A modular system with current SoC-like ppcs is no viable way. The 8610 and 8640 are too different alredy:
E.g. the 10 has inbuild gfx but no LAN, while the 40 has LAN but no gfx. The 1022 is also quite different. Thus modularity would be possible with one chip only and would only offer to get different clock rates. But e.g. in the case of the 8610, here are no higher clock rates scheduled that currently available. I doubt that the effort to make it exchangeable is worth the benefit. IMHO the design should kept as simple as possible to leave the price as low as possible.

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Agreed. Regular computers forgot about exchangable CPUs a long time ago. Not only for technical reasons (would you put critical, nearly gigahertz signals, on a regular copper connector?), but also because nobody changes the CPU of his computer. Moreover, the manufacturer would have to build products (CPU modules) without knowing if they are going to sell ever, and that's completely opposite to the first rules of business.

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Huh?

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He probably meant CPU *cards* and he's right about that.

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yes, interesting question as the Haiku folks stated several time that their main concern was x86 and the PPC port is behind (and late).

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Very little right now, and rightly so, let's not forget that Haiku has just released their first Alpha, their focus is getting the base stable. Even the ARM port is not at top shape -though a bit better than the PowerPC port. I'm having discussions with some of the PowerPC porters though. Haiku is a new OS, it can only get better and its marketshare can only increase, it would be folly to ignore it now, as it has great potential.

i don't deny the potential of Haiku, i've always been interested in it. I just hope there will be enough ressources in the future to maintain a PPC port (ARM is on its way to hit the netbook/net-top market, PPC is agonizing).

So do you have in mind to work on the Open Server Workstation basis ("pegasos 3'), refresh the project and make it built by BPlan ? what part (appart from financially) do you plan to work on yourself ? And what kind of help would you need if any ? (some talented people around here may be of help)

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Well, if the users that are so interested in it

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I don't think I could use the same name. And no, there will not be a "Developer's program" like there was with Genesi -unless Freescale does the same thing as it did back then. There will be a few selected developers that will get free boards but on the basis that they work on something -and quite possibly financial help will be given also -eg. like in the case of Haiku/ppc.

Personally, I plan to work on the Linux port, at least initially, set up autobuilders, make sure I support some popular distros (Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSuse) but also make sure the Linux distro distributed with the system will be as optimised and as integrated to the hardware as possible -no generic kernels, if Altivec is supported by the CPU, provide as many optimizations as possible. The distro distributed will be a slimmed down version of some chosen one. I have come to the point to dislike most distros, they're bloated like hell. Even moblin sounds better come to think of it. Anyway it is *very* early to decide on the distro yet. OTOH, I might hire someone to do the Linux work for me, and just work on the Haiku side myself. When the time comes, I'm sure I'll make a new inquiry for talented people to show themselves :D

> do you have in mind to work on the Open Server Workstation basis
> ("pegasos 3'), refresh the project and make it built by BPlan ?

The OSW's TetraPower board was supposed to be PPC970 based. None of the 3 proposed CPUs is PPC970. I guess work on the new board would rather be based on the "Pegasos 8641D" (but with 8640D instead) or on the "Efika 8610" :-)

BTW, the developer program of each project:
TetraPower ("CANCELED")
Pegasos 8641D ("CANCELED")
Efika 8610

Nice initiative! But I think what the Amiga/Haiku/PPC market realy needs is a portable laptop, And still I havent heard that any of the hw players are planing any laptops!? why?

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A laptop is much more difficult to work on. If the motherboard itself is successful and sales are good, we could easily -at least in the case of MPC8610 and P1022- move it back to a netbook form factor. But make no mistake, while an Atom netbook costs ~300-400$, and an ARM can cost $100 less, a PowerPC netbook, at least in small scales that we're after, should cost much more than that. Probably more than $600. On the other hand, it would be really cool to have a modern PowerPC laptop again -I'm writing this now on a Powerbook G4 12", the closest thing to a PowerPC "netbook".

For now I think the best bet in terms of price, time-to-deliver and features would be going forward with the 8610. The P1022 is a sweet CPU even without Altivec, but it will just take too long -Q4/2010- plus it just occured to me, that binaries with FPU code, will not be able to run on the e500 cores without some kind of real-time FPU code translation, with performance loss.

Btw, here are some early stats:

http://www.codex.gr/index.php?pageID=&blogItem=60

[ Edited by feanor on 2009/9/26 10:57 ]

> a PowerPC netbook, at least in small scales that we're after, should
> cost much more than that. Probably more than $600. On the other hand,
> it would be really cool to have a modern PowerPC laptop again -I'm
> writing this now on a Powerbook G4 12", the closest thing to a
> PowerPC "netbook".

There is already one, albeit with a CPU that's surely not in the class of the CPUs proposed by you:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6436&forum=11

But then, you probably already know that one at least since your thread at the Haiku forum.

> it just occured to me, that binaries with FPU code, will not be
> able to run on the e500 cores without some kind of real-time FPU
> code translation, with performance loss.

Exactly, though only true for e500v2 (and before), which the P1 (and P2) series has. e500mc of P4 series (and coming P3 and P5 series) has a "desktop compatible" FPU implementation.

More (and links therein):
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6313&forum=11&start=3
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6465&forum=11&start=19

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Yes, I saw that one, interesting, but it's not what I was thinking about.

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Yes, unfortunately it applies to our case, the P4 is way too expensive and I couldn't seriously suggest it as an alternative right now. (I know we are saying the same thing, there is no argument here). I just realized that for backwards compatibility, perhaps P1022 is not the best case, though attractive overall. It would need some serious work on the FPU real-time translation, and I can't even estimate the impact of that.

> What kind of interest there is on the Haiku side?

http://www.haiku-os.org/community/forum/market_research_new_powerpc_system

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true, i mixed them sorry.

Mail sent. Support MorphOS. We need new Hardware.

Mail sent. We wish new PPC based Hardware.

with Regards

jcmarcos:
Yes, the CrabFire was essentially a Pegasos 2 G4 in a
custom-built 2U-case and a stripped down Linux OS.

CrabOS, however, was an operating system made by
ex. Gentoo developer David Holm. The target platform
was of course the CrabFire.

Too bad we didn't get the CrabFire to market. We all had
our day-jobs aside and the project pretty much died.

Today, however, I work in my own company with ZyXEL
firewalls. Their latest firewall-line (USG) are mostly running
PowerQUICC CPU's. Only the highest end USG 1000-2000
are running dual-core x86 CPUs.

Mail is sent.

Any update on the figures, how many people are interested in that project?

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I was just about to paste this:

http://www.codex.gr/index.php?pageID=&blogItem=62

Feanor: is there any limit you have to reach to consider making your project alive?

I'd like 500 mails yes. I could even consider it at 300 (a typical production run is 500 units), ~60 is too few, but I didn't expect to satisfy the limit in 3 days obviously. I'm a patient man -until the end of October at least. :)

Did you try to announce that out of Amiga, Morphos and Haiku related forums? Meaby that would be a good chance to get some brand new users to our market :)

I asked also on linuxppc-dev, and debian-powerpc -though I admit I never found a reply from the debian list. I'll probably try again. I also intend to post on several more linux/ppc lists (gentoo, arch, ubuntu, opensuse).