News of Free 060 Like Apollo Core License

[LoadWB]

I was thinking about MorhpOS when I read your post...  I think we need more diversity in Amiga environment, that will help a LOT.

hehehe I rather like MorphOS and would not be upset at all to see it running on x86/64 hardware.  My thought was that AROS was targeted for the x86 all along so it might be the most likely candidate.

[ne_one]

What is most important/problematic: Waiting for under powered new PPC HW or waiting for AmigaOS that is widely available?

It's pretty obvious that what makes the most sense has never been the guiding force behind the Amiga in the Amino era.

It's mind boggling to me that transitioning away from 68k became an exercise in tightly-coupling the OS with yet another CPU suffering from accelerated decrepitude.

Fifteen years ago we knew that going platform agnostic was the way to go - even if that meant favouring the PPC.

I suspect the sheer work of making it x86 based would that many years, so not really realistic, espesially given aeon and acube has sunk alot into PPC.

There is a compelling case for rewriting the OS rather than porting it and maintaining backward compatibility through emulation. See also: Apple.

The laughable thing about all of this is that 30 years ago a small group pumped out the first few generations of the software in far less time than it has taken to move the needle forward in the next 25. We're talking about transitioning or replacing something that came out decades ago, with a small footprint and limited complexity.

[kreciu]

hehehe I rather like MorphOS and would not be upset at all to see it running on x86/64 hardware.  My thought was that AROS was targeted for the x86 all along so it might be the most likely candidate.

Only problem with AROS is that it doesn't bring this emotional "load" as AmigaOS (same with MorphOS).

[gregthecanuck]

It's mind boggling to me that transitioning away from 68k became an exercise in tightly-coupling the OS with yet another CPU suffering from accelerated decrepitude.

Fifteen years ago we knew that going platform agnostic was the way to go - even if that meant favouring the PPC.

I believe a TON of work has been done on OS4 to do exactly that - limiting the areas of tight coupling to the CPU/architecture. It is something reasonably obvious to do. For example, a lot of old assembler code was replaced by C. That decouples from CPU. I expect if you compared a lot of OS4 code to OS3 code one would see significant cleanup all over.

However, I suspect the endianness is still expected to be the same.

[wawrzon]

Only problem with AROS is that it doesn't bring this emotional "load" as AmigaOS (same with MorphOS).

well, when it runs on your amiga your usual amiga software it actually feels like an amiga. okay, stupid theme and an ugly default icon set aside, which both can be replaced. on the other hand default zune settings look usually better than mui and still are configurable without stealing a keyfile you may not be able to register anymore.

[psxphill]

Only problem with AROS is that it doesn't bring this emotional "load" as AmigaOS (same with MorphOS).

I don't see why not, you can even run AROS on 68k. There were a few mistakes they made along the way because they had all that x86 cpu grunt, plus a few other things that need optimising.

The main problem with AROS is that it's too similar to AmigaOS, so multicore & memory protection is an issue.

[kolla]

wrong..

Good, I am glad you think so.

[wawrzon]

Good, I am glad you think so.

im doing it. the development may find place in cross compiler environment, as well as inititial testing. but the hard part in many cases especially for low level stuff needs to be confirmed on an actual sytem via serial debug. unfortunatelly it confirms that the emulation is these days still not enough for everything.

[Iggy]

In many respects, Apollo extends the life of the Amiga while the PPC merely prolongs its death.

I'm assuming MorphOS is your NG OS of choice. Do we know how far off it is from x64?

Interesting thought. I'd always kind of considered legacy to be the 'Living Dead' of the Amiga world.

So Apollo, to me, would just be a fast zombie.

NG isn't wed to an ISA or a specific platform like legacy is, so altering it doesn't involve the massive re-writes necessary to rework our original platform.

[psxphill]

I am 100% sure that no solution we come with on our own will even come close to a modern X64 CPU though.

An atom on an A1200 accelerator card booting a 68k emulator would be very interesting.

[wawrzon]

The main problem with AROS is that it's too similar to AmigaOS, so multicore & memory protection is an issue.

yes, on amiga-m68k target smp, while possible ,if only there was hardware for it, would cause incompatibility. not so on x64.

[TheMagicM]

Only problem with AROS is that it doesn't bring this emotional "load" as AmigaOS (same with MorphOS).

Thats because it runs on x86, more than enough CPU to handle the emotional load.  LOL

[Niding]

Gunnar made a general comment about the direction and intent of the Apollo core, which will adress relatively frequently asked questions;

Is was always clear that: APOLLO's roadmap includes to run everything any 68K can run. This means also including running Linux.
 
But we have a clear policy about future features:
We _NEVER_ promise the users features that are not available today but only on our roadmap.
Users always only guarantee stuff working today 100%.
 
This means even if we might even run internally Linux for testing.
As long we are not sure we can release it now.
Our official answer will always be "no you can not run Linux".

http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=10876&x=1&z=Jg0cBR

[psxphill]

It's a weird week. Trump says he's only ever tried to be friends with Kim Jong Un and Gunnar says it's clear that Apollo will run standard Amiga Linux builds (unless he's talking about an Apollo only Linux build that is only compatible with user land 68k Linux software, but that would be misleading and dishonest....).

In september Gunnar posted this:

"68080 follows this MOTOROLA tradition.
68080 has an MMU and its updated to be modern."

Which makes his comment about Linux compatibility less clear.

I guess I better wait until the V4 is released and see whether the MMU and FPU is compatible. Going back to the point of this thread, is it the "V2" or "V4" core that is being offered?

[kolla]

Maybe one day it will run Apollo/DomainOS :p

[grond]

Going back to the point of this thread, is it the "V2" or "V4" core that is being offered?

There is only one core which is adapted for different hardwares, namely the V2 and the V4. What features can and will be included into a core for a new hardware will depend on that hardware. If it has a relatively small FPGA, the FPU would likely have more microcoded (i.e. transparently software-emulated) instructions than if a larger FPGA was used.