One unified OS for the future?

[Blinx123]

@wawrzon

If by "file structure" you're referring to the Linux file system hierarchy: It can be worked around (and in fact has been in the past. By the LinuxStep project).

Possibly the easiest solution is doing what Apple did inside Mac OS X. Adding symbolic links and hiding part of the hierarchy.

[TeamBlackFox]

Wow Biggun, I don't know if you're trolling or just plain delusional:

Not only does AmigaOS fit that criteria, but so does CP/M, TOS and DOS. I don't see why you'd want to renounce memory protection, I mean I'd hate to have a stop error, guru meditation or what have you constantly interrupt my work and corrupt my data. Its used because often enough programmes simply aren't perfect and will happily corrupt your OS.

SMP, and also threading and multiplexing are very important, simply because a single CPU can't do more than one task at a time. Multiprocessing allows for load balancing, increased CPU efficiency and less time spent switching tasks.

64-bit addressing and pointers are also important, because 4GB RAM no longer cuts it. Virtualization, rendering, servers and computational math all are very memory intensive and you simply can't use nasty hacks like PAE to get around it.

Either your trolling or your computing needs are so minimal that a cooperative multitasked OS with incomplete preemptive scheduling, no network stack out of the box and severely limited security and performance is enough for you to do everything on. Hell, Windows 3.1 is the same way. Expose that to the internet and before you know it you're box is compromised and exposed!

[Minuous]

4GB RAM no longer cuts it.

4Gb is a huge amount of memory and should be enough for any conceivable purpose, if the OS and application aren't poorly written bloatware.

a cooperative multitasked OS with incomplete preemptive scheduling, no network stack out of the box and severely limited security and performance

Are you talking about any of the AmigaOSes here? Because they all have full preemptive multitasking and TCP/IP stacks, and they all are very efficient (especially OS3.9) and thus highly performant.

[Blinx123]

4Gb is a huge amount of memory and should be enough for any conceivable purpose, if the OS and application aren't poorly written bloatware.

4GB clearly isn't enough. Especially in modern times.
My laptop only has 4GB RAM and it really can become an issue. Especially when reclaiming memory takes too long, there are memory holes in a piece of software like Flash Player or without cache optimization.

It's actually less of a problem for most 32 bit OS', since they usually assume that there's less RAM available. However, that isn't too say 32 bit systems can't be starved.

[A6000]

If there is ever a multicore Amiga compatible system running an AOS compatible operating system with memory protection, virtualisation and all the other buzzwords used by marketing professionals, who is going to write software to fully exploit all those features?, the best we can hope for is ports from the PC, and why would they even bother doing that for a market of just a few hundred people at best?
Such a system should perhaps come with an advanced program generator so that we are not dependent on other people to write the software.

[matthey]

4GB clearly isn't enough. Especially in modern times.
My laptop only has 4GB RAM and it really can become an issue. Especially when reclaiming memory takes too long, there are memory holes in a piece of software like Flash Player or without cache optimization.

Then you have the wrong OS and the wrong processor for a laptop. A 32 bit x86 with 2GB of memory and a little older OS is very happy for most uses needed for a laptop. I like your pic but I think that guy may have something to do with the problem.

It's actually less of a problem for most 32 bit OS', since they usually assume that there's less RAM available. However, that isn't too say 32 bit systems can't be starved.

The 68020 has about 10-20% better code density (code size) than the x86. The x86_64 is 10-20% worse code density by some estimates than the x86 (plus much more memory needed for stack and data alignment). We can make the 68k 5-15% better code density. That means our new 68k ISA programs could use 40% less memory than a x86_64. Better 68k compilers (I'm working on it) could save up to another 40% in code size. Caches can be this much smaller or have this percentage more code in them. Processors are cheaper to make with fewer caches. The i7 now has more caches than most Amigas have for main memory. Do we want to go bigger and more costly or do we want to go cheaper and more efficient? Some people may need the bigger and more costly so that is a good reason to have PPC for the high end and 68k for the low end with one unified AmigaOS API that makes programming easier.

[TeamBlackFox]

AmigaOS does in fact have several performance bottlenecks, discounting hardware completely, the OS is cooperatively multitasked, similar to Mac OS pre X, so a task that  demands CPU time gets it, with no way for the user to interact with and kill the task. Similarly, the OS is lacking a thread implementation, which spells to me NOT-THREAD-SAFE. I have seen a few userspace implementations of a ptheads-type model, but this is insufficient in most cases. This means AmigaOS, bare metal, runs everything in its own process, which increases memory requirements, wastes CPU time and makes the OS feel slower.

4GB RAM is not sufficient in many cases, either. If I am rendering something in lightwave on my Octane, I am limited to using slower rendering techniques that conserve memory, simply because my Octane has only 2GB RAM. If I had 8, the max, I would not have to be as careful. Even if I were to to take the Origin and hook it up to a  G-Brick, which can have over 8 times the RAM of the Odyssey GPU, with only 4GB between four 64-bit CPUs, is going to have issues. Before you call a false analogy and say that IRIX is bloated, I have many times the power of the most-decked out Classic Amiga, and MIPS R10000 CPUs and derivatives are in a class above any G4-based Mac, and if I had a quad 800MHz Tezro with DCD and 8GB RAM I would go toe-to-toe with a quad G5 Mac in benchmarks and expect comparable performance, for a similar reason that the Amiga edged out PCs in the early 1990s: the central CPU didn't have to be fast because the GPU was able to pick up the slack, combined with a DMA design based on, and designed with, networking in mind.

The fact is you can't brush off hardware advancement like its nothing at all - you have to adapt and advance with it. 64-bit is becoming the norm in the open source world - PC-BSD, DragonFlyBSD, Ubuntu and a lot of other players are dropping 32-bit support, it is a DEAD-END. Even ARM has the v8 specification now, a 64-bit architecture is upon us. I love my Beaglebone Black, but sooner or later I will sell it, and cope with the fact that 32-bit in the consumer and hobbyist market is running out of petrol and circling the drain.

The fact is the Amiga-NG platforms MUST evolve and advance, otherwise it will be pretty  much history, and it will join its competitors, DOS,OS and OS 9 in the history books for good.

[matthey]

AmigaOS does in fact have several performance bottlenecks, discounting hardware completely, the OS is cooperatively multitasked, similar to Mac OS pre X, so a task that  demands CPU time gets it, with no way for the user to interact with and kill the task. Similarly, the OS is lacking a thread implementation, which spells to me NOT-THREAD-SAFE. I have seen a few userspace implementations of a ptheads-type model, but this is insufficient in most cases. This means AmigaOS, bare metal, runs everything in its own process, which increases memory requirements, wastes CPU time and makes the OS feel slower.

The Amiga has used preemptive multitasking from day one. It has lots of different processes and tasks. Almost everything including most of AmigaOS works in user space which is much faster than switching to supervisor mode for everything. It's not as secure or crash proof because of it but it is fast and it works well enough when programs don't misbehave.

4GB RAM is not sufficient in many cases, either. If I am rendering something in lightwave on my Octane, I am limited to using slower rendering techniques that conserve memory, simply because my Octane has only 2GB RAM. If I had 8, the max, I would not have to be as careful. Even if I were to to take the Origin and hook it up to a  G-Brick, which can have over 8 times the RAM of the Odyssey GPU, with only 4GB between four 64-bit CPUs, is going to have issues. Before you call a false analogy and say that IRIX is bloated, I have many times the power of the most-decked out Classic Amiga, and MIPS R10000 CPUs and derivatives are in a class above any G4-based Mac, and if I had a quad 800MHz Tezro with DCD and 8GB RAM I would go toe-to-toe with a quad G5 Mac in benchmarks and expect comparable performance, for a similar reason that the Amiga edged out PCs in the early 1990s: the central CPU didn't have to be fast because the GPU was able to pick up the slack, combined with a DMA design based on, and designed with, networking in mind.

MIPS has the worst code density of any modern processor. The code size is more than twice that of 68k code. I can understand why you need more memory. Can you even boot your Octane with the same amount of memory as the Amiga 3000? My Amiga 3000 came with 2 (or 3 MB?) of memory and I could do a lot with it. I have a 3000T with a little over 100MB of memory with RTG gfx and I can do just about anything I need to with that while multitasking. I can't imagine 1GB of memory not being enough for 95%+ of users on an Amiga.

The fact is you can't brush off hardware advancement like its nothing at all - you have to adapt and advance with it. 64-bit is becoming the norm in the open source world - PC-BSD, DragonFlyBSD, Ubuntu and a lot of other players are dropping 32-bit support, it is a DEAD-END. Even ARM has the v8 specification now, a 64-bit architecture is upon us. I love my Beaglebone Black, but sooner or later I will sell it, and cope with the fact that 32-bit in the consumer and hobbyist market is running out of petrol and circling the drain.

The 64 bit hype sells computers. Bloated software sells computers. The desktop computer seems to be disappearing though. I wouldn't say 32 bit is dead for embedded and electrical devices. I know a 68k Amiga could do everything a pad and lower end laptop could do with less memory. Most powerful 68k Amiga computers have 64 or 128 MB of memory with happy Amiga users and you are saying that 4GB of memory is not enough for an Amiga? Maybe it wouldn't be for a MIPS Amiga or even a PPC (has good code density for RISC) Amiga but I can only dream of powerful enough apps for a 68k Amiga with 2GB of memory to ever run out of memory.

[biggun]

Wow Biggun, I don't know if you're trolling or just plain delusional:

Not only does AmigaOS fit that criteria, but so does CP/M, TOS and DOS. I don't see why you'd want to renounce memory protection, I mean I'd hate to have a stop error, guru meditation or what have you constantly interrupt my work and corrupt my data. Its used because often enough programmes simply aren't perfect and will happily corrupt your OS.

If your texteditor crashes then you loose your work anyhow.
Whether this is on AMIGA-OS or on UNIX it does not matter.
And memory protection does not help here.

SMP, and also threading and multiplexing are very important, simply because a single CPU can't do more than one task at a time. Multiprocessing allows for load balancing, increased CPU efficiency and less time spent switching tasks.

First of all - AMIGA OS supports threads.

Your argument is very "simple" but OK lets follow it.
Just say stop when you think you have enough CPU power

2 Cores have theoretically more power than 1
4 Cores have theoretically more power than 2
8 Cores have theoretically more power than 4
16 Cores have theoretically more power than 8
32 Cores have theoretically more power than 16
64 Cores have theoretically more power than 32
128 Cores have theoretically more power than 64
256 Cores have theoretically more power than 128
512 Cores have theoretically more power than 256
1024 Cores have theoretically more power than 512
2048 Cores have theoretically more power than 1024

Not happy yet?
Still need more?
What bloated Software do you want to run?

64-bit addressing and pointers are also important, because 4GB RAM no longer cuts it.

For all I want to do with my computer - 4 GB is enough.

[amigadave]

Well if you produce that many than there would be the funds
to also produce 68k cores which can compete with PPC systems.
Including real AMIGA chipsets again.

Right now we can with FPGA technology build 68k system
in the performance range of PowerpC Efika systems.

If you would produce around 15,000 - 20,000 systems as you describe
then you could "bake" real 68Ks including AMIGA chipset as SOC.

These systems would have the real chipset and performance
wise would be able to play in the same league as PowerPC AMIGA XE systems.

Maybe when more work is completed on the FPGA 68k Soft-Core design, and if a standard can be established for some kind of SAGA, and after several "Proofs of Concept" have been produced and sold to customers as accelerators for existing Commodore Amiga 68k computer models, or stand alone FPGA Amiga clones, maybe after all of that has happened, we can get a Kickstarter project started to provide the funding needed to "Bake" some new ASIC chips and increase the speed and performance of these FPGA accelerators and stand alone clones by another factor of 2x to 4x, or more.

I think that a Kickstarter project to fund the creation and production of new Amiga custom chips would be wildly successful, compared to other Amiga bounties.  There was a ton of interested and support for the Natami project, so the interest in an enhanced 68k Amiga accelerator or clone system is clearly there.  Maybe not in numbers greater than 10,000, but certainly more than 2,000.

Too bad that none of this will be ready in time for the 30th Anniversary of the introduction of the Amiga, which is planned to be celebrated late in July of 2015 at the Museum of Computer History in Mountain View, Calif., as well as other locations around the world.

[biggun]

maybe after all of that has happened, we can get a Kickstarter project started to provide the funding needed to "Bake" some new ASIC chips and increase the speed and performance of these FPGA accelerators and stand alone clones by another factor of 2x to 4x, or more.
.

The FPGA get faster every other year.
If you assume that "maybe after all of that has happened" will take a year or two.
Then simple using the new FPGA models will us a 2x performance factor.
No big fund will be needed for this.

[amigadave]

The FPGA get faster every other year.
If you assume that "maybe after all of that has happened" will take a year or two.
Then simple using the new FPGA models will us a 2x performance factor.
No big fund will be needed for this.

That is true.  Maybe it will never be cost effective to "bake" new ASIC chips for an updated Amiga clone.  I don't know how much performance increase is gained from going from a fast FPGA to a new baked ASIC, or how much performance increase is "Enough".  It has been stated in the past that 10,000 to 15,000 chips would need to be produced to make any new ASIC chip cost effective, which is probably too many for our remaining community, but who knows, maybe with the improvements shown using FPGA's and the Apollo Soft-Core 68k CPU, plus a SAGA core, we will see enough former Amiga users become interested again to reach those numbers.

I have guessed that we only have about 1,000 to 3,500 active users counting all flavors of Amiga & Amiga Inspired platforms today, but others claim there are many more than my estimates.  It will be interesting to see how many users line up to purchase the Phoenix accelerators, so please do NOT keep your sales numbers secret, like so many other sellers of Amiga gear do.  We want to know how many units you produce and sell and how quickly they are sold, which will help all programmers know the size of the community they might consider writing software for really is.

I can understand secrecy about some things from Amiga companies, but have never understood why they refuse to release sales numbers.  The only reason I can think of to hide sales numbers is that the number of sales is so embarrassingly low, they refuse to let anyone know how bad things really are, for fear of having the community shrink even smaller.  I hope the Apollo Team will not follow the pattern of hiding sales numbers for their Phoenix accelerators, or the Viper boards from Majasta.

Edit:  Maybe a big Kickstarter fund would help get hundreds of Phoenix accelerators built quickly and eliminate the risk of producing more than the number you have buyers for them.  This could also help fund the design and production of additional Phoenix accelerator models for any Amiga models you have not already designed an accelerator board for.

[biggun]

That is true.  Maybe it will never be cost effective to "bake" new ASIC chips for an updated Amiga clone.

It will depend on your goal.

If you want to bring out something like "CD32-2015 edition"  which you want to sell to halve a million people then baking chips is the best way forward.

If you want to produce some 68K Amiga clones and you are satisfied with
a calculated performance of an A500 running @ 1 Giagaherz then FPGA are the easiest way for this.

[OlafS3]

4GB clearly isn't enough. Especially in modern times.
My laptop only has 4GB RAM and it really can become an issue. Especially when reclaiming memory takes too long, there are memory holes in a piece of software like Flash Player or without cache optimization.

It's actually less of a problem for most 32 bit OS', since they usually assume that there's less RAM available. However, that isn't too say 32 bit systems can't be starved.

4 GB RAM is a issue? :confused:

Seriously all my newer systems (with Windows) and I never had a problem with RAM

[OlafS3]

That is true.  Maybe it will never be cost effective to "bake" new ASIC chips for an updated Amiga clone.  I don't know how much performance increase is gained from going from a fast FPGA to a new baked ASIC, or how much performance increase is "Enough".  It has been stated in the past that 10,000 to 15,000 chips would need to be produced to make any new ASIC chip cost effective, which is probably too many for our remaining community, but who knows, maybe with the improvements shown using FPGA's and the Apollo Soft-Core 68k CPU, plus a SAGA core, we will see enough former Amiga users become interested again to reach those numbers.

I have guessed that we only have about 1,000 to 3,500 active users counting all flavors of Amiga & Amiga Inspired platforms today, but others claim there are many more than my estimates.  It will be interesting to see how many users line up to purchase the Phoenix accelerators, so please do NOT keep your sales numbers secret, like so many other sellers of Amiga gear do.  We want to know how many units you produce and sell and how quickly they are sold, which will help all programmers know the size of the community they might consider writing software for really is.

I can understand secrecy about some things from Amiga companies, but have never understood why they refuse to release sales numbers.  The only reason I can think of to hide sales numbers is that the number of sales is so embarrassingly low, they refuse to let anyone know how bad things really are, for fear of having the community shrink even smaller.  I hope the Apollo Team will not follow the pattern of hiding sales numbers for their Phoenix accelerators, or the Viper boards from Majasta.

Edit:  Maybe a big Kickstarter fund would help get hundreds of Phoenix accelerators built quickly and eliminate the risk of producing more than the number you have buyers for them.  This could also help fund the design and production of additional Phoenix accelerator models for any Amiga models you have not already designed an accelerator board for.

+1

You answered why they propably keep sales number secret

[paolone]

Then you have the wrong OS and the wrong processor for a laptop. A 32 bit x86 with 2GB of memory and a little older OS is very happy for most uses needed for a laptop. I like your pic but I think that guy may have something to do with the problem.

Great. You summarize in a few lines of text what I actually hate about retrocomputing-minded people like you, here and on other IT fora. Your absolute knowledge about other people's needs about hardware specs and computer uses. Your "for most uses" clearly don't fit the needs of the person you're talking with, and, for your info, they don't fit mine either. My laptop, which incidentally is the machine I use to develop and build Icaros Desktop, is a 8-GB 64-bit Windows 7 PC hosting the Ubuntu Linux virtual machine I use to develop and all needed target AROS guests. Ubuntu VM takes 2 GB of RAM and every AROS VM at least 512-1024 MB each one. For my main job, however, I need Windows. Current 8 GB are fine, but I had to add 4 GB to the ones I got with the laptop at the beginning, since 4 GB only were plain not enough to perform similar tasks.

We're ending yar 2014 DC and we're now paying less than 50¢ per gigabyte on mainstream SSD devices, while 8 GB RAM modules generally cost less than 100 euros. There is no practical, no economical, no moral need to save clock cycles and memory cells anymore. There's no need to be afraid of paging files and memory protection: our SSD, but even our fastest hard drives, can perfectly live with them, fastly and reliably. Being so conservative in resources can be good for embedded applications, but neither with mainstream operating systems, nor with Android, nor even with post-Amiga OSes, we're even remotely targeting to embedded uses. Scalability can be good, but we're definitely using our computers to perform more and more resource demanding tasks. If you still think 4 GB are "just enough" for today tasks, it simply means you haven't ever worked with huge images, with HD movies, with virtualization, with most of CURRENT "computer tasks" that 15-20 years ago we could just dream about.