ARM vs. PPC (why continue the PPC path?)

[dammy]

Really?

http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/T4240T4160FS.pdf?fpsp=1

12 cores, 1.8 GHz, 6.0 DMIPS/MHz per core not good enough for you?

For embedded system, it's great for networking.  As far as going head to head with the A15, I have a feeling it's going to come up way short.  So what are the prices on the T4240?

[WolfToTheMoon]

Yes really.

Nobody claims PPC is dead for routers, switches, printers, and similar embedded applications (where CPU's like this one will do just fine, I'm sure). But nobody is developing PPC CPU's for laptop/desktop usage, that stopped 5-6 years ago (whenever it was that Apple went x86) and more importantly, nobody is making viable laptop/desktop motherboards or systems based on PPC CPU's!

It's dead Jim!

Not to mention that some PPC makers will be introducing very capable ARM designs.
I don't think that PPC will go completely dead that soon, but the writing is on the wall, it seems.

[mongo]

For embedded system, it's great for networking.  As far as going head to head with the A15, I have a feeling it's going to come up way short.  So what are the prices on the T4240?

A15 is about 40% faster than A9. That gives you about 3.5 DMIPS/MHz.

[WolfToTheMoon]

A15 is about 40% faster than A9. That gives you about 3.5 DMIPS/MHz.

That's about as fast a PA6T. But remember, there are 64 bit ARM chips on the way + nVidia's Denver CPU(64bit also, that will be backwards compatible ).

[Mrs Beanbag]

Arm already dominates the mobile phone/tablet markets, it's coming to servers and the desktop next.  Freescale's iMX series is ARM successor to 68k, why not?

Some people won't call it Amiga.  I don't care what it's called, I just want a reasonable performance desktop PC that doesn't have all that crappy Intel x86 legacy inside it.

ARM makes sense.  x86's days are numbered.  PPC is as good as dead already.

[mongo]

Yes really.

Nobody claims PPC is dead for routers, switches, printers, and similar embedded applications (where CPU's like this one will do just fine, I'm sure). But nobody is developing PPC CPU's for laptop/desktop usage, that stopped 5-6 years ago (whenever it was that Apple went x86) and more importantly, nobody is making viable laptop/desktop motherboards or systems based on PPC CPU's!

It's dead Jim!

The difference between a CPU used in an embedded application and a CPU used in a desktop or laptop is what, according to you?

Where can I buy a desktop motherboard based on an ARM CPU?

[Iggy]

Arm already dominates the mobile phone/tablet markets, it's coming to servers and the desktop next.  Freescale's iMX series is ARM successor to 68k, why not?

Some people won't call it Amiga.  I don't care what it's called, I just want a reasonable performance desktop PC that doesn't have all that crappy Intel x86 legacy inside it.

ARM makes sense.  x86's days are numbered.  PPC is as good as dead already.

Power PC is SO dead that IBM has designed all-new, Power-based microprocessor for the Wii U around it incorporating features found in IBM Power 7 server processors.
I'd love to have that in a personal computer.
I already have PPC and ARM based systems. I like ARM and will continue to use it for Linux (and eventually for Windows .
But right now, I'm sticking with PPC.

BTW - While I have quoted them in the past, DMIPS figures are not that great a measure of a processors power.

[mongo]

Arm already dominates the mobile phone/tablet markets, it's coming to servers and the desktop next.  Freescale's iMX series is ARM successor to 68k, why not?

Of course it dominates the mobile phone/tablet markets. There's not much competition there. Servers and the desktop are another matter entirely.

Some people won't call it Amiga.  I don't care what it's called, I just want a reasonable performance desktop PC that doesn't have all that crappy Intel x86 legacy inside it.

Unless you're writing an OS, or programming in assembler, you'll never have to see "all that crappy Intel x86 legacy inside it".

ARM makes sense.  x86's days are numbered.  PPC is as good as dead already.

ARM makes sense in situations where power saving is more important than performance. x86 will be around for a long, long time still. IBM, Freescale, and AppliedMicro would disagree with you about PPC.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Unless you're writing an OS, or programming in assembler, you'll never have to see "all that crappy Intel x86 legacy inside it".

I saw it when I put it in the socket.  I KNOW it's there, that's frustrating enough.

ARM makes sense in situations where power saving is more important than performance. x86 will be around for a long, long time still. IBM, Freescale, and AppliedMicro would disagree with you about PPC.

In other words it makes sense in my PC.  I build this system with quietness in mind first and foremost.  45W still seems like quite a lot though.

[KimmoK]

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but to me it seems that the latest Freescale should be i7 caliber in performance?
The e6500 core scales up to 2.5Ghz, so I'm sure there will be models with fewer cores, but higher than 1.8Ghz clock.
Will this be the first time when PowerPC is going to use hyperthreading?

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=QORIQ_AMP_SERIES

I think AOS will not change CPU architecture anytime soon:
http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwgentle_en.php

+ previously
"When it comes to leading edge PowerPC hardware their level of technical expertise is possibly unrivalled. As a result Varisys has contracted to work on several new development projects to improve and extend the AmigaOne product line". Adam Barnes, Varisys Technical Director said, "There is some exciting cutting edge PowerPC technology on the horizon and we are delighted to have the opportunity of bringing this to the AmigaOne platform." Varisys Managing Director Paul Gentle added, "We enjoyed working on the Nemo development which provided our first experience of the global Amiga community. We look forward to extending our relationship with the new projects and will do our best to "Keep this party going". Please refer to the Varisys and A-EON Technology website for future updates."

[zylesea]

Exactly my point!

Some people say that a dual core X1000 (or indeed a Power Mac with dual G4's) will make it possible to develop SMP for Amiga, but if you aim to do that, to develop "modern" features, like real SMP, real Memory Protection, 64-bit with increased addressable memory limit (which would also make "Virtual Memory"/swap-disk meaningful), it will *require* a break-up from the past, it will require a fresh start with a clean slate. And if you are to do that, why on earth continue the PPC path?

And as you said, no need to emulate the PPC. Most of the essential stuff is still "alive" and can be ported/recompiled. It would be a bit like AROS on x86 in that sense, you won't be able to run old 68k Amiga applications as seamless as you do in MorphOS today (would require UAE), but many of the MorphOS native applications could still be made available in a new version. Heck, with MorphOS 3.x, many things will even come bundled with the OS itself, including CD/DVD burning SW, FTP, etc.

I think you may agree to http://via.i-networx.de/q86.htm then. But my conclusion remains that yet for a switch x86 makes more sense than ARM.

[takemehomegrandma]

A15 is about 40% faster than A9. That gives you about 3.5 DMIPS/MHz.

The Tegra 3, is much faster than the Tegra 2, both being Cortex-A9 (higher clock frequency, more cores, better graphics and other accelerators, etc).

Some Cortex-A15 numbers: "What's more we already know of at least one manufacturer who has published benchmark figures for the Cortex-A15; Last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ST-Ericsson revealed that its new system on Chip, the Nova A9600, would have two Cortex-A15 core, runs at 2.5GHz and, more importantly, breaks the 20,000 DMIPS barrier.

This means that the ST-Ericsson's tweaked implementation of the Cortex-A15 can reach at least 4.01 DMIPS/MHz, which is itself a 14 per cent improvement upon what ARM's figures.

Given that startups like Caldexa are already developing quad-core iterations of the Cortex-A9, one can easily envision that a 4-core Cortex-A15 will shatter the 40K DMIPS barrier, putting it within touching distance of the AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition which reached almost 43K DMIPS running at 3GHz."

The Tegra "4" (Wayne) will be quad- or octo-core, made with a 28nm process, thus able to pump up the clock speed simiarly, and again there will be improvements on other aspects of the CPU, like the GPU, etc.

[takemehomegrandma]

The difference between a CPU used in an embedded application and a CPU used in a desktop or laptop is what, according to you?

First, I think Kronos said it in a good way over at AW.net: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Second, Amiga is single processor. It can only use one of the cores, which will probably make a MPC8610 more attractive than this (the community could have had a readily developed, open sourced and and free to use design based on this at the price of 20x X1000's. But I guess it was deemed too expensive...), and please note: I'm *not* calling the 8610 attractive in 2012! True SMP is prohibited by Amiga design, can't have real Memory Protection, does only have 31-bit memory space (and no, you can't have "more memory" using swap-disk). If you want features like this, you must break with the past and start all over with a clean slate, a fresh start. Endianness doesn't matter then, choose whatever architecture you want. And my point is that nobody in their right mind would choose PPC.

But most important: Nobody is making *viable* desktops or laptops using these CPU's. There are no viable products, and there won't be any either.

Where can I buy a desktop motherboard based on an ARM CPU?

As you may have seen, I have acknowledged this lack of broad range of motherboards based on ARM, it's focused on "consumer electronic devices" (where an OS like MorphOS potentially *could* find a role to play) so I am not about arguing that, but in this thread, there has been at least 5-6 mentioned, I have both a stationary computer and a netbook based on the Efika MX myself...

Of course the x86 would be much better in this regard!

[takemehomegrandma]

I think you may agree to http://via.i-networx.de/q86.htm then.

Some, but some not. Endianness won't matter one bit, for example. And in a micro-kernel environment (like Quark is meant to be), something like the "A-box" is really an abomination; you just don't do something like that, it's way too much going on in one "box" (if you want to call it like that). A more "kosher" way would be having every driver, every device, file system, every application, etc in their own "box" in the Quark memory space. PPC emulation is not important, at least it comes way, way down my personal priority list. I'd be happy to use UAE to run 68k apps and games, like on AROS, in the nice and easy way as MorphOS already offers (which will be more fun on a faster system than PPC, of course)...

But my conclusion remains that yet for a switch x86 makes more sense than ARM.

I agree, while there could be an interesting future on both of these. I guess it would be too much to as to support both?

[warpdesign]

x86's days are numbered.

I have been hearing that since maybe 1998... sigh...

It seems to me Amiga users/devs don't want a true new OS (I mean "OS", we shouldn't care at all about the hardware) but are more interested in running old stuff.

As I see it, the question is simple: do you want something new, taking advantage of new hardware (no matter if it's x86/ppc/68k/arm/big/little endian), powerful, fun to use, future-proof ? Or do you want to run your single-threaded workbench, display your nice png icons, and play with your scrollable screens ?

Just answer the question. If it's the second, no need to even talk about new architectures...

[dammy]

A15 is about 40% faster than A9. That gives you about 3.5 DMIPS/MHz.

So what is the price on the T4240?  We can go on and on the exact performance that gives one or the other the upper hand, it boils down what is cheap and powerful enough to make the average user happy.   Now as far as OS4, I would prefer it to remain in PPCland.