Is Amiga NG underpowered?

[Lurch]

There's going to be a mandatory ROM lockout of non-approved (hobby) OSs on all new Windows 10 systems.  NG Amigas have no chance of becoming mainstream.   I'm going back to the classics using FPGA technology.  Classics have a better chance by sheer virtue of having more software.

I think you mean Secure boot, this is part of the UEFI which prevents low-level malware like rootkits from interfering with the boot process.

Secure boot has been around since Windows 8, so it's not a new thing that is just Windows 10.

However it's up to the manufacturer of the motherboard (these days the main board) if this will be locked down or if they will provide a toggle. In 99% of cases there is a toggle in the BIOS to disable Secure boot. Most likely this will be the same with new hardware coming through for the Windows 10 generation of devices.

The worse case scenario if the motherboard is locked would be whom ever is working on the AmigaOS to x86 port (well it should really be x64 as x86 is 32bit and PC's these days are x64) contacts the motherborad manufacturer and Microsoft to have the kernel-mode drivers signed and then the motherboard manufacturer adds it the motherboard Secure boot database saying hey I'm not a viruii, malware or rootkit and it's sorted.

This also could be a good thing for AmigaOS, pick one or two PC motherboards and use the UEFI/Secure boot to look the OS to those.

This would create a stable platform and people could concentrate on developing drivers for it making it easier for developers.

Hardware would be cheaper than PPC and you would still have the predictability of what hardware is expected. A lot like a gaming console.

Oh and to add Microsoft already support Ubuntu and Fedora with Secure boot so it wouldn't be a stretch for AmigaOS. The FUD people are spreading stating Microsoft are locking out other OS's is crazy. It is to stop viruii, malware or rootkits and again 99% of the time it can be disabled in the BIOS.

It's also up to the manufacturer of the motherboard in question if it is to be compulsory or what OS's are to be in the Secure boot database on the motherboard not Microsoft.

[QuikSanz]

I am not sure why everything needs to center on "Power, number of cores, MIPS, and the need for speed?"  Is it the whole testosterone laden argument than "Mine is bigger, faster, longer, thicker, etc." than yours?  Why can't the world be "fast enough" for us? I remember hearing, "You can't always get what you want, But if you try sometimes, well you might find, you get what you need?"

Of course I heard, "Hey! You! Get off of my cloud" too...

Think of how fast Blender would be on 2 or 4 cores?

Chris

[NovaCoder]

[youtube]gupCF8LlpfE[/youtube]

[danbeaver]

@ Danbeaver
Power means nothing if the software is not written to take advantage of it.

Power Pc 604:
http://lowendmac.com/2014/cpus-powerpc-604-and-604e/
It is a respectable processor

And "With great power, comes great responsibility!"

So does Great Power come with software to take advantage of it?  Or is an over bloated operating system need Great Power to overcome crappy programming practices?

So many questions, so little time!

[danbeaver]

Think of how fast Blender would be on 2 or 4 cores?

Chris

Think how fast my home blender would be if I plugged it into 240V rather than 120V?

[QuikSanz]

Think how fast my home blender would be if I plugged it into 240V rather than 120V?

Better to add 1 or more motors than to blow the only one!

[Yasu]

Two things: I got an Powermac G5 @ 2.7 GHz and the only time it feels slow is when I surf at some heavy web pages (which usually feels sluggish (but not as sluggish) on my quad core pc too), but considering that Amiga was in the internet dark ages just a few years ago I can't complain. Oh, and 1080p MKV movies don't fare too well either but I can live with that. I don't use NG Amigas because of it's power.

Second, please stop complaining about the pricy hardware and that "we must" switch to this or that architecture. The reason we have pricy hardware is because an architectural shift is a huge undertaking with no garuantee of success. So someone actually opened up their wallets to make this hardware so we would have something to play with at all.

As for Amiga becoming mainstream again ... Yeah right. That ship sailed when Escom went belly up in 1996. After that Windows 95, Linux and later OSX came and became the laymens choice of OS. That will not change. We might love AmigaOS, but most people are happy having an app launcher.

Sit back, relax and have fun with what we do have. It's not bad, really!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Think how fast my home blender would be if I plugged it into 240V rather than 120V?

I'm standing way far back if you do that!  :roflmao:

[xboxOwn]

I'm standing way far back if you do that!  :roflmao:

Wouldn't he die if he does that?

[danbeaver]

Wouldn't he die if he does that?

Yeah Mike, wouldn't you die if you stood back from the Bass-O-Matic?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Yeah Mike, wouldn't you die if you stood back from the Bass-O-Matic?

I had to google that reference.  Obviously didn't watch very much SNL in my youth.  Definitely worth it.  :lol:

[danbeaver]

Yes, the Safety Zone is right next to the Bass-O-Matic; too far out and the spray of toxic bass could cause immediate death or disability.

p.s., who asks questions like that, really?

[QuikSanz]

Yes, the Safety Zone is right next to the Bass-O-Matic; too far out and the spray of toxic bass could cause immediate death or disability.

p.s., who asks questions like that, really?

Sounds like my old truck. Feel it for 3 blocks.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Sounds like my old truck. Feel it for 3 blocks.

One of my long string of sh**y old cars when I was younger was a 1968 Dodge Dart, Slant-6, with a glasspack.  The exhaust dumped right after that, right under the body of the car.  You'd start that thing up and it would shake the ground, people be all like "You got a 340 in that thing?!"  Haha, Slant-6 FTW.  :lol:

[QuikSanz]

One of my long string of sh**y old cars when I was younger was a 1968 Dodge Dart, Slant-6, with a glasspack.  The exhaust dumped right after that, right under the body of the car.  You'd start that thing up and it would shake the ground, people be all like "You got a 340 in that thing?!"  Haha, Slant-6 FTW.  :lol:

My old truck also has Headers and a glass pack, but I was referring to the stereo ;-)

[agami]

Is Amiga NG underpowered and that is why I don't want to buy one?
I hate to troll, but the new PowerPC systems are getting old or seriously old.
Any chance of us moving to an ARM platform?

Questions: What is power? How does one judge what is powerful and what is underpowered in this context? Is it purely subjective or can it be measured objectively?

For some it's simply speeds and feeds, numbers on paper; GHz, TFLOPS, Gbps, IOPS, Cores/Socket, Threads/Core, etc. In essence, the potential of the hardware. There is a good reason why this is the case; It is simple math, the kind most people can understand. And a lot of the time when more of these things are added people see improvement.

But this simple 'hardware potential' to 'calculation performance' equation is only practical when the environment dynamic is normalised. The reality of this is seen in cases when more potential is added and little or no improvement is seen.

For me it is the principle of Empowerment
In the computer HW/SW relationship, HW is predominantly the enabling factor, and software is the empowering factor.
Think back to the Amiga of yore, was any Amiga really powerful in terms of hardware? How many people bought an Amiga for the sheer MHz, or Mbytes of RAM or the amount of storage or the bandwidth of the Zorro bus? When compared to its contemporaries there were obvious reasons why it cost less; Apart from the custom chipset every other off-the-shelf component was for the most part a 'lesser-than' option.

But it was the software that tapped the hardware potential that empowered users to dream and turn those dreams into reality. That is what I call powerful.
Since then the only similar thing I have seen is the iPhone/iOS platform.

So is the the current ilk of Amiga NG systems underpowered? You betcha. Both by ways of hardware potential and empowerment factor. And maybe you're not buying one because on some level you know this already.
PowerPC or Power ISA has become old hat, and most of the major players are predominantly concerned with supporting legacy momentum.
Yes, ARM is the new enabler for all sorts of hardware and is outpacing other architectures in terms of technical and market growth. But as others have already said, a porting effort based on the existing person-hour commitments of any of the Amiga NG operating systems would take way too long.