It's great to see so much enthusiam about Pegasos, but please don't blind yourself by living in a dream world.

>cunsuming lesser power/resources than other kind of CPU.

Less than VIA, Transmeta, Xscale, Pentium-M etc?
Other CPUs do not consist of Pentium4 alone and we learn G5 are too power hungry for Genesi to consider a product at the moment.

>my Pegasos G3 600 Mhz can play Dvd very well.

Great for you, mine didn't and with G4-1000 it is barely watchable with MOS. My Celeron433 played it perfectly smooth.

>sometimes my old P3 450 have difficult alredy to play a 3d game.

And the same game runs faster on Pegasos? Did you make a test with Quake? Quake3 ran 55fps with Celeron433 in 1024x768x32.

>I think this will not happens if only I can run these games on my Peggy.

What makes you think so?
The P3 adds SSE optimizations to games, a G3 has no such features.

>Probably this will allow also "old" Pegasos version (like actual Pegasos 1) to rest competitive for long time.

I think the opposite will happen.
Genesi seems to want to leave the Articia behind.
There were no OF updates for the old machines and with the current priorisation of support/development I see little chance for further support (but there exists an upgrade program, at least in theory).

>My pentium 3 450Mhz is become too slow to play also emulators

Reinstall your OS or choose a better one.

>So, seem a good thing of this PPC machine is it's "longevity".

Don't confuse longevity with lack of aggresive development...

>Wealty customers can afford a big expanse to buy last model, but also a "poor customer" will buy a Pegasos,
>becouse also old models can execute well lasted programs witout too problems.

What do you mean, the 2nd hand market?

>Games, expecially 3d games, require a lot of CPU power and RAM, than a 3d card power, and PowerPC seem have it in abdundance.

Au contraire.
There is no better gaming platform than current PCs.
PowerPC based future consoles might change that, but generally these are special purpose platforms/hardware.

>I think a "heavy" (like future Doom 3) 3d game will run smooth on last Pegasos g4 or a future Pegasos g5.

Hey Tarbos if you dont like the system then dont use it. Simple as
that. I use a Mac G4 900MHZ and its much better an a lot of things
then my P4 2.4GHZ was. Photoshop, DVD movies, MP# playing and even
some of the same games like Halo run very well on it. I would even say
just as smooth as on the PC.

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Lets also not forget that millions of computers draw millions of watts of electrical energy from the grid

I'd hate to see China try to install millions of "industrial / gaming" wintel PCs on the grid. can you say recurring-brownout"
IMHO the (wattage)needs of the many would outwiegh the needs of the few (hardcore gamers)

AFAIK, most hardcore pc games still require m/s-windows, which we all know the Chinese gov't. would rather do without....

Therefore, this line of thought leads me to believe that converting as many "industrial" apps from x86-linux to the PPClinux, then possibly from ppclinux to mos, makes good sense for this platform's development.

whatever; just let the pervasiveness continue...

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That's not the point. The idea here is to respond to the promotional concept. Potential customers are skeptics and have to be convinced that this little upstart has something that's better than the solutions offered by giant, established corporations. Why exactly is a PowerPC system better than the mainstream systems? And, for people willing to consider PPC, why is Pegasos better than Apple?

With the PegasosPPC Open Platform's emphasis on "openness," the first logical question is why a customer who likes that concept would choose what looks like a niche product rather than going with the commodity x86 systems. The first several slides illustrating the advantage of the open-source approach also say "PowerPC", but the skeptical customer is going to respond that these OSS advantages also exist, and maybe even more so than on PPC, on x86, etc. Simply listing OSS and PPC together doesn't bond them in reality. It seems like it'll be a huge challenge to have the customer make the hardware shift once the software shift is in the bag.

The advantages of PowerPC and Pegasos in particular have to be spelled out and quantified to win people over. That isn't easy; look at the flames Apple has gotten for their "comparisons".

Frankly, when I look at the advantages listed on slide 5, the "convince me" part of my brain has a hard time being won over.
Quote:Well, if having "one hardware platform" is important to a customer, there are many options, aren't there? Some PowerPC and some not.Quote:Also true on x86Quote:Even more true on x86Quote:I don't know what this means exactly, but I would think it's also done by other vendors.Quote:This is where real-life figures are needed to show a bankable advantage.Quote:I'd guess this is far from a Pegasos exclusiveQuote:Could be a good selling point, but specific product and application comparisons are probably neededQuote:I'm not sure how this is more true for the Pegasos than other boardsQuote:Again, advantage needs to be quantified.

These are just the quick reactions when looking with a skeptical eye. I'd love to see the counterarguments or substantiation of claims.

It seems to me that a corporate customer would want to see some real-life cost-advantage figures. This has been done for Linux vs. MS, but I don't know about PPC vs. Intel architecture (other than in Apple PR).

There is also the single-supplier issue; I understand some organizations have a policy against ordering products for which there is only one source. Is this a problem for Genesi and the Pegasos?

Also, questions about price/performance need to be addressed. Like tarbos, there are plenty of people who need convincing that the apparent PPC deficiency here is either illusionary or not important. Why is a 1GHZ Pegasos "good enough"? Why should the customer be asked to pay the Pegasos price when there are commodity x86 boards much cheaper and more familiar? You can't just say, "if you don't like it, don't use it." The whole point is to sell these things, for pete's sake.

-- gary_c

>Hey Tarbos if you dont like the system then dont use it. Simple as that.



Let me just say if it were not for G5 there would be no chance in hell PPC had still a name out there. Even Motorola seem to agree and buy G5 now.

>Lets also not forget that millions of computers draw millions of watts of electrical energy from the grid

So you believe Alan Redhouse's claims China would save 50 billion Dollars per year by going PPC instead of x86? Again, x86 doesn't mean Pentium4.

>I'd hate to see China try to install millions of "industrial / gaming" wintel PCs on the grid.

Oh, what a horror, now imagine what would happen if every Chinese wants to eat meat instead of rice or if every Chinese wants to drive a car...

...one more quickie:

Quote: Huh?!

Hey tarbos (Arno)! Do some market research on the G4 and where all the PowerPC sales are coming from these days.

embeded markets....

@ bbrv

First I want to express that I am optimistic for the Peg but there are issues:
We need a cost reduction with the Peg. The advatages of PPC aren't too big if it comes to Linux. Linux runs on x86 pretty well. Whoever is interested in low energy consumption might jump to PentiumM or other low energy x86 solutions. These processoers are just quite okay.
PPC has advantages, but x86 has them as well. x86 is cheap (even te low energy models a rn't too expensive), widespread and has a lot of computing power.
The current situation with the Peg is that it is a bit too expensive for a Linux alterantive box. The cpu price is high (I guess the 1.2 Ghz 7447A will be around 200 US$ and that Marvell is not a penny thing as well (was it 75 US$?)).
It will get only smaller interest.
The main strength of PPC is *embedded*, *clustering* and industrial appliances. The desktop is very difficult. And Linux is of course great, but where is QNX (QNX should perform pretty better on PPC than on x86)?
There are a lot of issues...
Linux is a high important option, but don't forget MOS. It is *not* ready for a lot of things, but it is the main advantage the Pegasos has. All other things I can do with the Peg I can do with other HW solutions as well. Only MOS is a *Peg only* thing.
For the embedded market MOS strong enough right now, for the desktop market it is fairly usable, only for critical things it is not an option yet due to lack of MP within The ABOX.

Conclusion: I guess the current strategy with Linux is not bad (and will work with working hard), but don't expect to be welcomed with flowers on the desktop market. Focus more on embedded thingies (not G3/4 based solutions but emedded PPC e.g. 405) and MOS. Do not forget QNX.

Yep, embedded markets...but I meant the desktop for Joe (above-)Average.

Building an ecosystem around Pegasos sounds fine and I like that idea. If you don't want to push the borders and go for a broad market of application-centered "good enough" computing, the G4 is a perfectly fine chip (and if in doubt: make it dual!).

For HPC the G5 has a distinct advantage due to its faster busses (1250MHz Datarate instead of 167MHz), dual-FPU and 66% better clock speed. The 64-bitness is just icing on the cake.

As you once said - different horses for different courses!
We should feel lucky PPC covers such a broad range of chips and applications - starting from <100MHz over SoC and G3/G4/G5 to POWER4+ with 1.9GHz and new POWER5.

I hope you will get licensees that bring the Pegasos out of its current niche so there will be a secured availability and lower prices that don't have to hide from the x86 world.
RISC once implied reduced complexity and thereby costs, we could use some economies of scale.

Quote:

I try the Pegasos and this is what I have see.

Quote:

I know a IBM require lesser power than a Intel pentium/AMD, and I don't think a corporate industry take a risk to make adversiment using false informations.
Surely exist other kind of architecture, but they seem not used for common PC.

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Simply try some other players. Ofthen are programs itself to be slow, not machine.

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If only exist port of these titles, we can look!
But, many voices give a good speed whit Amiga version of some 3d games (quake and, I think, SHOGO), so really want see if these are true whith MOS 1.5.

Quote:

Becouse a PPC G3 is more fast than a P3 450.

Quote:

Worse choise. I have try some OS, but they still too heavy for my machine.

Quote:

Nope, better platform still Consolles, like Playstation and X-bot. These machines are build only for games.
Different thing if you like or not consolle games. ^.^

Quote:
I'm not so sure. Do you think PS2 or Nitendo runs Pentium ?

Cheers

Tarbos:

"Imagine if every Chinese wants to eat meat instead of rice"

You think they only eat rice? Thats insane and your are way to closed
minded for thinking and even saying something like that has no place
here.

I dont understand why someone wold come to a MorphOS and Pegasus users
site and complain about the system. Wh not go to an X86 site and
praise how much yo love the archaic designs of that chip and how M$
has done so much, no wait stoe so much to make it what it is today.

I for one think the Pegasos has a bright furure. The price point is
the only bad thing now, but its still priced much better then other
PPC solutions. Its a great machine and a lot of fun to use. With linix
and a G4 version its got HUGE business potential. If MOS is further
developed )A strong fear I have now with the talk of all this linux
suff) I think it could have a big imppact on the home markets too.
Maybe even over take apple some day if we are lucky. Thats a dream,
but you never know. I remember when M$ released windows and everyone
thought it was pure crap. Look at them now.

I fully agree Tarbos :)
Concerning the price of the board it will drop considerably when they will produce thousand of them

cheers

Oops, I mean Acill ;)

Quote:
This way of thinking is extremely dangerous, Acill. It is what the users made in its part of the demise of the Amiga: If you pretend to ban self-criticism, you are in fact killing the most important motivation for progress. Amigans (like I was, believe me) used to think that they were the greatest, and that everything else was crap. Look at those die-hard fanatics right now: They are pathetic.
It's supposed that Pegasos owners are largely amigans that have grown up. Let's behave like that.
By the way, sorry to participate here with this off-topic idea, and not giving any comment on the real subject, but I felt it's very important not to forget the mistakes of the past.

>I'm not so sure. Do you think PS2 or Nitendo runs Pentium

XBox does - and it's just 733MHz and an old NVidia Chip. :)
XBox is often considered to be the most powerful of current consoles.

I have AthlonXP 2500+, Radeon9800Pro and Dual-Channel DDR400 RAM that should make it run circles around PS2/NGC/Xbox - btw can you play in 2048x1536 with your gameconsole?

Let me add that I consider a desktop computer a "swiss army knife", so it should be able to do anything you can think of in a digital world.

Hi jcmarcos, we are certainly open to constructive criticism. Our main focus is the success of the platform and not our ego. We have made some big mistakes in the past, but it has always been with the best intentions. Trial and error is the best way to learn when you are trying to do something that few have successfully done this late in the IT race. The key is perseverance and a supportive and active developer and user community. We figure that as long as there are users interested in participating in discussion we should be willing to have one.

Bottom line: we feel the open source software movement is about empowerment. Empowerment shines best in the best hands. It is a catalyst for change. The issue is to provide this opportunity without judgment. Some people do alot with little and others nothing with everything. We think we stand with a vast opportunity before us. We have the good fortune to be able to consider all the lessons learned in the IT field over the last 30 years AND START OVER. Collectively, we have everything we need to do it. The open source software movement has changed the rules.

RockmanX, you are right. Latin America is also a great place to promote the Pegasos. We would have a machine in El Salvador and Peru now if we had enough to go around. The market leader in South America is Brazil with six machines.

Zylesea, DethKnight, Poundsmack and tapero -- thanks for your comments too!

We have to keep in mind that the Pegasos as a commercial product has only a few real months under its belt. The first units were received by users in January 2004. This is June. As long as we continue to do this kind Corporate Training (for the embedded market ) we will certainly be making progress even if it does not propel us forward as fast as we would like it to.

Raquel and Bill

Quote:

Xbot is "propriety" of Microsoft, in fact.

Interesting commets but I think a lot of people are alking about the consumer market whereas this is really targetted at business who aren't really concerned about having the latest P4 etc, besides have you seen the prices of high end x86 chips? They cost quite a bit more than a G4 1GHz Peg and that's just for the CPU.

I think the thing is to provide a full solution - as the presentation suggests. A good user-friendly linux distro complete with a full application suite: OpenOffice, JBoss, MySQL (note: look at PostgreSQL and others as well). If that can be done for a reasonable price (shouldn't be too difficult given you're not paying for Windows) and the advantages of low power (or even better: high efficiency) there could be good potential.

The CPU it's really competing with is the Pentium-M. There are low power x86 CPUs but look at their performance:

C3 Vs Celeron

Here's a quote which pretty much says it all:
"the new C3 has much lower... OK, has NO performance"

The G4 at 1GHz is going to give that Celeron a good kicking, and the Celeron already completely *destroys* the VIA chip...

--

I do think the G4 has wrongly got itself a bad reputation in the eyes of many PC owners but it's actually cometitive with the G5 at the same clock rate. They do need to fix the bus though, it's one area where it's badly behind pretty much everything now.

At the moment G4s are mainstream for Apple but there's a G5 iMac on the way which will change that.

It'll be intestring when Freescale produce their dual core + built in memory controller device they have on their roadmap. But I do think Genesi should be looking at producing something G5 based in the lineup. Only the top end G5s require a lot of power, the new 2.5GHz chip* in the Mac requires *less* power than the previous 2.0GHz version and unless Freescale come up with a high performance part Genesi will be stuck with only low end systems.

*The liquid cooling is because the heat is concentrated over a very small area.

--

Video playback:
Windows will likely use the hardware on the video chip to playback movies so it will be massively faster compared to any system that doesn't. You need to compare like with like to make a meaningful comparison.

Here is a 1.33GHz G4 Mac in action - it most likely uses accelleration but I've got avi, mov, mpg, streaming real video and a DVD playing here - all without any noticable frame dropping:

Videos

BTW The quality is duff because it's a photo of the screen.

Well, the idea is great and all, but being that if I wanted to run Linux I would do so on my laptop. My next Pegasos is stritctly MOS.. You're definitely going where no man has gone before and that can only benefit the platform. Probably didnt come out the right way..in other words..thats awesome..just dont forget about us little guys (MOS users. LOL)

:)


edit: after thinkin about 1 minute more..if it did go..I wonder if they would release their dev tools for Linux 32bit?

Quote:

You mean, persuade customer a Pegasos can do anything wich can be done on a PC?

In fact, I know much people which neither dare to try a different OS on same 86x platform becouse they have "fear" to not find the same things they have on Windows. And yes, in these alternatives are included also Machintos machines (like they are underdeveloped systems -.-).
But I think if they know they have all, only in a different manner, they can take seriuosly in consideration an alternative to Windows OS, or an entire 86x board.

Surely if you can give a security which Pegasos really can be anything needed, you should start gain a customer attention.

There are really few, for me, difference between Pegasos and a PC. Probably only PPC processor is the real difference. For rest, Pegasos use pieces alredy used on PC market. Is a real advantage: using pieces alredy tested and knowed, ad also a PC user can "transport" some on these on Peggy (well, only if these pieces are compatible... but i think Bbplan are increase compatibility whith next motherboards. Or not? O.o).

Naturally much adversiting on Pegasos is abouth PPC quality. Howerer, is possible illustrate more deeply these difference than other kind of processor, and explain becouse these CPU shuold be a good choise for a customer?
I mean: not only talk abouth charateristic, but also what are they all pratical advantage, so people can understand what they should expect. Some interesting charateristics are few knowed.
Example: why these processor have lesser Mhz and are equally powerful than Intel/Amd which have more Mhz? Many customer think "more Mhz=more power", whitout know this isn't correct. But if they can understand becouse a PPC need lesser Mhz, they probably can take a look at a PPC machine.
There are some "myth" abouth CPU, motherboard and "speed" which a inexpert user don't know well, and I think these myths affect HEAVY the market. Maybe there is not really to pump so higly 86x cpu itself, but a normal user think "big numbers=big power", so is natural for Intel/Amd produce these super-fast models to get customer attentions. Explain well these things whith simplicity and show why a PPC should a better solution than other, can be a good advertising for Pegasos PPC.
(I remember an old ZX-Sinclair Plus advertising paper, where explain why a machine whith more memory should be better than the older model 48k, or a different one whit lesser... altrough a ZX spectrum HAVE NOT graphical or sound chip like c64 or Amstrad CPC. :D)

Minator is right: Genesi should aim at solutions and as I said, at CUSTOM solutions for big customers and standard solutions for mainstream (like workstations, home theater boxes etc).
But of course should not become an alternative to Apple, becuase as someone else already said, it's not good to fight with the IT giants.
It should keep selling the single components alone while leaving the production of "solutions" to its partners (like HP, IBM...).
Someone who's not a computing expert, goes to a computer store to buy an IBM or HP computer, just to be sure he's doing right, and if in this store he finds out that one of the models is a Pegasos-based one and that is fanless, silent, low-power, small in size, and perfect for his needs, there are good chances that he would buy the Pegasos instead of the Hyper-Turbo Super-Hot Pentium4 which costs more, makes more noise, would not fit anywhere, drains power like a vampire and does the same things except for Unreal II at 1600x1200...
The only market that Genesi could not gain control of, would be the one of extreme gamers. I mean, it could with a G5 and some GeForce, but it could turn to be a bad economical move... Because it's full of over-the-top gaiming machines out there and there's no need of another one!
So I think Genesi should always remember Pegasos' strong points and boost them to become a really special thing that many consumers would be willing to buy, because it the best choice for their needs!

Hi there

This sounds great! But, where and/or when will someone make a PPC
based 'hardened' laptop, that is, one which can endure being outside
in the weather and rain? Here's why:

I currently work in the profession of photographing vehicles for the
internet, and part of that job is gathering data. I drive with my
equipment from dealer to dealer in this process. Currently we are
using an ARM based 'Sidearm' all terrain PC from Mellard Technologies.
Its a 206MHz unit, but since its cursed with WinCE, it is slow,
unweildy, unreliable and prone to crash. You know, like most Microsoft
powered products After each shoot the data collected is saved to
a CF card and then read via a Dazzle CF reader on a USB port into our
own proprietary software which resides on a PC based laptop running
Win98.
It too is prone to crash, the software takes literally over a minute
to launch on a PII-300 laptop, and of course there's the wonderful
inconsistencies of Windows to deal with. The Sidearm is the
weatherproof part, along with (hopefully) the camera. The laptop
stays in the car and provides warmth in the winter Don't tell me
how efficient mobile x86 CPUs are..

We are upgrading to a 'Toughbook' which is a small sub-notebook size
laptop with a touchscreen, 800x600 color touchscreen and a Celeron CPU
of about 400MHz or so. This little laptop is also weatherproof and
capable of powering a handheld scanner which will read the VIN codes
for the vehicles using the bar code that all cars have nowadays.

I'm trying DESPERATELY to find a way for our company to not have to
save money by using eBay sourced four year old Toughbooks running
Win98. My boss swears that Win98 is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY due to some
mysterious communications protocol which supposedly is used by all
auto-trader and similar used car information systems, and cannot be
gotten around. Is this true? Does Carfax really require you to be
running Windows to be able to talk to their server??

You see what I am getting at here? This system only has to do one
thing, an embedded type application, and it has to be reliable, and be
able to share its data, currently it uses Microsoft Access as its
backbone (all the vehicle data is in the form of a Jet database, maybe
thats why it has to be Windows) and if there were a laptop type data
acquisition device that ran MOS or Linux and could communicate with
Microsoft products, it would save us a TON of money and headaches.
NTM we wouldn't have to keep paying the Windows tax. My boss does hate
M$ and Windows with a passion, btw, so it isn't a loyalty thing.

Its a feeling that you just can't live in the business world without
proprietary Microsoft protocols. If I were the judge I would have
made M$ open up their protocols and thats all I would have done to
them. But unfortunately I'm not the judge. I'm not in GW Bush's
pocket either, but thats another discussion

Is there now or will there soon be a MOS/PPC powered mobile solution
that will do better (easy when comparing to WIndows and cheaper
(sub two grand per unit with scanner) about which I can talk to my
boss?? We're writing our own software in house for this thing, so
coding isn't necessarily the biggest hurdle. But, it HAS to be able
to speak Microsoft Access database. It HAS to be able to share its
data with outside databases, presumably most of which are M$-centric.

PLEASE give me something to sell here!!! I could retire at age 40,
easily, with this system. I'm 33 now btw