).



Don't get me wrong, I love using my old miggies, but when it comes to work, it's all horses for courses.



Not enough of a market, sadly.



Can't argue with that. I use ubuntu on my home PC, though work requires that I use fedora.

I already did-- you have a very shallow understanding of PC architecture so you did not even see it.  Reading joysticks on PC vs. reading joysticks on Amiga is a clear cut example where Amiga wins hands down.  Do you need exact numbers?  I have done the timing tests on PCs going from 90Mhz up to 2.8Ghz.  I have many more examples where Amiga wins over PCs, but if you don't understand this example others will be very difficult for you.

>There's no greater demonstration of how far behind the amiga is in hardware terms than a quick glance at the hardware upgrades that are available for it...

I have a PC hooked up to my Amiga so I guess my Amiga is better than your PC since I can consider the PC as a new hardware add-on.

>You are probably sitting there, p!ssed at me, thinking I'm some PC fanboy and that I hate the Amiga etc. The fact is, you couldn't be more wrong...

No, I'm not pissed off at anyone.  You are just wrong in stating that PC has surpassed Amiga in all respects and that's all I'm pointing out since some blind followers seem to be taking your views.  In fact, Amiga just surpassed PC in another catagory without even doing further research/development.  Parallel ports are no longer put on new PCs so Amiga has another thing that PCs don't have.  The ability to do parallel port based software projects.

[TheMagicM]

that my friend is the elephant in the room that you can't see:  you are running a 7 year old OS on hardware specs that are more or less 12 months old.  try running XP on a p3 600 with 256 meg ram, hey that was the average PC when XP came out.  And run Word 2003, a web browser an email client and see how much you enjoy it.  you might not even be able to open the start menu for all the hard drive groaning you'll get..

p3 600? LOL.  get with the times.  Yea its great going on a long trip in a 1974 VW Beetle but its not as fun and comfortable as my wife's 2008 Chevy Tahoe.

your system runs ok because you are using the "if its slow, then throw more hardware at it' philosphy.

Actually, that never crossed my mind.  Systems nowadays, if you build your own, are VERY affordable.  If you're using a p3 600, then its your own fault, go wallow in your own sorrow.  I have no sympathy for you.

Its not my fault XP is 7 years old.  I upgrade my systems to keep up with the times.  I'm glad XP runs well on my systems at work.   At home, I'm ballin' with a HP laptop runnin openSuSE 11.

Too many people bash XP when its their dinosaur hardware causing the bottleneck.