Market research for new PowerPC system
  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    feanor
    Posts: 104 from 2009/3/20
    Quote:


    jcmarcos wrote:
    ...That can't be counted as a disadvantage of the implementation, it's just life.


    Actually, life doesn't really bother with such details, it's just computers that deal with such stuff :)
  • »30.09.09 - 15:30
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  • Cocoon
    Cocoon
    fairlanefastback
    Posts: 54 from 2007/2/6
    I sent my email yesterday. :-D
  • »30.09.09 - 15:34
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Georg
    Posts: 106 from 2004/4/7
    @Krashan

    I would do multiple core support by simply allowing (through some new Exec functions) tasks to enter and leave a special state where they are multi-core-safe. While in this state the scheduler is allowed to run them on other cores. See here.
  • »30.09.09 - 15:45
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  • MorphOS Developer
    Krashan
    Posts: 1107 from 2003/6/11
    From: Białystok...
    Quote:

    ASiegel wrote:

    That being said, you can run four single-threaded applications on a quad-core machine and an SMP-capable OS will automatically manage to utilize all four cores rather than run the applications on the main core only.


    As it has been said many times, full SMP in MorphOS would be very hard to implement if possible at all. What I'm talking about is some kind of asymetrical multiprocessing (AMP), where one of cores is considered the main one, and the rest serve as a kind of "coprocessors". The kernel initializes all cores and starts a supervisor thread on every secondary core. This thread waits for messages from the kernel in idle state. When some application wants to launch a MProcess (short from "multicore capable process"), the kernel assigns one of secondary cores (it may be the main one as well if there is only one, or load balancer detects that the main core is the least loaded one). Then MProcess is added to the task scheduler of a core supervisor.
  • »30.09.09 - 15:46
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  • MorphOS Developer
    Krashan
    Posts: 1107 from 2003/6/11
    From: Białystok...
    Quote:

    jcmarcos wrote:

    The "dos.library" is the one that starts processes?


    Yes, the usual way to start a process is to call CreateNewProcTags() from dos.library. As it is a tag based function, it may be easily extended. In fact the difference between a regular process and "MProcess" would be that the system is allowed to run MProcesses on secondary cores. This is needed for compatibility, as many of existing multithreaded applications rely on the fact (and use it for IPC) that any two of their threads cannot be executed at the same time. Applications creating MProcesses have to do their threads synchronization and communication with simultaneous execution in mind.

    Quote:

    Of course, some extensions would be needed in the kernel.


    Fortunately exec.library relies on a minimal set of multitasking primitives, these are basically just signals and semaphores. All the rest rely on them (like messages and message ports). Then these extensions will be implementation ones, not API ones.
  • »30.09.09 - 15:57
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  • MorphOS Developer
    Krashan
    Posts: 1107 from 2003/6/11
    From: Białystok...
    Quote:

    Georg wrote:

    I would do multiple core support by simply allowing (through some new Exec functions) tasks to enter and leave a special state where they are multi-core-safe. While in this state the scheduler is allowed to run them on other cores.


    I do not like the idea personally, as it assumes the kernel will have to move a process from a core to another one. This will be performance costly and can potentially create many compatibility problems. My idea is that a proces once launched on core N will stay there until termination. About calling libraries from MProcesses - those libraries with shareable bases should be safe. Libraries with non-shareable bases (bsdsocket.library for example) will be not allowed to be called from MProcesses in the first stage of multicore transition. Then multicore-safe versions of them will be created. It is a problem of course, but not very big one. The first candidates for MProcesses will be tasks of number crunching and multimedia processing. Such tasks do not need any I/O libraries, just data are passed via memory blocks and basic IPC is needed for synchronization.

    [ Edited by Krashan on 2009/9/30 17:15 ]
  • »30.09.09 - 16:12
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    ausPPC
    Posts: 543 from 2007/8/6
    From: Pending...
    Using additional cores as coprocessors should be a good fit for the Amiga hardware & software model.
    PPC assembly ain't so bad... ;)
  • »30.09.09 - 22:18
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Jambalah
    Posts: 820 from 2008/3/30
    From: Roma, Italy
    Mail sent with a big thanks. Anyway it will go...
    Pegasos II 1 ghz
    Powermac G4 Quicksilver with Sonnet Encore 1.8 ghz
    Powermac G4 MDD single 1.25 ghz, silenced for ears health...
    Powermac G5 dual 2.7 ghz I'll be back...
    Powermac G5 dual 2.0 ghz
    Powerbook G4 1.67 ghz 17
  • »01.10.09 - 13:09
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    feanor
    Posts: 104 from 2009/3/20
    More updates here:

    http://www.codex.gr/index.php?pageID=&blogItem=64
  • »02.10.09 - 18:10
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    MorphDelf
    Posts: 274 from 2004/2/20
    From: Oslo, Norway
    This is great. 1st establish a project name 2nd talk about its progress with information about specs and other things and make community be with you on this 3rd When community gets interested, tell that to investors (give them link of interest) 4th Make a thread on amigaworld.net and morph.zone where you give people chances to come up with a name for this new PPC product. 5th .. Now you have both community and investors knowing that there is interests in this and that community supports you.

    People wants to help you out for sure! Its October and time for this is now :) Good luck and I hope you succeed. I really do.

    Regards,
    Michal, Amix
  • »03.10.09 - 08:49
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    mobydick
    Posts: 179 from 2004/2/26
    From: Mordor, capita...
    As far I understand, there are no good news. Tell me I'm mistaken.
    Pegasos II/G4@1GHz, 1 GB RAM, MorphOS 3.9
    Efika MX Smartbook, Ubuntu 12.04
    peguser.narod.ru
  • »07.11.09 - 09:19
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    feanor
    Posts: 104 from 2009/3/20
    Quote:


    mobydick wrote:
    As far I understand, there are no good news. Tell me I'm mistaken.


    Hi,
    sorry for the delay, there is going to be a series of meetings in the following week. Depending on the outcome of these meetings, the news will be good or bad but at least it will be a final decision. Though the mails I received are not as many as I wanted to (~120 in total) I didn't want to just dismiss the possibility of a nice ppc board. And although recent news reg. MorphOS on the mac minis -and soon powerbooks?- at least give people some more hardware to play with, it's still not as good a solution as new hardware -at least IMHO. But at least you won't miss a 8610 board that much :D
  • »07.11.09 - 13:09
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  • MorphOS Developer
    Krashan
    Posts: 1107 from 2003/6/11
    From: Białystok...
    it's still not as good a solution as new hardware

    Only if this new hardware has advantages other than just being new. From what I know, you can't compete with computing power, but you can with interfaces and extendability. Neither mini, nor powerbook are really extendable. Some users may prefer typical desktop machine with lots of slots, sockets and connectors.
  • »07.11.09 - 14:07
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    feanor
    Posts: 104 from 2009/3/20
    Quote:


    Krashan wrote:
    From what I know, you can't compete with computing power


    I think I've discussed this before, but seriously, I'm curious as to why people say that all the time. I have a MPC8610@1.3Ghz here and it absolutely destroys the G4@1Ghz in terms of performance (200-300% speed increase is not unusual). The 8640D is even better (being dual core). I'm pretty positive that the *only* thing the G4 on the mac mini or the powerbook is going to beat the MPC8610 on are cpu-intensive computations with NO memory access (like a mandelbrot fractal). Even a 3D renderer would be much faster on the 8610 as it actually needs totally random access to memory. Don't forget the 8610 has a 533Mhz memory bus.

    With regards to the P1022, well, I can't say for sure as it's quite a different design, but that one has a DDR3 memory interface (~800Mhz) which would make up for its somewhat slower CPU design.

    So actually yes, I can compete -rather the cpus chosen can- in processing power, in fact I would say it's the other way around. But seriously, I do not intend to start a flame here, I'm too anxious to see if this thing will actually become reality. :)

    [ Edited by feanor on 2009/11/7 16:34 ]
  • »07.11.09 - 14:17
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  • MorphOS Developer
    Krashan
    Posts: 1107 from 2003/6/11
    From: Białystok...
    I have a MPC8610@1.3Ghz here and it absolutely destroys the G4@1Ghz in terms of performance (200-300% speed increase is not unusual).

    Well, the time of Pegasos with its crappy memory bus, is over. Now you compete with mini @ 1.5 GHz and in the near future with powerbook @ 1.67 GHz. If your MPC 8610 board can beat them, fine. But it won't be easy. Extendability of your design and fast, modern interfaces may be your strong point. For example 2 or 4 SATA interfaces for those needing extreme mass storage. Neither mini nor powerbook deliver any other option than USB or Ethernet for that purpose.
  • »07.11.09 - 15:35
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    feanor
    Posts: 104 from 2009/3/20
    Quote:


    Krashan wrote:
    Well, the time of Pegasos with its crappy memory bus, is over. Now you compete with mini @ 1.5 GHz and in the near future with powerbook @ 1.67 GHz. If your MPC 8610 board can beat them, fine. But it won't be easy. Extendability of your design and fast, modern interfaces may be your strong point. For example 2 or 4 SATA interfaces for those needing extreme mass storage. Neither mini nor powerbook deliver any other option than USB or Ethernet for that purpose.


    The G4 in the mac mini has an internal bus at 167Mh. Because it's Dual Data Rate some sites INCORRECTLY report this as 333Mhz which is of course wrong. The "effective" RAM speed is 333Mhz, in the same way the Pegasos II has an "effective" RAM speed of 266Mhz (133Mhz bus). It is indeed better than the Pegasos, but only 25% faster, let's not get overjoyed here.

    Regarding connections, well for sure it would support 4 SATA2 ports, USB2 (USB3 if we find cheap controllers) and gigabit ethernet.

    [ Edited by feanor on 2009/11/7 18:03 ]

    [ Edited by feanor on 2009/11/7 18:07 ]
  • »07.11.09 - 16:02
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    mobydick
    Posts: 179 from 2004/2/26
    From: Mordor, capita...
    Quote:


    feanor wrote:
    ...USB3 if we find cheap controllers...



    I heard, Intel and other vendors decided to start USB3 controllers production not in 2010, but in 2011. So, I think that USB2 is enough.
    Pegasos II/G4@1GHz, 1 GB RAM, MorphOS 3.9
    Efika MX Smartbook, Ubuntu 12.04
    peguser.narod.ru
  • »07.11.09 - 19:15
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    feanor
    Posts: 104 from 2009/3/20
    Quote:


    mobydick wrote:
    I heard, Intel and other vendors decided to start USB3 controllers production not in 2010, but in 2011. So, I think that USB2 is enough.


    I actually had this in mind:

    http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05/19/nec_usb_3_host/
  • »07.11.09 - 20:00
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    mobydick
    Posts: 179 from 2004/2/26
    From: Mordor, capita...
    Quote:


    I actually had this in mind:

    http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/05/19/nec_usb_3_host/


    On the edge of technology :) Well, it's good reserve for future. Ok, let's wait for next week...
    Pegasos II/G4@1GHz, 1 GB RAM, MorphOS 3.9
    Efika MX Smartbook, Ubuntu 12.04
    peguser.narod.ru
  • »07.11.09 - 20:14
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    pampers
    Posts: 1061 from 2009/2/26
    From: Tczew, Poland
    Quote:

    Though the mails I received are not as many as I wanted to (~120 in total)


    That's quite sad i have to say.
    MorphOS 3.x
  • »08.11.09 - 00:19
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    amigadave
    Posts: 2793 from 2006/3/21
    From: Northern Calif...
    Quote:


    pampers wrote:
    Quote:

    Though the mails I received are not as many as I wanted to (~120 in total)


    That's quite sad i have to say.


    Hence my motivation to better promote MorphOS2.4 and try to get more users (and hopefully developers) with some "New Blood" to revitalize this community.

    I do think the message count here has picked up over the last few months though, so that is a good sign.
    MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
  • »08.11.09 - 05:29
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    takemehomegrandma
    Posts: 2720 from 2003/2/24
    Quote:


    feanor wrote:

    The G4 in the mac mini has an internal bus at 167Mh. Because it's Dual Data Rate some sites INCORRECTLY report this as 333Mhz which is of course wrong. The "effective" RAM speed is 333Mhz, in the same way the Pegasos II has an "effective" RAM speed of 266Mhz (133Mhz bus). It is indeed better than the Pegasos, but only 25% faster, let's not get overjoyed here.


    ...and DDR533 of the the MPC8610 means that it has an "effective RAM speed" of 1066MHz, which is 320% of the Mac Mini RAM speed! :-)

    I have no experience whatsoever from the 8610, but I recall comments from the Genesi affiliated people over at powerdeveloper.org that has evaluated it quite thoroughly, that claims it's generally one of the best performing e600 CPU ever made. It's the newest/last of the e600 core CPU's, the peak of the evolution.

    Quote:

    Regarding connections, well for sure it would support 4 SATA2 ports, USB2 (USB3 if we find cheap controllers) and gigabit ethernet.


    Sounds good! :-)
    MorphOS is Amiga done right! :-)
    MorphOS NG will be AROS done right! :-)
  • »08.11.09 - 08:59
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > It's the newest/last of the e600 core CPU's, the peak of the evolution.

    Not true. The MPC8610 was introduced in 2007, the MPC8640(D) in 2008.

    http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1383
    http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1548
  • »08.11.09 - 20:29
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    feanor
    Posts: 104 from 2009/3/20
    Final results about the market research here:

    http://www.codex.gr/index.php?pageID=&blogItem=100

    Quote from the blog -the interesting part-:

    Quote:


    ... Actually, I just thought of an idea, there is another way that we might build a nice ppc board, but I think it will find even less interest: open-source hardware, donation based. Say, we do a bounty -or what even its legal term is- and each of us, donates an amount, until we reach the desirable amount. If we could get 500 people to donate 100e each -or more in some cases- we might reach the goal to design the board. Since the board design would be open, anyone could then produce it. If the goal is not reached in a specific amount of time, everyone gets their money back -or we leave it open until the money is raised. So, what say you all? It's the last thing that can be done I think. So, if you are really interested in the idea, please say so, if enough people second this, I'm sure something could be arranged.



    Perhaps even use Genesi's bounty system?

    COMMENT: The nice thing with that approach, is that the end design will be open. If the amount of people does not reach critical mass for a mass production -eg. 500- there might still be a few (100 or even less) people that may go for a small production scale and get the board of their dreams, albeit a bit more expensive! And if I would decide to drop out of the project for whatever reason, the design would be open for anyone to continue development on it. Actually, I wonder why didn't I think of that scheme before...

    [ Edited by feanor on 2009/11/11 11:29 ]
  • »11.11.09 - 08:15
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    >>> 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.

    > 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.

    It seems this didn't hold back some people from working on a combined m68k/PPC expansion board for the Amiga 3000 and 4000, using the single-core version of the QorIQ P1022, which is the P1013, as its 1.0 GHz PPC CPU:

    http://www.ultimateppc.nl

    Close-up of the prototype board shows the QorIQ P1013 at 800 MHz:
    http://www.ultimateppc.nl/img/uppc_reva_devboard_g2_20120507.jpg

    As you said, a Power Architecture CPU with an e500v2 core isn't likely to be a good choice for hardware that's wished to provide backwards compatibility with WarpOS/PowerUP binaries or even compatibility with MorphOS or OS4.

    Statements with respect to this taken from http://www.ultimateppc.nl/faq.php :

    "Q: Will the PowerPC run AmigaOS4.x / MorphOS / etc. ?
    A: We hope so! We will work actively with any developer to get these OSes supported on the UltimatePPC.

    Q: Will the PowerPC CPU be supported in WarpUP / PowerUp under the Classic 3.x OS versions?
    A: That would be awesome. It will be a very difficult task because for this to work as we would need to have a compatible kernel that runs on the UltimatePPC. The PowerUp / WarpUP kernel is closed source and not available to us and we would need to work around the slight differences in architecture. We would love to see this If you have voodoo coding skills, know how and want to put in serious effort please let us know.
    "
  • »22.05.12 - 23:03
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