Personally I would prefer a 8610 @ 1330MHz over a 8640D @ 1 GHz over a P1022@1 GHz.
I think bplan should know pretty much about the 8610 already.
In principle I guess Freescale will shift entirely to QorIQ in the middle future, but before that transition is done and e600 gets abandoned I would like to see a new e600 system. And IIRC the QorIQ have some fpu weakness. They are no desktop processors, the e600 was designed for the desktop.
The 8610 is the easiest chip to start with, the price is fairly okay. The 8640D is not hat much more expensive, should be faster per core (bigger L2 cache) at the same clock. In future MorphOS has to cope with multi core cpus anyway, maybe the 8640D would be a good starting point for that endeavour.
I like small boards with integrated gfx, with the 8610 this is possible. For those not satisfied with the inbuild gfx unit, there will be the option to insert a gfx card into a pci-e slot. An 8610 system should provide 2-3 slots. Only one slot is too few.
The redtail design by NEC may be a good staring point to derive a small and pretty system from. I was thinking of getting in contact with them, but haven't yet.
In the end I am only interested if MorphOS will run on such a board.

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They do. AFAIK this one would be the faster to deliver than all three versions.

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So do I, but would you pay ~500EUR for one? This is the question here. Perhaps it will be less in the case of 8610, that will have to be seen when the exact parts have been decided.

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I don't disagree, but I have seen some early benchmarks that place the P1022 as slightly faster than the G4@1Ghz in absolute terms. Considering the much faster memory bus, it's definitely going to be faster allaround than the G4, at least where Altivec is not involved. This is why I think it's not something to ignore.

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I don't know the internals of MorphOS so I can't even make an estimate of how long this might take. But I still think it would be something that the MorphOS team would think about very seriously.

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In particular, the MPC8610 can include 1 PCI slot and 1PCI-e x8 slot (actually it can provide another PCI-e 4x slot, but this will probably be used on a SATA controller).

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They're not interested in anyone that's not willing to buy a few tens of thousands of units.

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I appreciate all the feedback, but I would appreciated it even more if you would send those comments in a mail, as I requested. It would make it easier to prepare a data sheet of all this info and see what the stats are and how I can use it make the right choices.

Konstantinos

With regards to MorphOS, the MPC8610 appears to be the most attractive choice out of the three that were mentioned. I think the key advantage of any new hardware would be the option of using graphics cards that include more than 64MB of memory. Irregardless of the CPU performance and potential warranty issues, this would certainly justify the added cost compared to second hand Macs.

The Mac Mini is a great machine in many ways, but the graphics memory is a bit limited when you are dealing with high resolutions and many (virtual) screens. A number of Pegasos owners already use cards with 128MB of graphics memory for this reason.

[ Edited by ASiegel on 2009/9/23 16:21 ]

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Sorry, I'm confused, did you mean the 8610 or the 8640D?

Prizes are lower on this page :
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MPC8610&tab=Buy_Parametric_Tab

(it's for 1000)

- Dual core CPU is useless in AmigaOS/MorphOS. So no 8640D.
- You can do several variants : low cost with 8610/800 MHz, up to 8610/1333 MHz.

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Prices for 1000 are not the same as for 100. Sure. We could probably get even lower prices than that, but the link was used to refer to the escalation of the price of the 8640D

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That's the wrong reason, imho, but I will note it down. And it's not useless, it's just not supported now.

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Well, true, but I'd have to do a spread out of the several models during production. I mean if there's lots of demand for the 1333Mhz models, then I'd be left with lower-speced 800Mhz ones, and vice-versa. But yes, that's a good idea if done properly, thanks.

Konstantinos

Sounds very cool to me :)
You got an email!

MPC8610 sounds like a good idea. On the other hand I'm not sure if it will be much faster than my 1.5Ghz Mac Mini. And another additional and big problem is the number of years that it would take to make MorphOS available for this board.

For the MorphOS community I think it's better to support Apple G5 machines. Some cores reach around 2.7Ghz and you can fit very nice graphic cards.

Don't get me wrong, developing a new board sounds very nice but it would have to be twice faster than a 1.5Ghz Mac Mini for people thinking about it (specially since just the motherboard would cost them more than twice the cost of a full Mac Mini).

Apple G5 machines reach 2.7Ghz and have 900Mhz memory bus. By the time you released that board most of people will be able to buy 2nd hand G5 hardware for very low prices.

I understand the difference between used and new but if you develop a new board keep in mind that it should offer more than 2nd hand hardware.

What about PPC 970 cpu family? BBRV stated the prices some years ago and the price was reasonable.

Is it possible to get some Cell cpus?

I would prefer PPC970 cpus... unless price is around 350Euros and performance twice than my 1.5Ghz Mac Mini.

[ Edited by Crumb on 2009/9/23 22:37 ]

[ Edited by Crumb on 2009/9/23 22:39 ]

I've sent the mail.

> IIRC the QorIQ have some fpu weakness.

Regarding the FPU implementation of the P1 (and P2) "weakness" is an euphemism.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6196&forum=11&start=32

@feanor
Great idea! It is really right time now to switch to a newer PowerPC based mobo from a Peg2 and I will definitely pay 500eur for a MPC8640D based system. But! Always there's at least 1 "but"! I definitely need more than 1 PCI slot, SATA or IDE doesn't seems to be a problem anyway coz there's a huge amount of IDE hw here, but I have a PCI sound card which I like and don't want to change to internal one, also I will definitely need an USB and I also have a TV tuner.
I'm using linux now much more than MorphOS because of my work and a poor development environment there, but if MorphOS will run there it would be a great thing.

> What about PPC 970 cpu family?

The PPC970FX is available between 1.0 and 2.0 GHz, the PPC970MP between 1.2 and 2.0 GHz. The even higher clocked parts (used in the PowerMac G5, PPC970FX up to 2.7 GHz, PPC970MP up to 2.5 GHz) were discontinued by IBM.

> BBRV stated the prices some years ago and the price was reasonable.

Actual Prices can be looked up at various distributors.

> Is it possible to get some Cell cpus?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6218&forum=11&start=20#61964

@Crumb,

I too would like to see the MOS Dev Team go on to working on a G5 PowerMac port of MorphOS after they are finished with the MacMini and maybe after also finishing ports to a few Mac laptop models.

The advantage of doing it for the PowerMac is that we could use some already supported graphics cards, sound cards, etc. in the PCI slots of the PowerMac. I would hope that this would shorten the required time to port MOS to the PowerMac.

This of course only makes sense if there isn't other better new hardware that the team should decide to port to instead. I am not hung up on buying used Macs, but their price to performance ratio as far as PPC hardware is concerned seems to be the best bang for the buck. I think it is the best option for the short term future of MorphOS, but would not be upset to be proved wrong if something better at the same price comes along.

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Actually, I tried to look up some prices for PPC970 and couldn't find a distributor, would you mind pointing to some URLs?

Thanks

Konstantinos

I've sent the mail.

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I explained myself badly: Desing a completely new Mini-ITX (for example) board, taking all the knowledge from the evaluation board. Of course, those connectors for development purposes should be gone.
By the way, it's just a shame that you have to repeat the work that NEC already did with its Redtail board. Has anybody here seen one, ever?

I know you prefer having answers in your e-mail, but I prefer having this discussion in public, it's much more lively.

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I assume you no longer work for Genesi.

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I agree. The fact that every other player has left this market looks scary, but things can be done right.

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I think that's reasonable for a new MPC8610 computer, with a reasonable amount of expansion options - Yes, a single PCI slot is too little. But you have a problem: I won't buy it because my Pegasos is not broken yet. And many people will think the same: If you aren't rich, why would you buy another computer to do the same (enjoy MorphOS). Well, it's faster, but can you mention smething that us Morhers do, that needs a lot of processing power?

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Putting "freescale" and "focus" in the same sentence scares me. If I were you, I'd go for the most stablished solution, and leave others battle with freescale for newish things.

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That looks like the start of an exciting ride!

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Even if you have an exact specification in mind, things change during hardware development. Hardware usually has funny undocumented behaviours, it's a whole different world to software. With bPlan by your side, and all their expertise, many of those traps can be avoided.

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Use the same as your MPC8610 evaluation board.

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I guess you have a perfectly complete idea about viability, at least MorphOS wise. As for different markets, you could use again the idea of the "CrabFire", years ago: A Pegasos based firewall (running Linux, of course) that could be labelled as more secure because it used a weird (PowerPC) processor, and thus malware for it was unexistant. Sure you remember the project, it came from Gunne Steen, if I remember correctly.
For other markets... I guess a bloody PC with Windows gets the job done easier and cheaper.

Give us a computer for having fun! (that's why we were so grateful to Genesi anyway).

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No, only the photos posted on powerdeveloper.org.

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Hehe, actually I was never a Genesi employee, although they did fund my Altivec work on libfreevec and other stuff initially, and I will most likely work with Genesi in the future in other things as well, like ARM NEON stuff. In fact, this motherboard, if it happens it will happen with Genesi's cooperation, after all they're the ones that know how to build cool PowerPC systems and that's why I contacted them in the first place.

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Yes, that is indeed a problem that I begin to realize. Many people might complain about lack of available new hardware, but if it was there tomorrow, would they buy it?


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There are many markets, including embedded, which could be approached yes, but first I want to have an idea of how many people are interested with MorphOS/AmigaOS/Haiku/etc. In the end of October, I'll post a summary of exactly how many people sent me an email, and we can discuss it from there. I think it's a fair amount of time to make such an estimate.

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True! That's why I want to make it also! (I lied about not doing it for fun, fun is a very important factor, but it's not the deciding one, unfortunately :)

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I would buy a board that would replace my Peg2 G4.
But it should have at least one PCI-E and 3-4 PCI Slots.
The 8610 would be enough for me but i would go for the 1.33 Ghz version.
And i would be willing to pay 6-700 Euro for that board if MOS 2.x would support it.
Oh and SATA, DDR2 or 3, GBit Ethernet, 4-6xUSB2 and AC97 should be on board. And i don't care much about the DIU.

Quote The Player!
I would buy another PPC board more performing for that price and with that specs with no doubts.
With MorphOS running on, of course!
Anyway it will go, congratulations for this nice idea!

I hope your plan will come true.

Email sent.

@feanor

http://www.ppcnux.com/?q=node/6562

I've heard IBM is not as helpful with small companies as Freescale is... but a PPC970MP machine would rock

[ Edited by Crumb on 2009/9/24 22:38 ]

> I tried to look up some prices for PPC970 and couldn't find a
> distributor, would you mind pointing to some URLs?

http://www.avnet.com offers the PPC970:

PPC970FX between 77 and 140 USD
PPC970MP between 209 and 315 USD

...depending on clock rate and quantity.

email sent.

how about to make it a bit modular? first release could contain the most worth cpu, but later, you could sell a faster cpu module? like the idea of the pegasos board, where wasn't many options...

bye, MarK.

For first, idea of CPU upgrade card (with extra hw connectors like DDR2, etc.) for existing Pegasos machines is not so bad ;) And it is looong expected thing.
And whole new hardware with modern interfaces will be pretty nice after years of waiting new powerful hw from Genesi.

@feanor

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What kind of interest there is on the Haiku side?