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

[Karlos]

I remember when the X1000 was first demoed and all the Amigans.net and AW regulars came here in droves to big it up that Karlos put up a link somewhere showing that the PA6T wasn't a huge amount quicker per clock than the G5. It's single biggest selling point was it's low power usage compared to the G5.

Either way, it'd be nomm'ed up by anything remotely recent.

Floating point performance of the PA6T was significantly higher than the G5 as I recall, though. Also remember that the performance was for one core. Of course, until OS4 / MOS get some sort of support for more than one core, that's a moot point.

[the_leander]

Floating point performance of the PA6T was significantly higher than the G5 as I recall, though. Also remember that the performance was for one core. Of course, until OS4 / MOS get some sort of support for more than one core, that's a moot point.

I seem to recall that the only time the floating point performance really took off for the mac was in a few very select and very highly optimised benchmarks using photoshop.

Either way you'd probably struggle to get a lower performing PC that wasn't an Atom powered lifestyle PC.

[Karlos]

I dunno, I'm used to wielding hundreds of GFLOPS nowadays. All CPU's seem insignificant in comparison.

[the_leander]

I dunno, I'm used to wielding hundreds of GFLOPS nowadays. All CPU's seem insignificant in comparison.

All hail the power of CUDA.

[Hammer]

The principles of north- and southbridge are in principle still inferior to a theretical modern day custom chipset design.
More flexible, yes, but also bottlenecks. Pumping up the bitrates still to overcome its deficiencies. Not something a tech head can be enthusiastic about.

Why is it inferior? The old Amiga 500 has Paula, Angus, Denise, Gary to provide chipset services. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_custom_chips

In terms of chipset services, what special about the old Amiga custom chipset?


Intel Core i3/i5/i7 doesn't have the standard PC northbridge chip i.e. PCI-Express 2.0 lanes for graphics is built into the CPU.

[Hammer]

I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing these days that simply could never be done on a 68060 -- seeing that it's fine for nonlinear video, etc.

MPEG2/H264 encoding in HD would be slow on the 68060. Today it's SMP and GpGPU.

[Hammer]

I seem to recall that the only time the floating point performance really took off for the mac was in a few very select and very highly optimised benchmarks using photoshop.

With G5, Apple didn't factor AMD's K8 Athlon 64 i.e. refer barefeat.com's benchmarks.

[the_leander]

With G5, Apple didn't factor AMD's K8 Athlon 64 i.e. refer barefeat.com's benchmarks.

Actually I was thinking prior to the G5's release. The only thing that the Mac offered in terms of performance that was anywhere near close to PCs of the day were those highly focused photoshop benchmarks - on anything else the G4 got spanked badly by both intel and AMD.

[SamuraiCrow]

@matthey
You rather missed my point: Only a lazy programmer writes the smallest possible loop to do a job and then blames the architecture if performance sucks. The 68060 is forgiving, PPC is not, but the PPC will deliver far better perfomance when it's rules are respected.

Regarding move16, it also depends on how much you want your cache polluting. If you are copying large amounts of data it has many advantages. You should never assume that because most copies are small, they all will be; well written code ought to be prepared for any reasonable eventuality.

And you missed MattHey's point that a small inlined loop that can execute at the same efficiency of the big optimized loop in a subroutine makes the latter technique obsolete.  The N68050 can execute an iteration of the small loop at about 2 clock cycles per iteration at 130 MHz due to improved pipelining of the instruction cycles and opcode fusion.  Using move16 is only suitable for use on cacheable memory also.  If you need to use it on a source or destination in Chip RAM while the custom chips are still whirring away, you may be in trouble.

The PPC requires that the cache be locked onto the loop adding additional steps to the process making inlining a disaster and brings back all of the calling overhead.  The fact that the PPC is unforgiving makes it entirely unsuitable for a hobby computer anyway.  Leave POWER on the big iron machines and make the hobby machine fun to use.

[Karlos]

And you missed MattHey's point that a small inlined loop that can execute at the same efficiency of the big optimized loop in a subroutine makes the latter technique obsolete.

No, it does not. The original comparison to which I was replying was one of alleged 68K superiority over PPC in being able to execute such a loop effectively. The critical miss in this argument is the implication that the PPC is a poorer architecture because of this. This is, of course, complete nonsense. It's simply a different architecture with different gains and trade-offs. A non-lazy programmer will learn these and write code accordingly, not complain that the simplest possible loop is not as fast as it could be on the basis of the behaviour of a completely different architecture. Being able to do this on 68060 does not obsolete the technique at all when talking about a different CPU (the PPC) or even an earlier m68k.

The PPC can do floating point multiply add. That requires 2 instructions on 6888x/68040/68060. How horridly inefficient. It can also do bounded rotates and shifts, which require several instructions on 680x0. The 486 had bswap. Does that mean the 68K was utter pants for requiring 3 instructions to accomplish the same?

For the last time, a non-lazy programmer concerned about performance writes the best possible code for the architecture. If that's a simple loop, then great, an easy win. If he has to unroll it and align operands, then that's what he does instead.

Many moons ago, I wrote a series of tests to gather information about memory performance and got a great deal of data back regarding this very type of operation over different types of memory (system ram, chip ram, RTG ram) and on different 680x0 / PPC. FWIW, despite suggestions to the contrary, I have always found that a suitably aligned, unrolled loop even on 68060 performs better (or at least no worse) than the naive case. I just don't presently have the data to hand in order to back that up.

[Hammer]

To answer the OP, yes I do approve, in the form of MOS, but by now we must see that such discussions are fruitless, start flame wars and lead to ignorant comments like when Kolla called me a dumbass because of my opinion of the iMica.

Reasons why MOS, OS4 and Classic will probably never be x86.

Bye Bye to all your favorite apps native support, they all need big endian for native support of any kind

Making it x86 would involve twice the work, as its assembly code is a mess, and all our API, ABI and system calls taht have bits of ASM would all be bye bye, useless

Even if x86 was the main platform, do you know theres over 20 N/S bridge combinations currently produced?

Your average Linux or Mac geek (the market we probably would be attracting) would be pissed at:
lack of memory protection
Lack of security and privacy systems.
Unfamiliar controls, needing to learn whole new syntax (AmiDOS and derivatives)

Also, realize a 1.5 Ghz G4 beats a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 in general performance, a PPC will give you twice (or more) performance per cycle due to its RISC and ability to execute instructions faster and more efficiently

Therefore, an x86 switch by any of those listed is HIGHLY unlikely.  Before these happen, Ronald Reagan would come back from the dead, or Kennedy.

In normal desktop benchmarks, PPE at 3.2Ghz in PS3 performs like PowerPC 970 @1.6Ghz. PowerPC ISA vs X86 ISA irrelevant i.e. what matters is the hardware implementation.
 
Since you made a claim on PPC vs X86 I'm restarting PowerPC vs X86.

http://www.barefeats.com/pbcd.html

Apple MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core 1 Duo)/Apple MacBook Solo  (2.0GHz Core 1 Solo)  
vs
Apple PowerBook (PowerPC 7447A 2.0GHz upgrade)
vs.
Apple Power Mac (Dual Core PowerPC 970 2.0Ghz)  







We are not factoring Intel Core 2, AMD Phenom II and Intel Core i3/i5/i7 based PCs. AMD Bulldozer is already in engineering release mode i.e. same state as X1000 beta test.

http://www.barefeats.com/imcd3.html
iMac C2D/2.33 = 24" iMac Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz
iMac C2D/2.16 = 20" iMac Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz
iMac CD/2.0 = Jan 2006 - 20" iMac Core Duo 2.0GHz
iMac G5/2.1 = Oct 2005 - 20" iMac G5/2.1GHz 'iSight'
iMac G5/2.0 = May 2005 - 20" iMac G5/2.0GHz 'ALS'
(All test systems had 2GB of memory)





http://www.barefeats.com/g4up2.html
MAXPower G4/7448 Upgrade versus similarly clocked Macs

PM G5 2.0 MP b = Power Mac G5/2.0GHz "June 2003" with Radeon X800 XT
PM G5 2.0 MP a = Power Mac G5/2.0GHz "June 2003" with Radeon 9800 Pro SE
iMac CD 2.0 = Intel iMac Core Duo 2.0GHz with Radeon X1600
iMac G5 2.1 = iMac (Solo) G5/2.1GHz "iSight" with Radeon X1600 XT
iMac G5 2.0 = iMac G5/2.0GHz "ALS" with X1600 XTz
7448 1.8 MP = MAXPower Dual G4/1.8GHz 7448 Upgrade in a "QuickSilver 2002" Power Mac with Radeon 9800 Pro
7448 2.0 SP = MAXPower Solo G4/2.0GHz 7448 Upgrade in a "QuickSilver 2002" Power Mac with Radeon 9800 Pro
7447A 2.0 SP = GigaDesigns Solo G4/2.0GHz 7447A Upgrade in a "QuickSilver" Power Mac with Radeon 9800 Pro
7455 1.42 MP = Dual G4/1.42GHz 7455 "FW800" Power Mac with Radeon 9800 Pro
Quick 1.0 MP = Power Mac Dual G4/1.0GHz "QuickSilver 2002" with Radeon 9800 Pro
Quiick 800 MP = Power Mac Dual G4/800MHz "QuickSilver" with Radeon 9800 Pro
The G4 Power Macs had 1.5GB of RAM; The other Macs had either 1.5 or 2GB of RAM.
All Macs were running OS X 10.4.9.






http://www.barefeats.com/harper.html
Mac Pro 3.2GHz 'Harpertown' versus other Mac towers

Harper = "early 2008" Mac Pro "Harpertown"
Clover = "apr 2007" Mac Pro "Clovertown"
Wood = "aug 2006" Mac Pro "Woodcrest"
PM = Power Mac (last version with PCIe slots)





64bit GEEKBENCH 2 benchmark test on all Macs

[jsixis]

I voted x86 just because I have plenty of those machines laying around.
PPC, well that would be ok if I could buy an old mac and it worked but without quality software at affordable prices why bother

[Hammer]

Actually I was thinking prior to the G5's release. The only thing that the Mac offered in terms of performance that was anywhere near close to PCs of the day were those highly focused photoshop benchmarks - on anything else the G4 got spanked badly by both intel and AMD.

In responds to Apple's G5 claims

http://www.pcworld.com/article/112749-8/64bit_takes_off.html
Athlon 64 vs. Apple G5 Systems: Not Even Close (chart)
Apple Power Macs did well on Photoshop, but the 64-bit AMD-based systems won handily on most tests.


AMD K8 Opteron 246 @2.0Ghz vs Power Mac G5 (two IBM PowerPC 970 @ 2.0GHz).

Benchmark Chart from http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=112749&page=8&type=table&zoomIdx=1
The AMD64 boxes debunking Apple's G5 claims i.e. 1 CPU vs 1 CPU and 2 CPU vs 2 CPU.

Intel Pentium IV is an easy target.

[actung_bab]

tough qwestion yeah right !!!
not your descion
the amiga been PPC for last decade bit late to ask know where have you been dude
hyperion cant port to x86 there rights are for ppc and why whould they want too
be commercial disaster all there work whould be pirated to hell.
hmm thats tough call not???

[the_leander]

In responds to Apple's G5 claims

http://www.pcworld.com/article/112749-8/64bit_takes_off.html
Athlon 64 vs. Apple G5 Systems: Not Even Close (chart)
Apple Power Macs did well on Photoshop, but the 64-bit AMD-based systems won handily on most tests.


AMD K8 Opteron 264 @2.0Ghz vs Power Mac G5 (two IBM PowerPC 970 @ 2.0GHz).

Benchmark Chart from http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=112749&page=8&type=table&zoomIdx=1
The AMD64 boxes debunking Apple's G5 claims i.e. 1 CPU vs 1 CPU and 2 CPU vs 2 CPU.

Intel Pentium IV is an easy target.

Tbh I didn't really follow the G5 much beyond it's launch. It's interesting to see that even afterwards, whilst some of the gap between PPC and x86 was gained, it was still on the trailing edge of performance, except, as before and as you noted: Photoshop.

RE the PIV, a power hungry, hard to cool beast it may have been, but it could still put the kosh to a G4 or a G5.

[nicholas]

Tbh I didn't really follow the G5 much beyond it's launch. It's interesting to see that even afterwards, whilst some of the gap between PPC and x86 was gained, it was still on the trailing edge of performance, except, as before and as you noted: Photoshop.

RE the PIV, a power hungry, hard to cool beast it may have been, but it could still put the kosh to a G4 or a G5.

Especially a HT enabled one running BeOS.