AmigaONE X2000 'Cyrus' board.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwhMTGzi9m4

What would one do, with faster hardware? I have a Mac Mini and I hardly have performance issues. The issues we do have are more or less software related (for example SMB).

If you can work and life with MorphOS 100% of the time, then new hardware can be nice if there is software that can use it. Even in Microsoftland, there is still software that can't use multiprocessor. Sure the scheduler can assign processes to cores but 4 processes using 1% of a core, isn't better than 1 core with 4% load.

Let's hope that the X2000 isn't a fraction as costly as the monstrously overpriced X1000 (overpriced in the sense that you can get 10 times the power 1/7th the price nowadays), but I doubt it. Making new hardware is nice and all, but making it for just the fan boys out there will not make the market bigger. And we IMMHO need to make the market at least big enough to support a couple of small software enterprices.

Quote:

I hope the opposite is true. The longer they keep shooting themselves in the foot by releasing half-supported under-powered over-priced hardware for OS4 they will only serve to drive people away from OS4 which will increase MorphOS' market share.

Quote:

I think the main aim of the X2000 is not to outclass the X1000, but to warrant supply. The PA6Ts are that crazy expensive (and rare) that a new design probably does the math even with the anticipated low production runs.
If they now skip this useless Xorro nonsense and keep the design rather simple (and hence not crazy expensive) it would be at least way more attractive than the X1000.
Step in the right direction at least, good luck for Trevor.

@Intuition

I doubt it. If MOS wants a bigger share, we need new users and they have other demands than we do. We want the "Amiga experience" so we can live without SMP, Multicores, new hardware and good modern software. But other users will probably not see it our way. They want it all, and they can get it with Windows, OSX and Linux.

So the ones that are left are the fan boys of each camp and they will not change for whatever reason. And the ones that are flexible enough already own multiple systems. So here there is no share to be taken, as I see it.

However, I look forward to the day when MOS do a architectural shift and be able to attract a new crowd. But then we need a minimum of good software in order for them to pay for a licence. So I think we don't need to add more hardware (except maybe the ones that are relatively simple to port by now) and concentrate in making MOS better and adding those much needed programs, that will then be ready for the shift. This, IMHO, could be the key to relative success for MorphOS in the future.

> The PA6Ts are that crazy expensive

There has been reported a price drop to 600 USD. Still expensive, but less crazy than the 975 USD reported before.

> If they now skip this useless Xorro nonsense

I'm afraid they don't:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=780

> Let's hope that the X2000 isn't a fraction as costly as the monstrously overpriced X1000

"Trevor told me (at the Silicon Dreams VCF show) that the cheaper (dual-core) version will be similar in price to the X1000, but they will actually make a profit on this one (unlike the X1000) that will allow future developments, while the POSSIBLE future quad-core one will be even more expensive."
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6820#90551

Quote:

I am afraid the continued interest and backlog of orders for the X1000 has not given A-Eon and AmigaKit any incentive to choose a cheaper alternative that could be sold at a price lower than the existing X1000. No doubt they could sell more computers, if they could price them closer to the current price of a SAM system, but it appears that they are not aiming for thousands of sales and may be content with the same few hundred units sold, like the current X1000. They appear to be keeping their sales aimed squarely at the high end AmigaOS4.x users and are content to leave the lower end of that market to A-Cube's SAM systems (though I do not consider them to be cheap, by any stretch of the imagination). Also, if you read further in the thread quoted by AW, AmigaKit states that nobody knows what the price of Freescale chips will be by the time the X2000 (or what ever it will be called) is ready for production and sales to the public. The price of the next system(s) from A-Eon and AmigaKit is totally unknown and could change many times between a rough guess a few weeks ago, to the actual price that will be charged 9 to 18 months from now.

I like Trevor very much, and have a high degree of admiration for him being able to follow his dream all the way to a real product (as so many others have failed to accomplish in this community), but I like the path that the MorphOS Dev. Team has chosen, as it is the most sensible direction to follow for the majority of users interested in a Next Gen. Amiga system, that has also naturally grown out of the original Amiga + PPC hybrid accelerators of the 1990's. AROS is easily the direction that makes the most sense, but it has taken so long to mature and is still behind MorphOS in many ways, I think it had lost the interest of many users. Now that AROS is making some progress, it will be interesting to see which direction will make the most sense for the future. My hope is still that the AROS and MorphOS Dev. Team will merge together, when the time comes for MorhpOS to migrate to the x86/x64 platform.

I think the combination of AROS developers and MorphOS Dev. Team members, will be an unbeatable force for the future of Amiga-Like computing.

Just my 2 cents,


[ Edited by amigadave 21.07.2013 - 11:52 ]

I fail to understand the point of designing a PPC motherboard in... 2013. Especially of this form factor, since the trend is having tiny boards with nice designs (see MacMini, mini PCs, Raspberry, Ouya,...)

Isn't it time to move onto something else ?

Quote:
I'm pretty sure Bill Gates thought the exactly same thing when he said that "640kb ought to be enough for everyone"...

I'm sure Amiga designers thought the same when designing Amigas... Unfortunately the Amiga 1200 didn't run DOOM in 1993.

Performance is an issue.

> Bill Gates [...] said that "640kb ought to be enough for everyone"...

From the year 1996:
"I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time … I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again."

From the year 2001:
"Do you realize the pain the industry went through while the IBM PC was limited to 640K? The machine was going to be 512K at one point, and we kept pushing it up. I never said that statement — I said the opposite of that."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattributed

Quote:

I rather hope that OS4 continues to act as a quarantine for the kind of people that seem to be hypnotised by the 'Am*ga' trademark and the 'one true blabla'. To me, MorphOS and morphzone is like an oasis away from that herd.

Addendum:

> "Trevor told me (at the Silicon Dreams VCF show) that the cheaper (dual-core) version
> will be similar in price to the X1000, but they will actually make a profit on this one
> (unlike the X1000) that will allow future developments, while the POSSIBLE future
> quad-core one will be even more expensive."
> http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6820#90551

More recent statements:

"we hope the 2Ghx model will come in under the A1-X1000 pricining"
http://www.intuitionbase.com/trevor_irclog.txt

"we are hoping that the new Cyrus Plus board with the P5020 will be slightly less expensive than the Nemo board"
http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson2_en.php


Edit: Added another statement.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 26.07.2013 - 17:36 ]

ausPPC,
Quote:
Oh, yes, I know that feeling - every time I boot up my X1000 and log in over at amigans.net.

I guess I pissed em off over at amiga.org asking about it. I just got a bit out of shape about the fact a $2800 system doesnt even have full support of the hardware. I still cant for the life of me figure out why they dont use Apple hardware and have a solid base of hardware on easily found machines. Why wouldnt you want to run on a G5 complete system for the price some of them are paying for a single hard drive????

@Acill

Quote:

Because when it was first proposed to Amiga Inc. (McEwen) there was no A-EON, and Acube had not produced the first Sam either.
Considerations are different now that "they" have 2 h/w developers to consider in regard to how such a move would affect them.
There is a legal issue as well, but let's not go there.

#6

> There is a legal issue as well

A legal issue preventing a port of OS4 to PPC Macs? I have doubts about that.

@Andreas_Wolf

Quote:

I was referring to the proof of concept.

the posts made by wegster concerning A/V

Would this prevent a new effort? I have no idea.

#6

> I was referring to the proof of concept.

Acill probably wasn't referring to Moana as he spoke about G5 in particular whereas Moana is for G4 (Mac mini).

> the posts made by wegster concerning A/V

Yes, I made my own observations regarding that:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=6235&start=24 (posting #25)
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=6235&start=32 (posting #33)

> Would this prevent a new effort?

I can't see how.

Update:

> Some C*Core press releases from yesterday mentioning [...] C9000: [...]

CCFC9000 chip with dual PPC476FP-derived C9000 core released:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://www.china-core.com/news/html/?60.html

Quote:

Nice, but a little slow.

> Nice, but a little slow.

Yes, indeed. They originally annnounced the core clock as 1.2 to 1.5 GHz but now it seems to be only 1.0 GHz in this chip. Nevertheless, nice to see that LSI is no longer the only company to use PPC47x technology in its chips.

And it will be interesting to see what gets offered to western world.
(so far not a english word even?)

Update:

> CCFC9000 chip with dual PPC476FP-derived C9000 core released:
> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://www.china-core.com/news/html/?60.html

C9100 and C10000 cores mentioned:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://www.china-core.com/page/CPUh/
http://www.china-core.com/pic/gif/1458092157.jpg

C9100:
- C9000-based
- extended AltiVec supporting floating point and integer vector floating point arithmetic

C10000 (in research):
- 64-bit
- multithreading
- AltiVec

So the C9100 basically means a PPC476FP-derived core with AltiVec. And I wonder whether the C10000 is derived from the e6500 core.

Update:

> They originally annnounced the core clock as 1.2 to 1.5 GHz but now
> it seems to be only 1.0 GHz in this chip.

Back to 1.2 GHz (28 nm process, up to 8 cores):

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://www.china-core.com/news/html/?68.html