Is Amiga NG underpowered?

[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.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I vaguely remember Hyperion saying they would port it to another system at 'the right price.'
If AROS does half the work of making drivers for an ARM platform, maybe they can work together.

[eliyahu]

I vaguely remember Hyperion saying they would port it to another system at 'the right price.'
If AROS does half the work of making drivers for an ARM platform, maybe they can work together.

possibly, but i'm not sure the AOS4 development team is all that interested in ARM, especially with new systems in the pipeline. of course AROS is already available for ARM, so if that's your interest, check it out. i haven't used it myself, but my understanding is that on the raspberry pi2, it runs well enough.

-- eliyahu

[Iggy]

The best ARM system I currently own is  quad core 1.8 GHz A17 based system.
The X5000 should easily outperform that, but the price difference is astronomical.

Honestly, I really still prefer PPCs to ARM systems.
ARM based boards don't generally feature PCIe expansion slots and other features that I have grown used to.
Their primary advantage is price.

[fishy_fiz]

If you want either ARM, or modern hardware/power, AROS is your only option.
If you want affordability, and an inbuilt emulator rather than a 3rd party emulator for system friendly legacy support there's MOS.
If "the name" is important there's OS4.x.

Seems pretty simple really. They're the options. Pick one, or not, up to you.

In regards to whether the ppc systems are underpowered, then currently, yes at times, and it'll only get moreso with time. Already theyre pushing the limits in some areas, and those areas are only getting heavier and heavier in the "modern" computing world. Slowly but surely more things will become out of reach. Already some containers for 1080p codecs (and some codecs themselves) are too heavy for even the most powerful ppc hardware available, and 1080p can only be seen as a medium resolution these days.
The internet is also getting heavier and heavier content (again, some of which is a strain at best for any ppc hardware). 3d rendering speeds are also archaic in comparison to the modern world.
If you want an idea of what the experience might be like, think of how it might be using pc hardware from around 10 years ago (Athlon/early p4 through to early athlon64/late p4 eras), but without full use of that power (less efficient drivers, features lacking, etc.), because really that's what it is.
 
Enjoyable enough, but within the context of modern computing they will show shortcomings at times.

[danbeaver]

Dr. Emmett Brown: Precisely.
 Marty McFly: Whoa. This is heavy.
 Dr. Emmett Brown: There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future?  Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

[Iggy]

I would agree with most of fishy's summation except for one thing, even though dated my 2.7 GHz dual processor G5 still has about the same power as a current low end X64 system.

And how much power DO you need?  After all, are we forgetting that the primary use for ARM processors is still cell phones?

I'm not ready to fully shift my computing to disposable appliances yet.

So while manyof you maybe fixated on laptops, tablets, all in ones, or those cute little mini itx systems, I still want a more conventional PC.

And I can get that with a PPC board.
And IF they ever get around to finishing Aros, I can get all of those forms.

So, what was your objection to NG again?

It can't be the hardware because we have a lot of good choices, many that are damned powerful.

Could it be the state of the NG OS' themselves?

Development is moving slowly, but it is moving.

And, as a MorphOS user (and I actually think this applies to all three NG platforms)  I am pretty comfortable with the stated directions all differing developers have said they want to go.

The only market that isn't really being served by NG is composed of those that are satisfied with what the had at the end of the last millennia.
And FPGA pprojects will eventually be developed to suit them.

So, exactly what IS your complaint?
That we have a tiny market and a wealth of choices and fanatically devoted hardware and software developers?

[Blizz1220]

Pretty sure my only complain being that when Bill McUnEWEN
makes public statements with keyword "Amiga" it will be all over
the WWW and when new Amiga is announced even written newspaper
here pump the news (sometimes just to show off how smart they are
so their boss would think more of them).

When Morphos was ported to PPC Mac there wasn't that many big news
outsides the forums , when AROS says "it seems we are at our end goal"
even less news.

When FPGA Amiga's come to life they will do use under different name and
under cover of darkness (some of them might be lurking out there in the shadows or so the urban myths fortold).

[ElPolloDiabl]

ARM doesn't have a lot of options. It was only an example.
The upgrade path should be an FPGA computer with PowerPC card if still possible in the next couple of years.
Some people will not want any legacy 68k.

[Blizz1220]

In ten years PPC will start moving to FPGA projects so I don't see
problem with that.

[AmigaNG]

I'm not underpowered, am I?

[Iggy]

I'm not underpowered, am I?

Apparently there is no concensus on this yet.
You could try asking your significant other (sorry, that just slipped out).

[Dr. Chef]

Underpowered

I'm not sure, but NG Amiga is definitely lacking features compared to Windows and GNU/Linux.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Pretty sure my only complain being that when Bill McUnEWEN makes public statements with keyword "Amiga" it will be all over the WWW

When has Fleecy McBill crawled out of his cave to say jack squat in the past few years?  Don't think I've seen an  announcement from him since about 2006...  ain't he dead yet?  :lol:

[Fats]

If you want affordability, and an inbuilt emulator rather than a 3rd party emulator for system friendly legacy support there's MOS.
If "the name" is important there's OS4.x.

I prefer OS4 over MOS because the OS3 look&feel on PPC, not because of it's name.

[eliyahu]

I prefer OS4 over MOS because the OS3 look&feel on PPC, not because of it's name.

gotta agree with you. i don't know how the meme of OS4 is only because of 'the name' got started, but it's nonsense, at least for me. i have AROS, MOS, and AOS4 machines -- but use AOS4 nearly all of the time because i enjoy using it more. i wouldn't care what they called it.

-- eliyahu