email sent by Ben.

I never knew the details or intentions clearly.
Very interesting to see how they ended up fighting amongst themselves... And further hurting the market they claimed to lead.

Quote:

Well,I didn't said the 970 wouldn't be superior, just not *that much*. The question now is how much this "that much" actually is and if the effort is worth the benefit?
*My* stance on this would probably be: Do the unevitably big cut once the G4 field is grazed. But OTOH I cannot really judge how much effort support for the 970 would be. And some AMP work (which would be beneficial for 970 support) could be tackled with dual g4 cards already. Anyway my current needs are catered well with my mini. I guess the G4s will be fairly okay for the next few years and the next hardware update will be required in about 2-5 years. Dunno if this time could be sufficient to do the big cut. But would be the alternative..?

> I don't know where the 1.8 GHz figure came from.

So you mean that you invented that number to present it as confirmed fact?

> an amiga-like OS need multicore CPUs?

CPU manufacturers of all major architectures have been going multicore for years and will even more so in the future. That includes *lowering* clock frequency of each core even. Reason is that the clock frequency has physical limits in our current semiconductor technology. Multicore will prevent further improvement in general computing power from stalling without radically changing technology to biotech or such. Thus, like any other OS, sooner or later "amiga-like OS" will have to be multicore capable to stay future proof.
Btw, it's usually not the OS itself that needs more and more raw computing power but the applications running on the OS.

Quote:

It was a typo. I meant 1.6 GHz. That's also just what A-Eon was running it at. That's not the normal clock speed for the chip.

> It was a typo.

Alright. Case closed :-)

> some AMP work (which would be beneficial for 970 support) could be tackled with dual g4
> cards already.

Or with stock dual-G4 PowerMacs. But I was aiming at mere single core support for the 970. I think even that would benefit MorphOS.

> I think it is going to be a really long "Two more weeks" for all those
> people waiting to purchase the X1000 and run AmigaOS4.1 on it

It seems the X1000 needs so long to bring to completion that it is now planned to be released along with OS4.2:

"AmigaOS 4.2 [...] is currently planned for release along with the powerful AmigaOne X1000 platform."
http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?p=479

What I find also interesting in this blog entry is that the "MicroA1-C Mark 2" (I guess that's the one with PPC750GX, right?) is called a "limited developer board" when in fact it was as much sold as a regular product by Eyetech as the previous one with the PPC750FX.

Come on Andreas, people are waiting over 500 days for X1000, they can wait another 500 ;)

@Andreas Wolf

"What I find also interesting in this blog entry is that the "MicroA1-C Mark 2" (I guess that's the one with PPC750GX, right?) is called a "limited developer board" when in fact it was as much sold as a regular product by Eyetech as the previous one with the PPC750FX."

You are confusing the Mark 2 with the Mark 3. The Mark 3 was the Micro model (with both FX/GX) that was distributed by the Eyetech dealer network.
Some developers had Mark 2.(very faulty)

#6

> You are confusing the Mark 2 with the Mark 3. The Mark 3 was the
> Micro model (with both FX/GX) that was distributed by the Eyetech
> dealer network. Some developers had Mark 2.(very faulty)

Thanks for correction/clarification. I wasn't aware that there was a version of the Micro-A1 older than the regular FX model out in the wild. This way it makes sense, indeed :-)

@Andreas Wolf

Located a post I believe backs this up.

source

btw-DaveAE also had one.

#6

> Located a post I believe backs this up.

Oh yes it does. Thanks again.

> DaveAE also had one.

...and as it seems m3x, COBRA, Gopal and SvenHarvey. There's a remark by sg2 that there only ever were 7 of those made:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://obligement.free.fr/articles/itwguillard.php

@Andreas Wolf

Very rare indeed.

Actually, the Micro MK3 (FX) is extremely scarce as well, and mostly in the hands of beta testers. You would be hard pressed to find more than a handful listed in owners' signatures.
The majority of the approximately 300 MK3 µA1s sold were GX.

#6

Addendum:

> There's a remark by sg2 that there only ever were 7 of those made

Rigo on the other hand thinks he "heard there was a limited run of 50".

http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/viewtopic.php?p=1954#p1954

@Andreas Wolf

"There's a remark by sg2 that there only ever were 7 of those made"
I'd tend to believe ^^ that.
All MKII were FX, if that hasn't been mentioned or obviously assumed to be true.

Another interesting post about MKII issues:

post #16

#6

> I'd tend to believe ^^ that.

True, 7 sounds much more realistic than 50 for this kind of board, so I think Rigo may have heard wrong.

> All MKII were FX, if that hasn't been mentioned or obviously assumed to be true.

Yes, that was obvious to me.

And now for soemthing completely different:

A new company doing PPCs.

To date C*Core (Suzhou, China) has been supplying a family of about a dozen processor cores based on the 32-bit M*Core licensed from Motorola.

Someone is still using this besides Atmel?

C*Core thinks it can beat Freescale at its own game?

Unlikely.

> C*Core thinks it can beat Freescale at its own game?

I don't think they really attempt to beat Freescale, at least not outside of China. You can probably view C*Core in the same light as Applied Micro and LSI who certainly won't beat Freescale but have their small stake in the Power Architecture centric part of the embedded market nonetheless (leaving automotive and military/aerospace aside I estimate Applied Micro holds about 10 to 15% and LSI below 5%). And as you know, competition is always a good thing for the customer.

Btw: https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=672 ;-)

Good point and a nice reference Andreas.
APM does have some products that are relatively feature filled while priced low enough to make them attractive.
Another company in this market segment couldn't hurt.

I wonder when we will get some technical info on their products?

> I wonder when we will get some technical info on their products?

From the article linked by minator:

"C*Core [...] has released a statement that it will announce its new CPU series and associated development platform at the group's Asia Power Architecture conference in Shenzhen on Sept. 1."

> A new company doing PPCs.

Thanks to a comment on that article I found another interesting attempt:

http://opencores.org/project,zcore
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_7100c6f40100sugy.html
http://groups.google.com/group/pwrseminews
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/pwrseminews/info
http://www.linkedin.com/in/fangqiu


Edit: The unfinished product was released in October 2014 under GPL:
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/openzcore/conversations/messages
https://github.com/lokisz/openzcore (empty unfortunately)

Edit2: https://github.com/lokisz/openzcore is no longer empty as of January 2019 and contains the unfinished zCore Pippo

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 22.08.2019 - 10:19 ]

> A new company doing PPCs.

And another one:

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4218659/Power-VeriSilicon-China

Seems it's going to get crowded ;-)

We should introduce MorphOS to some china rich guys ;)