ARM or x86 with FPGA emulator

[OlafS3]

I'm using the same method and tools other people are using so there is no point other than my method is console based and doesn't have a GUI. I'm not using an ancient compiler: the oldest compiler I've used is from 2006 - and it works fine with the C 99 standard. An IDE is just a graphical front end with proprietary or compiler specific libraries which hinder portability... Tell me again how that makes a programme any better?

Processor architecture does make a difference because RISC specific compilers like MIPSPro are designed to directly compile highly optimised code for use on their architecture. There is a reason -O3 is recommended in the documentation of Nekoware, an open source suite of software for SGI MIPS systems running IRIX.

Kremlar,

Its been a while so I don't remember the brand, but it was a dual Xeon server refurbished from the manufacturer. It failed three days after me and one of my friends who shares the cost of server cage space verified it for its 90 day evaluation. Everything was working fine on it. We had scarcely had it two years when the fire occurred. The fact is not that it was x86 that caused the fire, it is the fact we paid for a server grade hardware solution and got cheap rubbish instead. Nobody here I think has run their servers as hard as we did, and we do it because the servers are marketed to take this. Now we run increasingly more MIPS hardware converted for server use. No matter that some of it is 20 years old, our Sun and SGI racks have not had a single failure of a server in the same time that various servers running x86 and x64 hardware have given up the ghost. Luckily most just stop working, but there is a reason our hardware is now segregated by type: makes it easier to contain costly losses. The fact is I can get a few racks of SGI Origins for dirt cheap and when craylinked properly I get all the performance I need out of them and most of the time if there is an issue, it is an easy fix like a fan replacement or a cable reseat.

As I said it is more or less academic to me. I develop and sell a own-developed software + different services to small companies, time is rare and I have to live from my work so I do not want to care about implementation details or (even worse) hardware architecture, I use classes (partly added as components visible and invisible) to add functionality and am happy if I do not need to care about it. For example event management is automatically managed by the environment so for me programming on amiga is a big step back. Most people are now using such tools for development so if we want more programmers and more software we would need such tools but that would be another topic. What I mean here as a application programmer I want to concentrate on my product and not too much on API details and not at all on hardware architecture. And user do not care about OS or hardware at all.

Using something more "mainstream" has other advantages too because you can more easily port components/software. As a example you can add a JIT to OWB because there is a X86 version, I do not think that this exists for SPARC/MIPS. Both are only known to me (by name) as processors for workstations and servers and not for typical end-users so changing to them would mean disadvantages regarding loosing parts of the 68k integration and still have the problems of being exotic. Then I would even say better stay with PowerPC despite the known problems.

[biggun]

Why do we talk about this so long ?

Everybody with some "brain" sees immediately that moving to SPARC or MIPS would be no improvement over PPC at all.

* The Compilers for SPARC or MIPS are not any better than for PPC
* You would loose all existing PPC code. 68K to PPC Jit etc
* SPARC and MIPS are not faster than PPC
* There are no more or no better chips available for users


Is a silly proposal

[TeamBlackFox]

@Linde

Maybe I'm not understanding your question, because I've been trying to answer it. Let me try again:

I prefer working with an architecture at a low level. The reason I give two %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!s is because I actually would like to code some for Amiga down the line. Reason I don't now is simple: I am learning 68k assembler and that is one of the most tedious and pedantic languages I've learned because all the current compilers for C are too old and broken for OS 3.9 for me to use. I have been coding on a UNIX style C compiler such as Clang and that's how I intend to do this. GCC is a load of junk though so I may be forced to build my own compiler >_>. Anyways, back to my point: If the Amiga were to become x86 based I'd probably say screw it and not code for it because I have long given up optimising programs on x86 properly. Nothing about the tools I use exposes anything, rather, it is how I treat C as more flexible assembler. I like to be aware of the underlying hardware. With that said I'd probably stick to RISC boxes running BSD or some other UNIX if Amiga moved to x86.

@OlafS3

Ive got much different goals in mind than you: I never intend to make money off the code I write. I therefore could care less about what a user thinks. As a sysadmin as my day job I don't handle users or interact with them so I generally speaking don't care.

I'm just upset because I'd like to do some NG work since the toolchain and OS have a lot of expansion, but acquiring new and high performance hardware is impossible. I suggested a switch because it seems AEON and ACube are utterly incapable of building units at a reasonable cost/performance ratio. I could buy a whole rack of Onyx 350 IR4 graphics for the price of the X1000 and wipe the walls with it, especially since OS4 is a 32-bit, multiprocessor blind system.

AROS doesn't count for me since I dont own any powerful ARM or PowerPC hardware

@biggun

I REALLY don't appreciate being called stupid subversively. Currently there are plenty of more performant MIPS and SPARC chips available than most PowerPC gear. The R16000 of MIPS fame is faster despite being clocked lower, and a Sun Ultra 45 wipes the walls with a G5 and a PA6T. We're talking 10+ year old designs: It doesn't cut it! And if they adopt faster CPUs for the next NG Amigas, PowerPC ones I can expect the systems to be even more expensive.

As previously explained I could give a flying freak whether or not it would break binary compatibility. Sure other users care, but I care more about having a 64-bit OS with a CPU that can perform well today.

Don't feed anymore bull, you can look up the dhrystone measurements and other benchmarks yourself, but do keep in mind all of these systems are 64-bit and SMP capable so they're going to beat any slow uniprocessor 32-bit mode OS

[OlafS3]

@Linde

Maybe I'm not understanding your question, because I've been trying to answer it. Let me try again:

I prefer working with an architecture at a low level. The reason I give two %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!s is because I actually would like to code some for Amiga down the line. Reason I don't now is simple: I am learning 68k assembler and that is one of the most tedious and pedantic languages I've learned because all the current compilers for C are too old and broken for OS 3.9 for me to use. I have been coding on a UNIX style C compiler such as Clang and that's how I intend to do this. GCC is a load of junk though so I may be forced to build my own compiler >_>. Anyways, back to my point: If the Amiga were to become x86 based I'd probably say screw it and not code for it because I have long given up optimising programs on x86 properly. Nothing about the tools I use exposes anything, rather, it is how I treat C as more flexible assembler. I like to be aware of the underlying hardware. With that said I'd probably stick to RISC boxes running BSD or some other UNIX if Amiga moved to x86.

@OlafS3

Ive got much different goals in mind than you: I never intend to make money off the code I write. I therefore could care less about what a user thinks. As a sysadmin as my day job I don't handle users or interact with them so I generally speaking don't care.

I'm just upset because I'd like to do some NG work since the toolchain and OS have a lot of expansion, but acquiring new and high performance hardware is impossible. I suggested a switch because it seems AEON and ACube are utterly incapable of building units at a reasonable cost/performance ratio. I could buy a whole rack of Onyx 350 IR4 graphics for the price of the X1000 and wipe the walls with it, especially since OS4 is a 32-bit, multiprocessor blind system.

AROS doesn't count for me since I dont own any powerful ARM or PowerPC hardware

@biggun

I REALLY don't appreciate being called stupid subversively. Currently there are plenty of more performant MIPS and SPARC chips available than most PowerPC gear. The R16000 of MIPS fame is faster despite being clocked lower, and a Sun Ultra 45 wipes the walls with a G5 and a PA6T. We're talking 10+ year old designs: It doesn't cut it! And if they adopt faster CPUs for the next NG Amigas, PowerPC ones I can expect the systems to be even more expensive.

As previously explained I could give a flying freak whether or not it would break binary compatibility. Sure other users care, but I care more about having a 64-bit OS with a CPU that can perform well today.

Don't feed anymore bull, you can look up the dhrystone measurements and other benchmarks yourself, but do keep in mind all of these systems are 64-bit and SMP capable so they're going to beat any slow uniprocessor 32-bit mode OS

AROS runs on almost any hardware available except SPARC and MIPS including X86/X64/PowerPC/ARM and 68k. If you search for something running on your two favorites you will have no luck.

[TeamBlackFox]

Well of course. My sentiments exactly. If I'm gonna buy something high performance it has better be a good RISC CPU is my though, and for anything recent that leaves out PowerPC, ARM is too underpowered, so that leaves SPARC and MIPS.

Of course if A EON were to get a POWER7 based system with NUMA and reasonably priced around $1000-1500 at most, sure I'd pick it up. But the current offerings seem to be limited by cost and CPU availability. Why not then move to MIPS which has plenty of high performance designs available? Or SPARC which has processors sold from Fujitsu. I'm sure between those a lower cost yet high performance option exists!

[biggun]

Currently there are plenty of more performant MIPS and SPARC chips available than most PowerPC gear. The R16000 of MIPS fame is faster despite being clocked lower, and a Sun Ultra 45 wipes the walls with a G5 and a PA6T. We're talking 10+ year old designs:

The Sun ULTRA 45 came our 8 years ago - while the G5 came to market 12 years ago,.
Whether a old  Sparc is faster than an much older PPC does not really matter.


The which AMIGA users migh interest is:
* being able to run existing software
* being able to buy good, new hardware for a reasonable price

PPC is least provides the first point.

[OlafS3]

You always circle around your two favorites but it will not happen. I do not think for different reasons that A-eon or Hyperion will ever change ISA and drop PPC but "if" they did the new platform would need big advantages compared to PowerPC to justify the expenses they need and the sacrifices that would needed f.e. dropping the existing 68k integration and the efforts needed to run old PPC software. And do not forget that the main programmers (the Frieden brothers) are paid for it and if the expenses can be regained after is unknown and a risk. And why do you think A-eon (one person) is interested to pay for a ISA change? I only know that he is prefinancing new PPC hardware. Hyperion wants to get paid for porting it by the hardware vendor, who do you think will be willing to do that?

[TeamBlackFox]

You know what? It isn't even worth arguing over anymore. Screw it. I'm not being unreasonable and I'm certainly making a point that everyone seems to casually deny: that SPARC and MIPS are readily available, and offer more performance for less cost than our current designs. Sure it would cost money to move, but I can't imagine A EON is getting rich on the 100 or so X1000s sold. I also think I'm not alone in feeling alienated and cheated in that the performance offered is much less than I can get elsewhere.

The more I think about it though the more I see why nothing gets done here. Just too fragmented and resistant to change anything that may break compatibility.

[Kremlar]

If you're going to move anywhere you move to an architecture where there is an existing inexpensive desktop product that exists - like x86.

[biggun]

I'm not being unreasonable and I'm certainly making a point that everyone seems to casually deny: that SPARC and MIPS are readily available, and offer more performance for less cost than our current designs.

Please show use where we could buy new Laptops or new Desktop with these for < $500.
If you can do this - then your would have a reasonable point.

[TeamBlackFox]

Gladly for MIPS: lemote.com/en/products

For higher performance stuff, a company like A-EON could take one of the open designs such as the OpenSPARC T1 and build boards off that for reasonable prices. It isn't as hard as you're postulating.

[TeamBlackFox]

If you're going to move anywhere you move to an architecture where there is an existing inexpensive desktop product that exists - like x86.

Yeah and that will be the day I move to another NG product that doesn't do that. You don't realize the scope of issues that is going to cause. Look at BeOS/Be Inc. if you want to know what lies in store for anyone wanting to play with the big boys.

[Kremlar]

lemote.com/en/products

Available today?  At what cost?  Available tomorrow?  There's no security there.

For higher performance stuff, a company like A-EON could take one of the open designs such as the OpenSPARC T1 and build boards off that for reasonable prices

Reasonable to who??  It would not be "reasonable" at low volume.

Yeah and that will be the day I move to another NG product that doesn't do that. You don't realize the scope of issues that is going to cause. Look at BeOS/Be Inc. if you want to know what lies in store for anyone wanting to play with the big boys.

Certainly no worse than AmigaOS is right now.  The x86 solution is quite clear - port to x86, pick a solid board to support early in its life cycle with a long projected life cycle, write drivers and build your new "AmigaXXX" out of it.  Integrate emulation for 68k apps in a sandbox.  No one cares about PowerPC apps.  Buy 1000 boards at $60/each and you have a stock of new "AmigaXXX"s to sell.

There's no advantage to custom hardware, so why use anything but the best?  If you look at price/performance/availability/stability on the desktop NOTHING beats x86 quite clearly.

Certainly no less "Amiga" than what is being sold today.

[biggun]

Gladly for MIPS: lemote.com/en/products
.

What are the prices of these products?

[TeamBlackFox]

Kremlar,

Come now, the majority of cost of production isn't the creation/assembly so much as licensing. If someone produces an OpenSPARC derived chip and then orders at least 1,000 of them from China, then its gonna be hella cheaper than the current 300 or PA6T orders and then having to deal with licensing costs et cetera.

The Lemote computers are readily available from resellers, they sell them on Amazon and other online retailers. The entire architecture from CPU to firmware is open source, which is good because I've had to deal with the proprietary firmware on servers and coercing them to run BSD instead of RHElL or Windows can be a challenge. Having an open source from top to bottom architecture will help minimize bugs and reduce power consumption, improve ACPI stability etc.

Yes, I'm anti-x86. I'm against a backwards architecture that is poorly engineered, constantly fought over by AMD and Intel, hampered by incompatible addressing modes, uses hacks to extend the opcode possibilities.

A CPU in this day and age doesn't need 1000+ op codes to do its job. And since ABI/API has long since broken legacy software there is little point in conserving the real and protected modes of operations.

You also completely blew off my warning about BeOS: what makes Amiga any different?

Let's see :

Both are niche OS with various open and proprietary solutions
Both suffer from infighting and fragmented user base
Both are hampered by backwards compatibility with the original iteration
Both had official solutions running on PowerPC
Both have open source solutions on x86, neither are very successful outside their niche

BeOS failed permanently when it switched from PowerPC, and dropped it for x86

Sounds an awful lot like history repeats itself.

[TeamBlackFox]

OlafS3,

Tekmote.NL sells some for €200-400, mostly due to import tariffs. If there was more demand I'm sure the cost would drop.