Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
From: Delaware, USA
Talos™ II Lite Base Chassis $1,399.99
IBM POWER9 CPU (4-Core) $375.00
Total $1,774.99
AmigaKit price for X5000 board in USD $1,680.
In other words, the TalosII Lite costs $95 more than an X5000.
May I be the first to state the SMP and 64 bit capability for MorphOS ought to be developed on Power 9.
Using the hypervisor we could even have little endian sessions running alongside big endian sessions, current MorphOS 3.10 sessions running alongside what the future brings, possibly OS4 or AROS sessions running on emulated SAM460, X5000, or PowerMac 7,3 or 11,2 platforms, and still have power left to emulate X64 if need be.
THIS, is a better choice than X64. Our current software would run on this without qemu, it would run MUCH faster, we'd have access to a little endian format that would eliminate the issues with WebKit, and most important of all IT WOULDN'T BE X64/Intel based.
We would remain unique.
With this, my support for an X64 transition certainly wavers.
I'm buying a TalosII Lite, or the ATX successor instead on an X5000.
I should be able to emulate an X5000 in the near future anyway.
And if that can be done, then MorphOS can probably be run on Power 9 whether the development team supports a port or not.
And I know I could get this board to run AROS, which would bring the possibility of future enhancements like SMP, alternative video card support, better OpenGL support...end user development participation.
Basically, a lot.
I've been exploring AROS on PPC over the last few days, and the Linux hosted version could be made to run on most of our current platforms.
I hope to have it running on the G5 by the end of the summer.
To conclude, if an X64 transition is inevitable, so be it, I'll follow and set up an X64 system, BUT I intend to remain a supporter and user of Power.
My favorite processor of all time was the 68000, and the PPC has grown on me.
Further, I was involved in developing 68000 based software and never got over the sting from the loss of market share to inferior Intel based hardware.
So what if its improved? Its still proprietary, Windows has been getting steadily worse since Win 8, and Linux has become a realistic alternative.
Open platform, open OS', no Intel or Microsoft involvement what so ever.
I'm in.
[ Edited by Jim 17.05.2018 - 12:46 ]"Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"