Anybody still hate x86 on principal?

[nicholas]

Personally I like the Alpha architecture a lot.  Shame it never took off really.

[nicholas]

The view that x86 is The Only Way Forward for the Amiga is holding the community back because many people are so shackled to this notion that a "new Amiga" has to compete with, outperform, and eventually (obviously) overthrow the PC clones that they aren't interested in anything else the Amiga hardware world has to offer.

Is it not the case that this attitude is due to x86 being commodity* hardware rather than it's performance merits?

*More users == more developers == more users == cheaper and more plenty hardware.

The lower the barrier to entry the better for all regardless of CPU architecture.

In theory at least....

[OlafS3]

I never said that X86/X64 is the only way forward. I do not care about processor type, be it INTEL/AMD, MIPS, ARM or a future SUPER-DUPER processor. But I would never program any of these processors direct in assembler (or it would be run in UAE and then the environment is not important). So "Amiga" should run on the best available hardware and not make bets again who will win (Amiga-Companies are obviously losing all bets :-) )

BTW the thread is "Anybody still hate X86 in principal?" and I answered Me not.

[Heiroglyph]

Because it's a CPU from 1978 (complete with a tiny register file, lack of orthogonality between the registers, and horribly awkward addressing scheme) that's been progressively kludged up into a modern processor, and even on the new models you can still see the surgery scars. 68k was a pleasant 32-bit architecture right from the get-go.

The 68000 was a CPU from 1979 but by 1996 the 68060 was effectively dead as a desktop CPU.

Just because it didn't live long enough to have kludges doesn't make it worth using for more than retro computing today.

I'll agree that the design of 68k was better, but that doesn't help me in any way today, where it actually matters.

This thread is nothing more than nostalgia vs. logic and it's degrading fast.

[nicholas]

This thread is nothing more than nostalgia vs. logic and it's degrading fast.

Isn't that "The Amiga Way"?

[OlafS3]

Isn't that "The Amiga Way"?

:-)

[Heiroglyph]

Isn't that "The Amiga Way"?

lol, what was I thinking?

[Hattig]

It will keep getting attacked on all fronts, not least because ARM's are rapidly getting to the "fast enough" level where most ordinary consumers don't care about performance any more. And then competing with ~40 GBP ARM computers slightly larger than a credit card becomes an unpleasant proposition (my "media centre" is one of those powered via micro-usb, and streaming files from my file server.

AMD can see the writing on the wall, they're designing ARM based 64-bit APUs for the future. Intel's stuck on the x86 train though.

Personally I don't care about AmigaOS on x86, maybe a few years ago I would have been.

Instead port it to run on a Beagleboard ($45) or similar ARM SoC board first, this has a single-core ARM Cortex A8 so Hyperion don't need to worry about that issue with AmigaOS. Binary incompatibility means that they can just push through memory protection and all those other things that AmigaOS is just a bit crap and un-modern at.

[EDanaII]

I never said that X86/X64 is the only way forward. I do not care about processor type, be it INTEL/AMD, MIPS, ARM or a future SUPER-DUPER processor.

Sadly, it seems to me that, rather than having a boat with no sail, some people would have a sail with no boat. "Hoist them sails, people! What do you mean we're sinking? You're just not hoisting them high enough!"

[AmigaClassicRule]

Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?

I do not think PPC is anyway better and I do not hate x86. x86 is doing it's job and ten times more...in fact I love my PC (x86) a lot. The real question, what are you going to do about it?

[Thorham]

Nope, don't hate x86, I just like the 68000 family because it's fun to program on.

[tone007]

[youtube]qpMvS1Q1sos[/youtube]

[yssing]

x86 isnt going away in the nearest future, but the top is a cold and lonely place, and others are compeeting for the top.

But going for x86 now, would IMHO be a wrong move, especially since ARM is now moving forward, plus PPC is far from gone.

If there were to be a move to an other architecture, such a decision has to be based on extensive research and good foresight.

So personally I think, that sticking to PPC for NG would be a good move, and as for classic, then FPGA would be the right choice.

[Nostalgiac]

PPC is far from gone.

bit of topic but it struck me as funny... earlier tonight I was gutting a working G4 based PowerMac... removing it's motherboard/cpu and all other insides to be dumped... as I plan to use the case as a rather nice side-table

So... my PPC is gone soon :p

peace !
Tom UK

[Linde]

Is there anybody here who stills hates x86 because PowerPC was better?
If so did you have no problem buying an ARM device?

If you take into account the latest IBM PowerPC it is only marginally better than an x86 Xeon.
It is also getting a little confusing nowadays with all the SIMD and the reprogrammable graphics units.

The CPU could be very different in 5 years from what it is now.

It's just a CPU to me. I don't care very much about how they work unless I have to do low level programming on them. The fact remains that however inefficient and complicated the x86 design is, a cheap x86 based PC is still much faster than any Power architecture PC available.

[AmigaClassicRule]

x86 isnt going away in the nearest future, but the top is a cold and lonely place, and others are compeeting for the top.

But going for x86 now, would IMHO be a wrong move, especially since ARM is now moving forward, plus PPC is far from gone.

If there were to be a move to an other architecture, such a decision has to be based on extensive research and good foresight.

So personally I think, that sticking to PPC for NG would be a good move, and as for classic, then FPGA would be the right choice.

I don't get this ARM thing. What is it? Is it a new hole CPU like PPC is for 68k and x86? Are you saying ARM is going to take over x86 and ARM is not backward compatible to x86?

I am a little confused here in this whole thing.