Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2720 from 2003/2/24
@ katos1
Sure, a "bouquet" of CPU options would be great. That is also one of the points with having replacable CPU cards. Freescale would perhaps also see this as interesting; the Pegasos as a platform for their customers to evaluate the different Freescale PPC CPU's, who knows?
But one has also keep in mind that economy of scale is important. Perhaps there can be several steps in product offerings regarding price/performance, but I don't think they can be too close to each other. Then they will only sell low volumes of many options, which in many cases would be worse than to have fewer options with more distinct differences, and channel the customers to any of these instead (to pump up the volume on those fewer options a bit)?
I can see a point in offering a very low power, very low cost option. Especially if we are talking about thin clients. I may be wrong here but according to my own experiences from thin clients, they rarely aim to replace a full-blown desktop workstation. I have mostly seen thin clients as Internet café applications, information kiosks, etc. Simpler stuff that won't need *a lot* of horce power, but where noise and reliability (no fan) and price (low cost) would be of greater importance? So a very cheap 600MHz CPU card could perhaps find a spot in the CPU card bouquet. Which also raises the question why the IBM G3 is still there? Both the 7447 and 7447A CPU's from Freescale are available in 600MHz versions. With Altivec!
I can of course see a point in also offering top-of-the-line performance. The latest and fastest CPU available, for desktop power users, servers etc. Price/cost is expected to be higher here, but those who need it will buy it as long as they see it as a fair enough deal. It's also a feather in the hat for a technology company to be able to show off a flagship.
So if only two options for CPU cards are to be available, I would suggest a 600MHz G4 (scrap the G3) for low power, low heat and low cost applications, and a 1.42GHz G4 for power users or anyone feeling that 600MHz won't do.
If three options for CPU cards are to be available, I would suggest the current 1GHz to be included in the bouquet as well. Three CPU's, each with it's own significant differencies from the others and in their areas of use, 400MHz steps in between them, and Altivec all the way.
I would not suggest a fourth option, unless that is a dual CPU card with 2x 1.42GHz CPU's (dual CPU's are for real power users, and building a pair of anything less than the most powerful CPU's available is nothing but a waste of the concept).
MorphOS is Amiga
done right! MorphOS NG will be AROS
done right!