Nobody doubts that there are use cases for the chips, otherwise they would neither be developed nor sold but I am wondering for what consumers can use them (and both X1000 and X5000 are consumer boards). If it would be sold to people using it professional then it might make more sense (if it would be full supported) but companies will certainly not buy it because it is too expensive, missing drivers and development environment for it, and no support nearby and thus problems if f.e. the system must be repaired. The last point alone would be a no-go for a company. So X series is for amigans only. Trevor integrates Xena again in the new X5000 despite the experiences with X1000 so he has either ideas people here not have or it is just a small gimmick to make the board special without any real use. But every gimmick makes it more expensive so I personal would have left it away if I realize that something is without real use but it is Trevors decision and the money of the people that buy the boards...
I think you are selling short (underestimating) the ingenuity of Amiga (and now AmigaOne, MorphOS, AROS, & FPGA clone) users. As itix wrote, the pool of users who have a lot of the technical expertise and knowledge of how AmigaOS and any newer Amiga inspired OSes work, is shrinking and rare. This makes new ideas and products, or add-on boards more rare as well, but we still see something new being worked on every year, so there is still hope that new ideas will make there way into our tiny community. Even ideas that use the Xena/Xorro combination. We have seen just here in this thread that there are a few developers who have some interest in working on projects that use the Xena/Xorro combination, but only when they have finished other projects and have the time to work on any Xena/Xorro project. There are other owners of X1000's that may not have much programming or electrical engineering knowledge, but still want to explore the possibility of creating something that uses the Xena/Xorro combination (like me). I am getting tired of repeating the same kinds of things over and over again to people who just refuse to listen, or admit that there are two valid sides to this argument. Would an FPGA have been a better choice instead of an XMOS chip? Probably, but I'll bet it would have been much more expensive and maybe even more difficult to add to the motherboard than the simpler XMOS chip. That argument is water under the bridge and we have Xena/Xorro now. It is there for anyone who wishes to make use of it and does not get in the way for those who choose to ignore it. Again I say, why so much time and effort to argue against A-Eon's choice to provide this extra feature (and believe me, to most X1000 owners, having Xena/Xorro is an added value feature, that they may be able to use some time in the future)? Why do a few members here feel compelled to spend so much time and effort telling us what has not yet been done, or what can't or shouldn't be done, with a user defined chip and interface that is there just for people who want to be creative and use it in any way their minds come up with? It is Trevor's choice to continue including Xena/Xorro on future systems and it is the buyers of these A-Eon systems choice to buy them, or not.
I get that some people are angry that they can't afford them, or that they want A-Eon to make something different. I feel sorry for those people, but please move on to something you really enjoy and want to promote with positive energy. If your interest is in FPGA accelerators and clones, put your energy and time there, raising excitement about that platform. If you prefer MorphOS on PPC Mac hardware, go promote it to new users and raise awareness of how great that platform is. The same goes for AROS, AEROS, ARIX, or any of the other AROS distributions. Why spend time telling a sculptor that his lump of clay, or block of stone, can't be this, or can't be that. Xena/Xorro will be used in the future by a few people, then you can come back and use all of your negative energy to criticize what someone has spent weeks, months or years creating, and tell them how they could have done it easier and faster, and better, by using their PC. Is that the kind of thing you want to spend your time doing? Because that is what is looks like many of you are doing here in this thread. (this is not aimed directly only at you Olaf, though in might apply to some of your statements in this thread)
so you basically develop a program and upload it in the chip where it is executed independently and reacts on events but no interaction with the host system (if I am wrong then someone can explain it)
I don't believe that is correct, but people like Lyle or Trevor, or Spirantho, would have to give you a technical explanation of exactly how the XMOS chip is connected directly to the PA6T CPU and/or memory chips, or bus on the Nemo motherboard. It is my understanding that there is direct access to and from the XMOS chip from AmigaOS4.x, but I could be wrong. How else would Lyle have created, or ported some of the tools to program Xena from AmigaOS4.x, if there is no direct lines from the Xena chip to the rest of the system?
