X1000 CPU is PWRficient PA6T

[mikeymike]

The XMOS chip in the "X1000" will probably be as much fun as the FPGA on the Sam.

You know, if you ever get tired of repeating your general opinion, a bot could be written that does it for you

[koaftder]

I wonder if/when they will come up with a demonstration of the Xena/xcore chipset's capabilities.  Otherwise it's going to take a year or two at least before some interesting apps come out that use the chipset after the sale of the X1000 begins (by which time judgement of X1000's success will have already been judged).

Never? A-Eon doesn't care about the xs1-l1. It was marketing hype to them, they never even bothered to have the damn chip soldered onto the prototype board. For good reason too, it's completely irrelevant in a desktop system. It blew me away the hype they spun about it.

[koaftder]

The XMOS chip in the "X1000" will probably be as much fun as the FPGA on the Sam.

It will be worse, a few idiots will probably try to make use of it and all they will achieve will be a wank and a layer of incompatibility with no actual gain for having done so.

[yoodoo]

A-Eon have made it clear several times that the XMOS chip was Varisys' idea, rather than theirs and has been put on as an almost free extra (£10 or so on a £1500+ board).

Yes, they talked about it in their marketing blurb, but they have consistently avoiding saying what it could be used for and instead made it clear that it would be up to the users to find interesting things to do with it.

The hype came from certain over-enthusiastic community members, NOT A-Eon or Hyperion.

[Piru]

A-Eon have made it clear several times that the XMOS chip was Varisys' idea, rather than theirs and has been put on as an almost free extra (£10 or so on a £1500+ board).

They have? Where?

The hype came from certain over-enthusiastic community members, NOT A-Eon or Hyperion.

Have you already forgotten about the "What is X?" nonsense?

[jorkany]

A-Eon have made it clear several times that the XMOS chip was Varisys' idea, rather than theirs and has been put on as an almost free extra (£10 or so on a £1500+ board).

Yes, they talked about it in their marketing blurb, but they have consistently avoiding saying what it could be used for and instead made it clear that it would be up to the users to find interesting things to do with it.

The hype came from certain over-enthusiastic community members, NOT A-Eon or Hyperion.

It's the main selling point on the A-eon website. Since they won't talk about the CPU, "Xena" and "Xorro" are the only way the X1000 has to distinguish itself. The whole color scheme of the original "X" logo came from the XMOS website.

Just because nobody has yet managed to come up with a purpose for the XMOS chip to be on the mobo doesn't mean it isn't A-eon's main marketing ploy.

[yoodoo]

They have? Where?

In at least 2 or 3 posts on AW.net and iirc in an AF interview.

I might fish out the references if work is really slow tomorrow...

Have you already forgotten about the "What is X?" nonsense?

Nope - but I read that as generating interest in something a little unusual (which the XMOS is) rather than promising world-changing features and  I don't recall them saying what the XMOS might be actually used for - the earlier versions of the website specifically said it would be up to the users to find uses for it.

[KimmoK]

In at least 2 or 3 posts on AW.net and iirc in an AF interview.

Also at the A-Eon site: Our hardware designers had a brilliant idea: "Why not add an XMOS chip?"


And the rest of their text about xena:
"Once there were custom chips; for the AmigaOne X generation, we have customisable chips. XMOS calls it "Software Defined Silicon", we call it 'Xena', a nod to the old custom chip names. It's the inheritor of the 'transputer' concept, and it's something we're quite excited about.

Capable of eight concurrent real-time threads with shared memory space, at up to 500 MIPS, Xena gives the X1000 a very flexible, very expandable co-processor. The uses are endless; control hardware, DSP functions, robotics, display - even SID chip and console emulators.

Xena is not simply strap-on extra adding an extra half GHz of processing power, it's a different kind of thing to a general purpose CPU altogether. It's an event-driven processor, which means it can respond immediately to events such as external signals, rather than having to wait on an interrupt. This makes it appropriate to true real-time functions. It has many input/output lines which are software configurable, making it ideal for ultra-low latency data sampling applications and extremely easy to turn into control hardware for... well, virtually anything. The I/O can also be configured to communicate with extra XMOS chips that can run the processor's code in a highly parallel fashion, and for serious power applications you can just keep on adding processors.

The Amiga has seen some truly ingenious hacks and add-ons; Xena can take this to a whole new level. It will take a while for the full possibilities to be realised, but we urge you to visit XMOS and discover more for yourselves."

Seems pretty ok description of it's capabilities. In the teaser phase they were perhaps more "enthusiastic".

Also I recommend to read their xorro description as well. It has about all the public details of the connections of/to xena.

[gertsy]

Well, only the most fanatical users will pay $2225 USD for technology that performs on par with systems back in 2003.  I guess if your hobby is buying obsolete hardware, then knock yourself out.

Agree it's comparable to 2003 Intel Pentium speeds but for a box that can run Amiga OS that's impressive.

BTW does the estimated $2222 US include OS4 ?

[dammy]

The hype came from certain over-enthusiastic community members, NOT A-Eon or Hyperion.

Then why are they calling it a X1000 then?  They even hyped it in the system's name.

[minator]

IBM are still actively developing PPC architecture, ALL three games consoles out there use a PPC in some form. We have Xenon, CELL and Broadway. OK Broadway is rubbish and pre G4 speeds but that still leaves two completed CPUs that are PPC compatible. I doubt very much Microsoft would change from PPC back to Intel either, so expect to see a revised Xenon II within a few years (not the rubbish 16 colour s-l-o-w game from the bitmap bros!!).

IBM/LSI, AMCC and Freescale have all announced new chips recently, it isn't dead by any means.  PPC isn't targeting the desktop anymore but they are getting faster.  There is an upgrade path but with Amiga volumes don't expect them to be cheap.

They wont be competitive with most modern PCs but I don't think they'll be quite so bad as some are suggesting.  The expect X1000 is going to be a lot better than a 2003 vintage PC.  I don't know how the core will compare but it has a dual channel on-die memory system - similar to that found in today's mainstream PCs.

Unfortunately SPEC has not had a good reputation for a long time and it's got a lot worse recently.  The only way to find out real performance is to try it and see.

[runequester]

Then why are they calling it a X1000 then?  They even hyped it in the system's name.

"monkey bazooka" sounded more awkward

[Boudicca]

Lets get some points out the way.....

* Xena is likely a method to "lock in" to the hardware, custom chip custom encryption, custom security, and hard to copy.

* 99% of all X1000's will remain in their original packaging and retained by collectors, its obsolescence is irrelevant, it's a collectors piece, for vintage uber geeks, thats the target market and they may not even been fans of the Amiga......

* Its compatibility, performance, price and usability are all irrelevant as its not going to exit the packaging. It will be resold at increasingly escalated prices and a short production run is an absolute certainty.

X1000 = Fiat 500 Abarth (Gutless piece of **** but colour coded and stylish), If Clarkson reviewed it for the cool wall it would a jewel around Kristin Scott Thomas's neck, polished and kept in a safe and brought out on occasion to polish its packaging.

I can't see how anyone can disagree with this.......isn't it obvious ?  

[Amiga_Nut]

IBM/LSI, AMCC and Freescale have all announced new chips recently, it isn't dead by any means.  PPC isn't targeting the desktop anymore but they are getting faster.  There is an upgrade path but with Amiga volumes don't expect them to be cheap.

They wont be competitive with most modern PCs but I don't think they'll be quite so bad as some are suggesting.  The expect X1000 is going to be a lot better than a 2003 vintage PC.  I don't know how the core will compare but it has a dual channel on-die memory system - similar to that found in today's mainstream PCs.

Unfortunately SPEC has not had a good reputation for a long time and it's got a lot worse recently.  The only way to find out real performance is to try it and see.

I doubt very much that a machine based on the tri core sextet thread capable IBM Xenon CPU as in the £125 xbox 360 @ 3.2ghz would cost more than £400/$500 etc. It is also significantly faster than the existing G5 based x1000 by a huge margin...ie current quad core PC speeds in reality.

And Sony/Toshiba/IBM are not going to let CELL die, again with over 45 million CPUs produced for various applications price is not a sensitive issue as with old G5 PPC architecture stuff.

Anyway I did a bit of research on the XMOS co-pro, it can execute 8 threads on each of the 4 cores yes but only two threads in reality (ie two every 1/4 of the total CPU speed so 100mhz processing per pair for a 400mhz XMOS running 8 threads on a core).

The problem is the OS has no support for such esoteric hardware. Maybe the XMOS would make a good geometry setup engine like a baby version of the CELL SPUs on PS3 for your GPU but who knows. And a quick and dirty kludge like WarpOS or PowerUP is not going to work well.

The real issue is the people making the OS and the hardware need to be the same damned company in step with each other 100% of the design phase, look how many revisions it took MS from Windows v 1.0 to achieve effective and useful multitasking. Using Dr Tim King's TriPos for Amiga in 1985 was nowhere near as complicated as integrating a dual core cpu and quad core co-pro with the ability to run 32 threads integrated into a single thread single core OS like OS4 to be sure my friends. I don't envy the programmers tasked with that and given the tiny sales of x1000 it's not going to be Hyperion I bet.

[Amiga_Nut]

Lets get some points out the way.....

* Xena is likely a method to "lock in" to the hardware, custom chip custom encryption, custom security, and hard to copy.

* 99% of all X1000's will remain in their original packaging and retained by collectors, its obsolescence is irrelevant, it's a collectors piece, for vintage uber geeks, thats the target market and they may not even been fans of the Amiga......

* Its compatibility, performance, price and usability are all irrelevant as its not going to exit the packaging. It will be resold at increasingly escalated prices and a short production run is an absolute certainty.

X1000 = Fiat 500 Abarth (Gutless piece of sh*t but colour coded and stylish), If Clarkson reviewed it for the cool wall it would a jewel around Kristin Scott Thomas's neck, polished and kept in a safe and brought out on occasion to polish its packaging.

I can't see how anyone can disagree with this.......isn't it obvious ?  

I don't disagree with any of that except that the Abarth Fiat 500 is the best in its class....if you want a euro shoebox of a car or have a tiny garage

Anyway the issue is A-EON are marketing it as the second coming, and that's why you get such a huge disparity in the reception received by Amiga users who lived in the Reagan years of A1000 and know for a fact how it absolutely slam dunked EVERY desktop computer available in 1985 in every department at any price. Interesting yes, expensive yes, FA to do with Amiga 1000 or any kind of spiritual successor to A1000 vs Mac vs ST vs 286 EGA PC. Sure the ST was cheaper but it was like comparing an M3 and a rolling chassis of an M3 with no engine or drivetrain lol it was the bare minimum for a computer even in 1985 with zero custom hardware and an off the shelf non multitasking GUI.

[Jose]

@Piru

So, you'll be lining up to buy one as it comes out ?