ARM based Amiga?

[takemehomegrandma]

And while ARM doesn't seem to come in a desktop board (that I'm aware of anyway, perhaps I'm just ignorant)

I think a http://pandaboard.org/ would make a perfectly capable desktop machine for most everyday tasks.

I think this is a much better working-out-of-the-box option than the pandaboard, and while perhaps a bit underpowered (about on par with/slightly faster than a Sam440) to be called "desktop", this doesn't stop me and many others from using it as such for everyday usage! And I certainly wouldn't mind this turn into this!

And these devices is soon to be upgraded to the i.MX53 CPU, still Cortex-A8, but much faster and more capable in many ways, and they are doing it *really* cheap (which translates into *less* than $49 for the board, no idea by how much less, but probably considerably less; low cost seems to be the main focus of the development).

When it comes to Cortex-A9 (that we see in various products today, like iPad2, Tegra2 based devices etc), current chips performs on par with the PPC G4 processors, which is not bad at all, given the additional power and benefits of the on-chip support controllers and accelerators that boosts performance of many applications in a smart, resource friendly way. A lot of things will happen in this field soon though, both in clock speed (Tegra3 will be a faster dual core Cortex-A9, have better GPU, etc, and GlobalFoundries will demonstrate a 3GHz dual core Cortex-A9 made with their 28-nm processes sometime in 2012, as well as a low-power 2GHz version), and in number of cores (Freescale recently announced their Quad Core Cortex-A9 based i.MX6, and also showed it off running in real silicon, here it's being benchmarked by Konstantinos Margaritis/Genesi. It may get here sooner than many would expect).

Cortex-A15 brings a whole bunch of new features from the desktop/server world, and a whole new level of performance.

Then we have the partnership between ARM and nVidia, bringing real 64-bit Workstation performance, the "x86 killer", while keeping the ISA backwards compatible. I think others will follow.

ARM will be the only CPU architecture running on *everything* from phones to workstation/servers, with many interesting devices in between.

[Tripitaka]

By todays standards my PC CPU is far from leading edge, (it's an AMD 2800 X2) but I seldom get anything eating all of it's power, in fact I rarely use more than 50% of the CPU cycles. The simple fact is fast drives, RAM and GPU are far greater issues. Now before anyone asks I do a lot of graphics work so I'm not just web browsing.
All in all I favor fast throughput of data so I'll take elegant design with less bottlenecking over raw CPU grunt any day and it's in this direction that I would prefer to see a modern Amiga go.

[takemehomegrandma]

Tablets, phones, sure, they need the battery life, but waiting for web pages to finish rendering due to wimpy processors is no fun.

my 70 GBP (~$110) cheapo Android pad with a 700MHz outdated ARM renders web pages fast enough for casual use for me, and is already about 3 generations beyond the curve.

The key, and the philosophy in ARM, is to use "co-processors" in a smart way as much as possible, offloading the CPU. Why should the CPU have to bother with decoding images, audio and video?

[takemehomegrandma]

And a dual-A15 at 2.5GHz will beat out a 1GHz PowerPC 460 by a long way.

You don't have to wait for the Cortex-A15; the Cortex-A9 is already on par with PPC G4 clock by clock, and AFAIK the G4 beats the 460, and faster Cortex-A9's are about to enter the stage...

[fishy_fiz]

I guess I havent really explained the perspective of my arguement very clearly. While youre right in that there's enough combined cpu/gpu resources in current higher end and upcoming ARM cpu's for thier intended content I still think for more of a typical desktop type environment (like amiga os and its derivitives are) whatever is most powerful and affordable is the way to go. It's not that I have a particular preference to x86, it's not as elegant in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day it's plentiful, cheap, and powerful.

People often comment how Amiga OS is fast on lower spec hardware, and Im not going to dispute this. Im a big fan of the system and have been for more than 2 decades. The thing is though imagine the potential for an amiga system based on the current cutting edge hardware, taking advantage of both cpu and gpu, physics acceleration, blah, blah,blah all taken advantage of (custom hardware) by the system. AROS, while quite nice, doesnt yet take this anywhere near the potential available. Maybe one day  

At the end of the day though it all comes down to what  person wants to do. For me the Amiga is the ultimate system for being creative on. The OS doesnt get in the way and you can just get down to business, not to mention the personal customisations a person can make to automate processes, or just make things more to youre liking. I like the potential for datatypes for video and gfx work (filter datatypes, being able to do video work with your favorite 2d art package if it uses datatypes, and about a billion other possibilities).

Anyway, end of the day I just favor raw grunt being available. Even in this day and age there's sill plenty of reasons more grunt is desirable, and even more places where it creates a nicer experience even when its not necessary. I want an impressive Amiga system again, and current high end x86 hardware + current end gpus can provide that. If in 5-10 years its ShadyBob'sSuperProcessingUnit then that's what I'll favor. Maybe 20 years though and it wont seem so important

[commodorejohn]

The current mobile fad will subside in time. Already things are close to saturated and more and more people are getting tired of the fad all the time. This isnt to say it'll vanish, but there's not much more scope for extra customers. The market is already predominantely made up of trend followers and same people upgrading thier phones, etc.

I agree completely that the current tablet/smart-phone boom is fad-driven and will subside as the novelty wears off, but it's my hope that thanks to it, with more R&D dollars and real, solid OS development work going into non-x86 architectures, we may finally see the end of the PC's formerly inextricable dependence on one particular architecture - and that's when things will really get interesting.

[Turambar]

I think this is a much better working-out-of-the-box option than the pandaboard, and while perhaps a bit underpowered (about on par with/slightly faster than a Sam440) to be called "desktop", this doesn't stop me and many others from using it as such for everyday usage! And I certainly wouldn't mind this turn into this!

And these devices is soon to be upgraded to the i.MX53 CPU, still Cortex-A8, but much faster and more capable in many ways, and they are doing it *really* cheap (which translates into *less* than $49 for the board, no idea by how much less, but probably considerably less; low cost seems to be the main focus of the development).

When it comes to Cortex-A9 (that we see in various products today, like iPad2, Tegra2 based devices etc), current chips performs on par with the PPC G4 processors, which is not bad at all, given the additional power and benefits of the on-chip support controllers and accelerators that boosts performance of many applications in a smart, resource friendly way. A lot of things will happen in this field soon though, both in clock speed (Tegra3 will be a faster dual core Cortex-A9, have better GPU, etc, and GlobalFoundries will demonstrate a 3GHz dual core Cortex-A9 made with their 28-nm processes sometime in 2012, as well as a low-power 2GHz version), and in number of cores (Freescale recently announced their Quad Core Cortex-A9 based i.MX6, and also showed it off running in real silicon, here it's being benchmarked by Konstantinos Margaritis/Genesi. It may get here sooner than many would expect).

Cortex-A15 brings a whole bunch of new features from the desktop/server world, and a whole new level of performance.

Then we have the partnership between ARM and nVidia, bringing real 64-bit Workstation performance, the "x86 killer", while keeping the ISA backwards compatible. I think others will follow.

ARM will be the only CPU architecture running on *everything* from phones to workstation/servers, with many interesting devices in between.

Thanks for letting me know about these. I'll certainly be interested when the upgraded version becomes available.

[vidarh]

I agree completely that the current tablet/smart-phone boom is fad-driven and will subside as the novelty wears off

Personally I think that demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the long term appeal of these devices.

Don't think of them as phones. Think of them as computers that happen to have a small screen and touch screen and phone functionality built in, but that increasingly can be connected to screens and keyboards and all kinds of other devices.

Why would a consumer buy a large box desktop they'll never open and never expand when they can get a fast enough computer that fits in their pocket and that comes with a built in phone, camera and music player in a similar price range to what most people are willing to spend on a PC?

PC's have regularly shrunk in size. And the last few years the desktop market has collapsed as low end laptops have become powerful enough and cheap enough for people to prefer them to a bulky, stationary computer.

Why would this trend towards smaller form factors, that's been steady since the 80's, suddenly reverse?

[commodorejohn]

Personally I think that demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the long term appeal of these devices.

Don't think of them as phones. Think of them as computers that happen to have a small screen and touch screen and phone functionality built in, but that increasingly can be connected to screens and keyboards and all kinds of other devices.

I have thought of them that way, ever since they came out. I keep running up against the fact that a laptop has a built-in keyboard and doesn't need a special mounting case for it (like the one my brother has to turn his iPad and Bluetooth keyboard into a makeshift laptop,) even the smallest ones come with better specs for price than than a tablet, and they have a vastly better software selection. And if you really need a touchscreen there's laptops with them or adapter kits for other laptops.

PC's have regularly shrunk in size. And the last few years the desktop market has collapsed as low end laptops have become powerful enough and cheap enough for people to prefer them to a bulky, stationary computer.

Why would this trend towards smaller form factors, that's been steady since the 80's, suddenly reverse?

Didn't say it was going to, but I think it's fudging the argument to count laptops in with tablets, as they are in all regards much closer to desktop PCs. When tablet evangelists start counting laptops into the mix it comes off like they're desperately glomming onto anything that isn't a desktop PC in an attempt to support their argument. Arguing based simply on physical size is silly; even desktop PCs have been shrinking for decades. The real question is, what kind of concrete advantages does a portable computer with no keyboard have over a portable computer with a keyboard?

I'm not saying there's no legitimate market for tablets; maybe there is, I dunno. But I do believe that the current all-hogs-to-the-trough rush the industry is engaging in is just another fad boom, like that magical period in the mid-'90s when investors were throwing money by the fistful at anything with a .com on it. Booms never last forever - eventually they go bust, and what emerges from the wreckage will be a lot closer to what the actual market supports.

[Digiman]

Amiga = Daphne/Agnus/Paula and NOTHING ELSE.

I find it hilarious when people say OS 4.1 running on a SAM460 is more 'Amiga' than Aros running on a DELL PC.

And even if you don't have Daphne/Agnus/Paula exactly then there is still the issue if it is 'Amiga' then why are my original Amiga games like Rocket Ranger on 3.5" as useful as coasters if you don't own a Commodore Amiga sold in the 80s and 90s?

Now that that piddling little discussion is out of the way the second point is this....i7 processors have been around for nearly 4 years now...FOUR F^$£ING YEARS so a new 'Amiga' has to have a CPU that is SUPERIOR to the 2007 i7 2.8Ghz. I don't want ARM and I don't want washing machine controller type rubbish like SAM440 EVER AGAIN MENTIONED.

A new 'Amiga' needs to cost 1/4 of the cost of a PC gaming rig (excluding monitor cost) AND run a game like Battlefield 3 IN FULL 1080/1200p DETAIL.

Do you think Sony and Microsoft had it easy when this is exactly what they had to do in 2006/2007 when it came to CPU cost? Nope they had to be very cunning in their design to keep the costs down and performance 300-400% more efficient than Wintel PC gaming boxes.

680x0 is NOT Amiga, 680x0 = ANY not PC based machine from the 80s (Mac/ST/Amiga/Next/Unix workstation etc etc) so a damp fart of a CPU base on a 1000 MHz 68000 theoretical design is not what I want.

Amiga as you know it is dead, Amiga = custom hardware and non-industry standard CPU to shat all over PC price performance. If you added a USB mouse and keyboard to a PS3/360 and they had a bespoke desktop OS that did everything XP/Vista/7 or OS X does but smoother and more responsively they you would have had a spiritual successor to the Amiga 1000.  But this never happened and we are back to our non-choice of either a bloated Mac or PC crappy OS that thinks nothing of dumping terrabytes of temp files WHEN IT FEELS LIKE IT or a games console that has all the spiritual successor advantages of Amiga 1000 running the equivalent of Amiga Marble Madness/Defender of the Crown vs DOS/Mac versions BUT none of the equivalent of advantages of a more productive OS and a more creative audio visual computing experience (making samples/mod tunes/dpaint pictures/digiview images/anim brushes from 16 second realtime grabs of buck rogers/BSG etc etc)

Like I said nobody will ever do this because Nintendo has no interest in producing a non standard desktop alternative OS computer, nor does Sony, and Microsoft are busy selling you that $hit called Windows/Office to finance Xbox R&D

Nobody else has the money, and it is obvious that we are dead in the water now with nowhere to go. Unless a new machine in the next 12 months is designed costing no more than a top end PS3 AND can technically run Battlefield 3 in 1080p and maximum details settings THEN YOU MIGHT AS WELL FORGET ALL THIS NEXT GENERATION AMIGA HORSE FEATHERS. ANYTHING LESS THAN THIS TODAY IS A DISGRACE TO CALL IT AN AMIGA OF ANY DESCRIPTION WHEN THE GAMES ARE WORSE AND THE OS DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A FIREFOX/CHROME QUALITY BROWSER.

And unless that happens Amiga will remain a tiny fraction of the size of Apple (already a tiny fraction of the worldwide % of PCs sold) and hugely expensive and not very useful. Sure Natami and Minimig are nice but they are just a means to play top end 90s Amiga games like Quake. The world has moved on....and Amiga didn't because Commodore went bankrupt and every successive owner pillaged the IP and improved on nothing!

[vidarh]

I have thought of them that way, ever since they came out. I keep running up against the fact that a laptop has a built-in keyboard and doesn't need a special mounting case for it (like the one my brother has to turn his iPad and Bluetooth keyboard into a makeshift laptop,) even the smallest ones come with better specs for price than than a tablet, and they have a vastly better software selection. And if you really need a touchscreen there's laptops with them or adapter kits for other laptops.

Those would be a big deal if you only ever want to use your computer as a laptop. If on the other hand you sometimes wish to use it on the go, sometimes as a laptop, sometimes as a desktop, a smartphone that can connect to a larger screen suddenly becomes a vastly more interesting choice.

And most laptops today are sold for home use where a tablet is sufficient: Sofa surfing, watching movies or fiddling around with things where people don't care about a physical keyboard. "Power users" that "need" a physical keyboard are a tiny minority.

As the same time, even for many of us that do need a physical keyboard some of the time, a tablet and/or a smartphone are viable second or tertiary computing devices replacing additional PC's and/or can be a primary device with "extras" such as the Atrix or the EEE transformer.

By all means these solutions are highly unlikely to replace the laptop or desktop entirely in the short term, but frankly I can't imagine any situation where we won't eventually get to a product where the screen and keyboards are "dumb" and the computer stays in our pockets unless we want to use a phone sized screen - the appeal is to carry your desktop with you; walk up to a screen and it's all there instantly, with all your data and everything. Having state (data and/or running processes) in a stationary computer if one that fits in your pocket can hold it all just seems silly.

It's not about if, but about when, and personally I think we're very, very close to the cutover point.

Incidentally, it's that dream that gave us VNC back in the day, though of course that was coupled with centralized computers, - Oracle and Olivetti's research lab used RFID badges couples with VNC to bring up peoples desktops whenever they walked up to a workstation

Didn't say it was going to, but I think it's fudging the argument to count laptops in with tablets, as they are in all regards much closer to desktop PCs.

I wasn't counting laptops with tablets, but with desktop PC's - laptops is a tiny niche too. Both were outsold massively last year by smartphones, and this year they are being outsold *combined* by smartphones. Tablets are a curiosity in comparison - tablets are much less of a threat to laptops and desktops than smartphones are, at least for the foreseeable future.

Tablets are nice once they're cheap enough to throw around the house as extra screens to surf the net on, watch movies on or read books on - which is why I have a 70 GBP crappy tablet. Smartphones on the other hand are viable at a much higher price point because they are multi-function devices to a much greater extent and are more portable.

But I do believe that the current all-hogs-to-the-trough rush the industry is engaging in is just another fad boom, like that magical period in the mid-'90s when investors were throwing money by the fistful at anything with a .com on it. Booms never last forever - eventually they go bust, and what emerges from the wreckage will be a lot closer to what the actual market supports.

I don't think we're anywhere near the boom phase for either tablets or phones yet. In five years time we might begin to see that. Today we're just seeing smartphones take over the "dumb phones" market and eating moderately into the existing PC market, with tablets as a tiny little niche sibling that will continue to see good growth because of the symbiosis with smartphones (e.g. I signed in with my Google account on my new tablets and had it sync all the apps I had installed on my phone with a couple of key presses).

[Kronos]

Amiga = Daphne/Agnus/Paula and NOTHING ELSE.

So anything that came after first few 1000 A1000s ain't "Amiga" by your definition ?

Takes being "snobby" to whole new level....

[nicholas]

An Amiga is any machine with a physical Paula chip, anything else is just Amiga-like.

But seriously, who cares?

[commodorejohn]

Those would be a big deal if you only ever want to use your computer as a laptop. If on the other hand you sometimes wish to use it on the go, sometimes as a laptop, sometimes as a desktop, a smartphone that can connect to a larger screen suddenly becomes a vastly more interesting choice.

I'm just not seeing this, no matter how many times tablet evangelists repeat it. How is a tablet with a detachable keyboard that you have to lug around separately more convenient than a laptop which has it built-in?

"Power users" that "need" a physical keyboard are a tiny minority.

Since by "power users" you apparently mean "anyone who uses a computer for anything more than YouTube and AIM," I am going to have to vehemently disagree that they are a minority at all, let alone a tiny one.

As the same time, even for many of us that do need a physical keyboard some of the time, a tablet and/or a smartphone are viable second or tertiary computing devices replacing additional PC's and/or can be a primary device with "extras" such as the Atrix or the EEE transformer.

See, this is the difference between "can" and "should." Yes, it's possible to use a tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard in place of a laptop, but that doesn't make it a better option. Separate Bluetooth keyboards require a case like my brother has in order to not be a pain in the ass, and while snap-on keyboards like the Eee Transformer circumvent that, in either case you're just making it into a poor man's laptop.

Which raises the question, why not just a laptop, then? They're cheaper, they're nearly as compact, they have a better software selection, and you don't have to tote around a separate freakin' keyboard if you feel you might need it (or leave it behind thinking you won't and then find that you do after all.)

frankly I can't imagine any situation where we won't eventually get to a product where the screen and keyboards are "dumb" and the computer stays in our pockets unless we want to use a phone sized screen

I can. I recently acquired a 12" PowerBook to play with, and from the moment I switched it on I realized just how tiny an 8-10" screen like my Eee or typical tablets have. My nearsightedness doesn't affect anything at such a close range, and even then I had trouble switching back to my Eee; I can only imagine how older or more visually-impaired users would feel when confronted with a small screen like that.

the appeal is to carry your desktop with you; walk up to a screen and it's all there instantly, with all your data and everything. Having state (data and/or running processes) in a stationary computer if one that fits in your pocket can hold it all just seems silly.

Laptops already provide that, and often with a decent-sized screen into the bargain. (And they don't require a particular docking connector since any decent laptop will have VGA or mini-DVI out and USB or PS/2 ports for a separate keyboard and mouse, if you so desire.)

And while desktop PCs might not be as convenient generally as laptops or other portable computers, they offer full access to all the expandability the market offers, up to gigabytes of RAM, terabytes of hard disk space, and the best CPU and GPU horsepower out there, and that's something no portable computer can claim. Yes, that's probably not necessary for most users, but the set of people who can make significant use of more than what a laptop or tablet can provide is most certainly non-negligible.

Incidentally, it's that dream that gave us VNC back in the day, though of course that was coupled with centralized computers, - Oracle and Olivetti's research lab used RFID badges couples with VNC to bring up peoples desktops whenever they walked up to a workstation

You'll note, however, that the primary use of VNC in the personal-use computing world is to allow netbooks and tablets to access the storage capacity and computing power of desktop PCs.

Both were outsold massively last year by smartphones, and this year they are being outsold *combined* by smartphones.

...

I don't think we're anywhere near the boom phase for either tablets or phones yet.

By your own claims, tablets and smart-phones have gone from their entry into the mainstream with the release of the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad last spring to the new Next Big Thing as far as the entire industry is concerned. That's a boom. They're selling like hotcakes, everybody's making them, and as far as the press is concerned they are Officially Hip. The question is, what happens when they're ubiquitous enough that they stop being cool, and the public frenzy is diverted to some new trendy gadget? They'll be left with only the people who really want them and are comfortable using them, and who knows what percentage of the peak market share that will be?

[minator]

and GlobalFoundries will demonstrate a 3GHz dual core Cortex-A9 made with their 28-nm processes sometime in 2012

It's a bit vague but I think they have already built this.
BTW the 32nm SOI process AMD uses appears to be faster so they could make them even faster...

ARM will be the only CPU architecture running on *everything* from phones to workstation/servers, with many interesting devices in between.

Actually they go a lot lower already and will go higher than servers.  I would say they're not in PCs but that's not true, you'll find several ARM cores in modern PCs - the HD has one, the WiFi, etc...

[Tripitaka]

To be honest I don't consider the "Amiga is dead so it needs to bring out something amazing in 12 months" approach at all valid. I've noticed this comment on this thread and others before. It's rubbish! The Amiga is no more or less dead in general terms (ie. to the masses) if it takes 5 years more for a new machine. Sooooo...

...maybe the best approach would be to get in early with future techs like Silicon Integrated Nanophotonics, Coriolis fans, MRAM etc... and build something truly astounding. Lets face it any new Amiga should have Thunderbolt as standard at least.

If your not familiar with the above techs just google them.

Sadly any approach is limited by cash first and foremost and without big investment the chances are Amiga will never catch up again. It breaks my heart to say it but I think one of us needs a big lottery win to throw at the problem. :/