Do you approve of PPC (in some form) as the future of Amiga?

[Iggy]

Since we already have AOS4 and MorphOS, I'm not sure about the point of this question. PPC has been a part of our future for quite a while.
 
Everyone needs to get over the Amiga name. "Amiga" is just a trademark. Soon we're likely to have X86 "Amigas" that won't be able to run AmigaOS (just AROS, Windows, or Linux). That's the future whether we like it or not.
 
As to future platforms for those of us still hanging on, since they're already available what are we debating here?

[minator]

Who wouldn't want a computer with 80 cores instead of 4?

Anyone who's heard of Amdahl's law.

Useless for a desktop? Are you on drugs? Can I have some of them?

Actually that processor is useless for pretty much anything aside running linpack benchmarks.

It's an experimental chip used to see how they could get something like that to work.  The cores are simple VLIW things that run no existing software.  There is a newer 50 core version with Atom like cores but even it's a bit of an oddity, it's not SMP so you have to run an OS per core - unless you are using a specialist cluster based OS.

[Amiga_Nut]

x86 is the commonest platform so it should be on it. Go full 64-bit SMP/SMT while your at it.
I would also like to see it on ARM because it is perfect for light lean OS and unlike other ARM OS you would be free to tinker with it.
PowerPC died when Apple dumped it, if people didn't see it was time to move then... they must interpret the world funny.
68k on FPGA will be satisfactory, but it is not for a serious alternative main OS.
If nothing happens I hope Haiku or AROS will be fully functional alternative OSes.

Sorry to pick on you, just quoting to address a general misconception, but PPC compatible cores are in Wii/PS3/360....and you can thank IBM not those twats at Apple

Last Amiga died with A4000/A1200. All the others are just Amiga by name, no custom chips and no style just a box for running OS4 (which needs a LOT of work to catch up)

(CELL PPU is more or less 1 Xenon core)

[Amiga_Nut]

Anyway they must concentrate on software, no matter on which CPU it run (even if itś alien technology and is cheaper than X86) if there is not applications or certain features in the OS they will get the same result

Exactly! You need a modern 100% compatible browser and all extensions like Flash/Jquery/PHP/JAVA/HTML5 etc and then all the codecs for SD and HD video and every flavour of audio and a nice media player. A torrent client. MSN/Yahoo/Skype client. A good professional paint program and office suite. An API for 3D acceleration. Oh and multicore/multithreading/64bit ALU support.

Actually that's about it really. doesn't sound like much....but it's all essential.

[kedawa]

I've never seen PPC as being an important part of the Amiga platform.  As far as I'm concerned, it's an architecture that was used in some third party accelerator cards and nothing more.  That doesn't mean PPC support is a bad thing or a hindrance in any way, but there's no getting around the fact that x86 is the only viable option for powerful and affordable hardware.
I think having MorphOS and AmigaOS exclusive to PPC has actually worked out for the best.  If those operating systems were available for x86, we probably wouldn't have AROS today, and it would be a shame not to have an actively developed FOSS member of the Amiga family.

[Hammer]

X86 makers:

-Intel
-Amd
-Via?

PowerPC makers

-IBM
-Freescale
-Amcc
-Toshiba
-Rapport inc
-Agnilux/google?

PowerPC wins

X86 makers:

AMD
Advantech (e.g X86 SoC)
D&MP (e.g Vortex86 Series SoC )
Intel
NVIDIA (e.g. ULI M6117C)
RDC (e.g R8610 )
VIA
ZF Micro (e.g. ZFx86 SoC)

Intel has licensed Intel Atom to TSMC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_x86_manufacturers

[Heiroglyph]

Since we already have AOS4 and MorphOS, I'm not sure about the point of this question. PPC has been a part of our future for quite a while.?

I think he was getting a judge of how the users feel about PPC and is it still the way of future, or should we consider other CPUs for future development.

I'm firmly in the x86 camp.  Nothing will ever be as fast per dollar again.

[kolla]

It is called AROS... It runs on cheap and broadly available x86 hardware, it is free, it is opensourced. It should dominate the Amiga future, shouldn't it? Guess why it has not happened for 15 years.

Because of people like you? :hammer:

AROS was never taken seriously among the "true" Amiga developers, it's just quite recently it has gotten to the point where it is even mentioned in the types of discussions like this one. And why has it taken so long? Because the said "true" Amiga developers have not really been interested in participating.

Oh, and btw - in my view, AROS is already dominating.

[trekiej]

I voted PPC because to me some form does not leave out the possibility of other platforms.
Outside of Freescale using lawyers to hinder 680x0 dev. is there any technical reason why 680x0 could not be developed to compete with with todays quad cores?
Thanks. (Sorry if this question was asked a 100 times before )

[the_leander]

Outside of Freescale using lawyers to hinder 680x0 dev. is there any technical reason why 680x0 could not be developed to compete with with todays quad cores?

Only the earth shattering costs of reworking an arch that hasn't seen development in what, 16 years?

That's even assuming that what you ended up with would remotely resemble or be compatible with what you used as a starting point.

Consider the differences between 68k and Coldfire and that is only one step away, what you're proposing is several steps away.

[takemehomegrandma]

I voted x86 as it's the only logical choice.  Actually the only choice period.  Aros is the future.

AROS on brand new Commodore Amiga x86 machines!

[Karlos]

Only the earth shattering costs of reworking an arch that hasn't seen development in what, 16 years?

At least the 68010+ already meets the Popek & Goldberg virtualisation requirements

[Cloudane]

I'm with those who say there's nothing evil about a type of CPU.  Well, unless Intel are assassinating pet kittens and using the corpses for their cores but I don't think so

To me it seems senseless, especially in the current economic climate, to pick a minority platform that costs 4x as much for the same power (or less).  There are a lot of hardcore Amiga fans on here, yet only an even more hardcore subset would bother paying that kind of money to play with what is basically an experimental OS.

AROS was never taken seriously among the "true" Amiga developers, it's just quite recently it has gotten to the point where it is even mentioned in the types of discussions like this one. And why has it taken so long? Because the said "true" Amiga developers have not really been interested in participating.

It suffered from chicken-and-egg syndrome I think.  Nobody was interested in getting involved because it was taking so long (15 years!) to get into a state that can be considered "interesting" (reasonably usable).  It didn't seem like it was getting anywhere, and therefore difficult to take seriously.  Yet it probably took so long because nobody was interested in getting involved.

Now that it's in an interesting state, that's probably why it's being taken a bit more seriously as an option.

[klx300r]

PPC is like the Amiga..people said it was dead but it is still ALIVE:afro:

[jorkany]

PPC is like the Amiga..people said it was dead but it is still ALIVE:afro:

Why does it have to be one or the other? For example, viruses (the ones with the protein casings not the computer ones) aren't considered alive although in many respects they appear alive.

[commodorejohn]

I don't really care for the move towards homogenization in the computer market, and that goes double for computers I like because of their hardware, so x86 is right out. But I'm not really fond of the PowerPC move, either. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad processor, but why does everything 68k-based have to move to it? The 68000 architecture is a fundamental part of what the Amiga is, and taking that away makes it less of an Amiga.

Besides, the 68k is about the most assembler-friendly architecture you'll ever find. Don't want to give that up.