Dr. Garry Hare Amiwest Speech

[System]

Kenny, you're out of line.

[System]

Hooligan,

This has gone on for far too long.  If anything, the Amiga community (with a lot of help from the MorphOS/Pegasos community) has pretty much become an impediment to the Amiga's ability to market a real machine.   Certain mouthy children are, in fact, an embarrassment to the memory of Jay Miner and the Amiga platform.

Wayne

[Hooligan_DCS]

@Wayne

The name "Amiga" has been raped by executives in our community, but Jay Miner's memory stands still unharmed and is respected by very many people, including me.

Those certain mouthy children you mention, well, in my eyes they only make clowns of themselves.
LUCKILY it seems to be a hobby of only a few people, so not all is lost.

[itix]

@wayne

There is always the delete button. As I see it is very popular today.

[The_Power_of_the_Ginger]

(*Sidesteps around sticky arguments*)

This may be a naive thing for me to say, but this looks like really quite nice news. If it had happened 5 years ago it would have been better, but the old saying "Better late than never" (and avoiding the sayings "Heard it all before" and "Too many cliches spoil the broth") may well ring true.

I simply hope that it means, from what the announcement looks like, that a talented development community will get the chance to produce something worthwhile, and maybe get paid for it this time.

Whatever the situation, I hope someone will knock it into bite-size chunks for me, and that www.amiga.com will get revamped.

But then, I fell for the iwin hoax. :-D

[Waccoon]

And I wonder.. everyone knows DE is dead. There are no developers anymore, there is no new software anymore, most of DE developers left or went for an A1.

Heh.  I couldn't even become a developer.  Amiga Inc. must have been on vacation when I bought my SDK.

If I would employ Garda, I would become bplan?

No, but if you shuffle his debts and contractual obligations to avoid forclosure...

I haven't reached any conclustions on KMOS.  I was  happy when they announced they had bought OS4.  But, when they announced they had bought ALL of Amiga Inc., well AFTER buying OS4, that's just too fishy for me.  I'm in agreement with KennyR (at least to a point).

Yes, and what you'd need to do is create a low-level hardware interface that is basically the VP run-time engine. The OS would run on top of this.

I'm all for writing apps and libraries, and maybe even drivers on a VP engine, but the idea of writing an OS and other low-level parts in VP is pretty scary.  Tools like the shell, for example, should be in VP.  The kernel and low-level drivers should always be native -- hardware access is what they're supposed to handle.

Again, it's important to distinguish between the kernel and the OS.  The kernel is what provides the interface to the hardware and the low-level drivers, the OS consists of the tools, shell, GUI, and high-level drivers.

So what. CPU's these days are ridiculously fast.

It's not so much the speed.  Try doing to a CPU what DirectX did for graphics cards.  That's the point of VP.

Ironic.  Didn't the Amiga pioneer the concept of coprocessors?  Why do you think APIs like OpenGL exist?  When the were first introduced, they just added overhead.  Today, APIs are essential for coprocessing, hardware acceleration, and architecture independence.  Funny how slow the CPU world has been to adapt the practices of the graphics industry.  The Intel monopoly is a big factor.

The use of that extreme virtualization would also make it impossible to take full advantage of HW acceleration (like 3D).

Full advantage, yes, but that's like comparing assembly to C.  There's pros and cons for tryint to take full advantage of the hardware.

Personally, I think if you make a good architecture, performance will just fall into place.  Write your software normally and let VP and/or the compiler worry about the rest.  People obsess way too much over performance.

In the long run, optimization might actually reduce performance, too.  But, I won't get into how that works.  :-)

VP/intent does not support memory protection (MP is planned for AOS4.x) it never will.

My presumption is that each thread will have its own independent VP hook, so the underlying OS handles memory protection.  If all VP threads share a single VP thread, then that's a very bad idea.

Maybe cell phones don't need memory protection if they run 1-2 processes, but when they start to multitask and run hundreds of threads, the need for memory protection will become obvious.  Are we retrograding to the days of MS-DOS and Classic Macintosh?

The name "Amiga" has been raped by executives in our community, but Jay Miner's memory stands still unharmed and is respected by very many people, including me.

Keep in mind that the millions of the people who really made the Amiga special are long gone.  Only the hundreds of totally obsessed fanatics remain.  That's why I don't like the choice to use PPC.  I think most people who have converted to x86 would agree that a $200 PC mobo is a much better value than an old $800 PPC board, and my P4 is reliable and dead silent, too.

And, yes...  I'll stop talking about CPUs.  Nobody really cares anymore.

There is always the delete button. As I see it is very popular today.

I don't argue with the admins, but I wish whoever was deleting posts would just edit them down to a placefiller, instead.

[cecilia]

I haven't reached any conclustions on KMOS. I was happy when they announced they had bought OS4. But, when they announced they had bought ALL of Amiga Inc., well AFTER buying OS4, that's just too fishy for me.

i heard the interview with Hare where he says they hired Fleecy and McEwen.
not really sure what that means, but it's possible that they were hired to sweep the office floors and wash the windows.

ya never know! :-o

[Hooligan_DCS]

>Keep in mind that the millions of the people who really made the Amiga special are long gone. Only the hundreds of totally obsessed fanatics remain. That's why I don't like the choice to use PPC. I think most people who have converted to x86 would agree that a $200 PC mobo is a much better value than an old $800 PPC board, and my P4 is reliable and dead silent, too.

Of course they are cheaper.. but you don't wanna be one of THEM, do you ;-)

[Hooligan_DCS]

> heard the interview with Hare where he says they hired Fleecy and McEwen.
not really sure what that means, but it's possible that they were hired to sweep the office floors and wash the windows.

> ya never know!


Yes we do. We saw the results already, didn't we?
There is a saying that everybody deserves a second chance... moss and mcewen has consumed more than that.. and then some.

[redfox]

i heard the interview with Hare where he says they hired Fleecy and McEwen.
not really sure what that means, but it's possible that they were hired to sweep the office floors and wash the windows.

ya never know! :-o

 :lol:

[KimmoK]

@Glaucus

>Not sure what the state of VP is these days, but creating a complete OS based on the idea is exciting.

There are some realitities that describe it as "not optimum" in various issues.


>>- VP is not PowerPC, it's incompatible. It's a totally different kind of CPU.
>Yes, and what you'd need to do is create a low-level hardware interface that is basically the VP run-time engine.
>The OS would run on top of this.

It is not sensible to run all of the OS on top of VP.

>This way, the OS and all the apps would be translated to native PPC, Intel/AMD, MIPS, etc, on the fly.

But the OS and all of the apps would need to pe ported to another CPU first, the VP CPU.

Ask Hyperion if they are willing to do it...


>>I'm pretty sure that AOS responsivenes&speed can not be fully reached if the CPU is not used natively.
>So what. CPU's these days are ridiculously fast. Do we really need a 3.5Ghz chip to surf the web? With chips like that, even a 50% hit in performance would still provide a very satisfying user experience (and I think VP can achieve far better then 50%).

50% hit in performance would kill AmigaOS and me (because I would be so ashamed and disgusted).
And for house heating I'm going to use other, better means already.

IMO, one of the basic ideas of AOS is to be more efficiant than others.

One of KMOS intentions is to use AOS in some embedded use. 3.5 Ghz CPU does not fit in embedded use.

>>The use of that extreme virtualization would also make it impossible to take full advantage of HW acceleration (like 3D).
>3D graphics is tied to the video card, not the CPU. The VP engine would have nothing to do with this.

If 3D drivers are run on top of VP, it cuts off some of the performance.
If the whole 3D system is virtualized as "GVP" (GraphicsVirtualProcessor?), the efficiency of low-level Warp3D can not be reached. And every thime there appears new Graphic processor, the GVP would need to be rewritten.

Again. IMO: we should outperform Wintel rather than be slower on purpose.

For audio & pleasant sound experience, near "real time OS" performance is required.

etc...

(High level OS things could be run on top VP, but none of the low-lewel OS things. U C, there are reasons why intent requires a HOST OS on almost everywhere.)

>Alti-vec, however, might pose a problem, but there might be ways around this as well.

Right.
IIRC, not even the FPU "problem" is solved yet. Intent FPU is slow.

The way around altivec is that VP does not have altivec, and I'm sure it never will have any good SIMD VP unit.

I think making a SIMD VP would be totally insane attempt. (intent gives the possibility to use native executables amongs VP ones, perhaps that could be used...)

>>VP/intent does not support memory protection (MP is planned for AOS4.x) it never will.
>Perhaps we need to write a specialized VP system for the OS.

It has taken about 13 years for TAO to bring the VP to the current level. I doubt it would be sensible to try top outperform them in a few years time...

>Or perhaps, add it to the hardware interface and spawn a new VP instance for each application and keep them all in their own sandbox.

Hmmm... I wonder where the OS would reside then.

>Anyway, I think it's technically possible, might require more resources then Amiga has right now.

In the end....

I think at some point AOS5 would have been a HW banging OS (with MP etc, for limited set of 64bit CPU motherboards, etc.) that seamlessly runs some parts of it and some applications on top of VP(s).

It should have been possible ... the rest is history.

Let's focus on one thing at a time. All energy to get the initial AOS4.0 out first.

>It would be the ideal system and making an OS that is binary compatible with the majority of systems out there would be a great advantage for the Amiga.

IMO: AOS would not perform like AOS should if it is run on top of virtual machine.

Why would we need a OS that is binary compatible with everything?  ((I hope not just to be the first one at any cost?))
What if PPC already (or tomorrow at least) can be put everywhere?

Isn't it enough if we have applications that can be run on any system out there?  (intent and AmigaDE apps)
(And at the same time applications that run best on AOS.)


(I'm sure after the workbench is rewritten for AOS4.1, it will be possible to have identical looking user interface running on AmigaDE.)

[BigBenAussie]

Dudes, I was at Amiwest, and I think there was a lot of discussion that was not recorded between the audience and Garry.

I just woke up after getting home from my 11 hour trip from Sacramento. Arrgh Madness. Never EVER go Greyhound. Lost my baggage and all. Had to ride next to fat snoring Bubba for most of the trip too in a rickety old bus with kiddy size seats. I shoulda flown. I don't know what posessed me. Anyhoooo.

Garry wants to use A1s in the set-top boxes obviously, and these will act as conduits for wireless content (EXACTLY LIKE I"VE BEEN SAYING FOR THE LAST MONTH) to any devices, be they PCs or PDAs. The initial plan was obviously to leverage OS4 to deliver content that would take the form of movies, thus Garry talking to Hollywood production companies and telcos. He told them how his new technology aids them in terms of speeding up broadband delivery via the internet. Now, as I pointed out in MY numerous posts over the last month, he obviously saw (LIKE ME) that movies and video are not enough, and he wanted to deliver software to a variety of plaforms wirelessly as well, but with the compatability problems that would be difficult. In that regard, when he said in an earlier interview that AmigaDE was not required to deliver his solution to a customer, he was right. AmigaDE is the icing on the cake.

It was obvious(TO ME AT LEAST) that AmigaDE would solve that software compability dilemma. As we all know, if you write AmigaDE software it will be compatable with every platform, it will gain developers, and therefore we will have more software available for the OS4 platform. It is no different from porting, except it is much easier. Apps and Games written in AmigaDE will scale between PDAs, set-top boxes, consoles and Desktops!!!! More platforms, means more opportunities for developers to make money.

We simply can't get huge game releases the like of consoles, unless they're ports, so something, no matter how simple, is better than nothing, and things can only improve, as they do for any software platform. Hyperion and others will still produce OS4 native games that will blow us away. In fact Ben(Hyperion) hinted they were working on something special that will rejuvinate the platform, and give the Amiga community a bout of confidence and that we'd be cheering. Wouldn't it be lovely, if they ported the latest Halo. Hmmmm.

I asked Garry about making the AmigaDE player free and he said that Tao wouldn't allow it although he thought it was in their best interests. He said there was some way of getting around it, but didn't care to comment. The only way I can see around it is to precompile for the target platform on the server and then deliver it over the internet.

On top of this, the Amiga set-top boxes will act as wireless routers and automatically save and secure(encrypt?) data that doesn't fit on your desktop hard disk. Amigas will become synonymous with speedy content delivery, to a variety of platforms wirelessly, and network data security for the home initially, and perhaps later for Small to Medium businesses.

Garry most certainly wants to port OS4 to other platforms apart from the A1. He sees that portability and small footprint as key and the reason he bought the OS in the first place. Apparently there are many PPC enabled devices out there that could be targetted at the right time. He did not say he was porting AOS4 to AmigaDE. He was reluctant to say that he was locked into only keeping OS4 on A1 as though it was not politically correct and he did not want to emphasise it. He kinda dodged the question and said all current agreements would be honoured and that he would not announce anything else at this time. I think he commented that he wanted OS4 ported to a PDA AND SOON!!!! I think a console port would be tremendous and I predict it will happen (I've been right so far). HE ALSO SAID THAT ALL DEVICES THAT RUN AMIGAOS4 CAN BE BADGED AS AN AMIGA!!!!

GARY ALSO SAID THAT THE NEW AMIGA DE VERSION WILL BE AVAILABLE IN WEEKS AND THAT WE WILL BE BLOWN AWAY AT THE IMPROVEMENTS. I am soooooo going to puchase the new SDK. I'll have written an Amiga compatable app BEFORE I even have OS4. Now, how is this a bad thing? It is unrealistic to believe that your average joe is going to be attracted to the Amiga because of the apps, but rather the way OS4 operates and its other benefits. If software is ubiquitous it aids AmigaOS4. Thus writing AmigaDE apps does not in any way hurt the Amiga platform, and in fact leverages all existing platforms as targets, thus attracting developers who have always complained that the Amiga market is not big enough. Compatability between platforms is the holy grail. Hopefully, AmigaDE wont fail in compatability and performance the way Java is perceived to.

What else did he say? Ah, I asked Garry about porting OpenOffice and he kinda bauked, until I mentioned a browser in the same sentence, and he went off on how a world class browser was of great importance and how it is likely that he will pay for a port. Of course, he wont get the Amizilla bounty, because it'll be OS4 only!!!!

What else?? Errr... Oh, he has no plans right now to change the KMOS name to Amiga Inc, especially as the obscurity kinda assists in the licensing of further technology or the aquisition of other companies. (My vote is for renaming KMOS as Commodore but I doubt it will happen, but then who guessed KMOS would buy AmigaInc? Oh, and stop being pessimistic about the Commodore name!!! It'd be GREAT. The family reunited. If people don't remember the Amiga they sure as hell remember the C64, the best selling microcomputer of all time. The name Commodore, has far from a negative connotation in the mainstream audience)

When asked about purchasing Tao he said they had been in discussions for a week and that the best he could do is get them to agree to forging a stategic alliance that does not have either of them stepping on eachother's toes(my words).

What else? Oh, I asked Ben(Hyperion) about an OS4 port to the Transmeta devices, that could theorietically be modified to function as PPCs. He said it was not the way to go. Not sure I agree, but OK. Those Crusoe devices are getting incredibly small, powerful and SLICK.

Hey, did any of you know that Hyperion worked on the 3d routines for Intent? Ben told me.

I think it was mentioned at the Banquet, but if not, here it is,
OS4 being a closed source platform is actually more appealing to companies. This may be due to security concerns(Security through Obscurity as Ben put it), and ALSO Garry said that companies practically always mentioned how worried they were over the SCO litigation with Linux.

Hmmm. Any questions? After the show, I felt confident in Amiga's future and Amiga Inc's direction. I felt like it was soooo clear, but maybe I heard something you guys did not. So shoot me a question, and I'll let you know if it was discussed off the recording.

[Waccoon]

It is not sensible to run all of the OS on top of VP.

True.  Unfortunately, people still see an "OS" as a monolithic platform, so nobody with tecnical experience will explain which parts should be native and which should be VP to ordinary people.  Most still think web browsers are part of the OS.

Again. IMO: we should outperform Wintel rather than be slower on purpose.

Does that explain why Java has exploded in popularity?  That's about as sluggish and glitchy as you can get!

You also have to figure that Windows programmers aren't exactly concerned about reliablity, and most low-level drivers are so hell-bent on performance, there's little we can do to compete.  Do you think any Amiga graphics drivers can go up against the likes of nVidia or ATI?  They pour millions of dollars into making those drivers as fast as possible, and everything runs as close to the hardware as possible in kernel mode.  Poke fun at Windows all you want, but most drivers are designed to slice through the bloat and get as close to the hardware as possible.  I doubt you can exceed the performance of Windows in many ways.

For audio & pleasant sound experience, near "real time OS" performance is required.

Realtime has nothing to do with speed.  It has to do with latency.  Doom3 is doing all its sound mixing in software with the CPU, instead of using the hardware features of, for example, Audigy cards.  Why waste CPU cycles to do that?  For one thing, you can mix it just as you like, instead of limiting yourself to the capabilities of the hardware.

Unless it comes to games, most people don't care about performance except on paper.  Responsiveness counts.

I'm starting to hate using that word, though.  Responsiveness has become a major buzz word as of late, but nobody really seems to know what it means.  Fast screen refreshes in OS4 is only a small part of the whole story.

IIRC, not even the FPU "problem" is solved yet. Intent FPU is slow.

I thought they were allowing you to use native "tools" to optimize your code, and only force VP if no optimized tools were available?  I know little about FP, though, other than the fact that each CPU has different levels of accuracy and will return unpredictable numbers.

I think making a SIMD VP would be totally insane attempt. (intent gives the possibility to use native executables amongs VP ones, perhaps that could be used...)

Yeah, that's the tools I was talking about.  Any programmer who wants to release code on multiple systems MUST break down the critical stuff into native code, and use generic alternatives as a last resort.

The problem is, many do no bother.  Even Perl scripts are not always portable because people keep using home-made routines using symlinks and UNIX shell calls, instead of using proper libraries.  It shocks me how many people still try  to parse CGI data themselves instead of using CGI.pm!

IMO: AOS would not perform like AOS should if it is run on top of virtual machine.

That depends what parts of it are running on a virtual machine.  A VP CLI and GUI would make little difference in terms of performance if the graphics drawing routines are still native.

As we all know, if you write AmigaDE software it will be compatable with every platform

Potential to be compatible?  IMO there is no such thing as a fully portable application.  There's always some nut that wants to screw everything up.  Hell, we can't even get webpages to look the same in every browser!

I think DE should offer a set of generic and native tools and let the developer decide what to use.  If they want to enjoy the profit margin of many different markets, they'll have to program accordingly.  If they need ultra performance on a particular CPU, there should be nothing to prevent them from using native code.  That's what I don't like about Java.  Write Once Run Everywhere is a dream that doesn't exist.  Java is notorious for cross-platform bugs, which makes me wonder why everyone likes it so damn much.

On top of this, the Amiga set-top boxes will act as wireless routers and automatically save and secure(encrypt?) data that doesn't fit on your desktop hard disk

Funny how they don't call them file servers anymore.  They're all set-top boxes.

HE ALSO SAID THAT ALL DEVICES THAT RUN AMIGAOS4 CAN BE BADGED AS AN AMIGA!!!!

Well, at least someone realized that the Amiga is not just about slick hardware...

I am soooooo going to puchase the new SDK

Don't you want to see the product, first?  The first SDK was simply horrible - very raw and terribly organized.

Those Crusoe devices are getting incredibly small, powerful and SLICK

Do they have native instructions, now, or are they still only emulating x86?  Code morphing is still a major performance hog, and I haven't heard of how good Transmeta processors are working native.

OS4 being a closed source platform is actually more appealing to companies.

True.  If you have no legal right to make changes to the code, there's really no point in having it open source, as it'll probably take just as long as a closed source product for fixes to be implemented.

Oh yeah, and open source does not mean fewer bugs.  Fewer bugs are because of the dedication of the developers and their debugging techniques.  I can give you a long, long list of open source projects that are swamped with bugs -- seeing how the developers are all on vacation and I always end up having to fork the code into my own, new project just to fix all the damn problems!

Security through Obscurity as Ben put it

I won't raise my opinion on that comment again (as my last post got deleted).  I will say he'll have to do much, much better than that.  Security is not magic, as any script writer will tell you, and as we move to more virtualized processors running on dynamicly compiled or translated code, security will start becoming a very, very big problem.

As an example, I still see people doing lots of evals in their Perl code, such as:

$val = <<...something which includes CGI input...
EOF

eval( $var, {...} );

These people are insane!  Never, ever use eval except to force run-time compilation to improve performance.

I felt like it was soooo clear, but maybe I heard something you guys did not.

I want to see a working prototype.  If they need investor money, they're not getting it from me buying an SDK.

[KimmoK]

"Security through Obscurity as Ben put it"

That's what we have today, and VirusZ.  :-P

Even though that "obscurity" security migh outperform any WIntel security solution that exist today, I'm sure KMOS and Hyperion knows that it's only the beginning.

[smithy]

I've just come back from a weekend in Prague (fantastic city by the way) and I've been catching up on all the excitement from Amiwest!  I have some mixed thoughts about it all though, and I think Garry's speech and Q&A session has raised as many new questions as he's answered.

Colin_Camper mentioned that they thought we'd see a version of AmigaOS running on VP.  I think this is possible, but unlikely:  Garry has mentioned the PPC version of Intent, and we already know that KMOS must port AmigaDE to the Pegasos, so it is my belief that we'll see a version of AmigaDE running on OS4/AmigaOne.  Colin_Camper could be right of course - perhaps OS4 will be ported to run on top of AmigaDE.  But AmigaDE must then run on something else.... this scenario (3 systems on top of each other) seems impractical for mobile devices and defeats Garry's unique selling points of small & fast, technically it is unlikely, and from a market point of view it makes no sense either to rely on a third party product while offering a similar service as that third party product.

So this brings us onto the topic of how will AmigaOS run on mobile devices without VP?  The answer is simple, and is the same reason why the whole AmigaDE idea is flawed:  almost every mobile device uses the same CPU.  Symbian only works on one CPU.  I'll repeat:  Symbian is huge, it's massively widespead across billions of devices yet only works on ARM.  There is no port for any other platform.  Fleecy himself brought this everything-uses-ARM point up years ago in an article I read and mentioned it was a threat to AmigaDE, whose USP was based on the mobile world being multiplatform - sorry I don't have time to seek it out.

Anyway, now we know that we don't need AmigaDE to run on a huge variety of devices, it brings us to one logical conclusion - that AmigaOS will be ported to ARM.  We know that OS4 has employed good design practice and has a HAL so it's quite easy to port to other platforms without any big upheavals.  The questions that remain therefore, is how do the teams at Hyperion and KMOS fit together?  Who will do the ARM port?  Who will develop the higher levels of OS4 further?  Will priorities mean that OS4 development slows or loses out in favour of development that will make the system more scalable?

Also unrelated but interesting. Will the ARM port gain greater focus than the PPC version?

[KimmoK]

"....that AmigaOS will be ported to ARM."

To a yet another little endian CPU?

"We know that OS4 has employed good design practice and has a HAL so it's quite easy to port to other platforms without any big upheavals."

It would break binary compatibility, unless that's why KMOS now sees intent to be important alongside AOS.

"The questions that remain therefore, is how do the teams at Hyperion and KMOS fit together? Who will do the ARM port? Who will develop the higher levels of OS4 further? Will priorities mean that OS4 development slows or loses out in favour of development that will make the system more scalable?"

Reality is that the desktop niche most likely would not be enough anyway. So AOS needs to scale.

"Also unrelated but interesting. Will the ARM port gain greater focus than the PPC version?"

I think there will not be ARM port of AOS in near future.
ARM is not needed. ARM or Xscale is not scaleable and powerfull enough. Today PowerPC fits in "bigger than PDA" sized products (mobile even) and PPC cores are not that much harder to embed. Tomorrow... we'll see.
And I'm pretty sure that KMOS is not stupid enough to go against Symbian&friends with their own cell phone OS, only M$ is.