The MorphOS presentation is sunday between 10.45-11.30 (now), and "Fab1 told me there should be some news to be told" (link).

Of course everyone who is there has an obligation to relay any news here ASAP!



[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 10.11.2013 - 10:28 ]

Short French report on Amiga Impact: Link

> Link

Fab's presentation slides:
http://www.meta-morphos.org/article.php?sid=1633


Edit: changed link to English news item

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 21.11.2013 - 22:08 ]

Quick translation of the MorphOS presentation report at the Alchimie posted on AmigaImpact.org :

MorphOS 3.4 :

Support for non-native resolutions for Powerbooks
Improved support for graphics cards based on R300 (Radeon 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800)
Big improvement for AGP tranfer speeds on G5 (x5, until 1,2 Gb/sec) and 16 bit screens bug fixing
Improvement for the network stack (speed + config)
Password lock screen (on startup or during screen saving )
MorphOS 3.5 will be mostly a bugfix release, MorphOS 3.6 will have some new stuff :

Support for more recent graphic cards
Support for more G5 models
javascript JIT for Odyssey
CUPS integration
SSHFS, SMBFS through Fuse


[ Edited by SoundSquare 10.11.2013 - 18:21 ]

> Support for more recent graphic cards

Does anybody know how recent is "more recent"?

It´s good to have a roadmap. So we´ll have MOS 3.4 really soon?

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As far as I know (with the qualifier that I try not to ask questions if the answer means I have to keep my mouth shut), they only support in the works is limited to Apple AGP cards.
And, even if PCIe G5 support were to be announced (and I am pretty sure that is not imminent) the focus on Apple supported cards means they won't be that much more recent.

Keep in mind that they have focused on cards that are supported by the machines we are using, and that they usually get out a 3D driver fairly soon.

After all, while Radeon HD is an option under OS4 , the users there are still waiting for the promised 3D drivers.

Is there anything that we don't already have powerful enough cards for already?

> As far as I know [...], they only support in the works is limited to Apple AGP cards.
> [...] they have focused on cards that are supported by the machines we are using

Okay, I think this would mean Radeon X800/X850 with R420/R481 GPU then.

> even if PCIe G5 support were to be announced (and I am pretty sure that is not imminent)

"Support for more G5 models" could mean just this. Or it could mean even older PowerMac G5 models than are supported now (is this likely?). It could also mean iMac G5. And considering that both support for more recent graphics cards and support for more G5 models are supposed to come in MorphOS 3.6, which is 3 releases away, it doesn't have to be imminent.

> the focus on Apple supported cards means they won't be that much more recent.

Yes, we know that those don't go above the Radeon X1900 (R580).


Edit: typos removed, links added

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 11.11.2013 - 16:24 ]

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Yes, I agree. Under all circumstances I think we can assume that they will stick to Radeon's, meaning that all Nvidia cards are out of the picture.

Then if we look at AGP only (AGP 8x to be more precisely) we have the Radeon R400 architecture from which the two cards X800XT and X850XT came as OEM Apple G5 cards AFAIK. Performance wise they should be better than GeForce 6800 Ultra but below GeForce 7800GS, and could work as a good replacement for the R300 family of cards found as standard in "our" current line of supported PowerMac7,3 G5 computers. This is probably the best there is for Radeon/AGP 8x/Mac. Note that the cards can also be modified to work with AGP 4x/PowerMac G4 by disabling the pins 3 & 11 of the card (if you are buying second hand, it might be good ask questions about this before buying). It seems to be available in good supply.

Well, this has covered "more recent graphic cards" for the *currently supported* G5 models, but the roadmap stipulated "support for more G5 models". So what can that mean when it comes to "more recent graphic cards"?

Well, we have the iMac G5's of course. The first series of iMac G5, the "PowerMac8,1", used GeForce from Nvidia, which goes away. The second series, the "PowerMac8,2" used Radeon 9600, which hardly qualify as "Support for more recent graphic cards". The last iMac G5 series before they went "Core Duo", is the "PowerMac12,1", which used a Radeon X600 Pro, which is a family of chips that basically is the R300, but with PCI-Express instead of AGP. This doesn't qualify as "Support for more recent graphic cards" either!

They could also introduce support for the older line of PowerMac G5's, the "PowerMac7,2" series. But those have also an AGP 8x bus, so the same as above is applied to them, the R400 family's X800XT/X850XT will be the "most recent" graphic cards possible, right?

They could also introduce support for the newer line of PowerMac G5's, the last ones ever built, the "PowerMac11,2" with PowerPC 970MP CPU's and PCI-Express. Unfortunately, all these came with GeForce 6600 as standard, so a GFX card switch is mandatory. Then the best G5 compatible card I can find, is the ATI Radeon X1900 Mac G5 Edition. It should perform slightly better than a GeForce 7800GT. It seems to be available in good supply.

To sum it up, can it mean anything else than the R400 family's X800XT/X850XT for AGP 8x, or X1900 Mac G5 Edition for PCI-Express?

Quote:
I guess at least with 3D support. Basic "2D only" could probably be done relatively easily, but why would they bother with a half-assed release, instead of improving Radeon support further?

SMBFS support sounds really great, as my current NAS doesn't like current smbfs at all...

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SFTP and FTP support (via handler or so) would sound much better for me ;)

> X800XT and X850XT [...] as OEM Apple G5 cards [...] seems to be available in good
> supply. [...] ATI Radeon X1900 Mac G5 Edition [...] seems to be available in good supply.

That depends on the definition of "good", I guess. However, there should be plenty enough for usage with MorphOS, given the size of the MorphOS market. One thing to note is that those cards are usually above 50 EUR, even when offered used or refurbished.

Jupp3,
Quote:


Mine does..only problem is...is that I can only go down a few subdirectories and then it no longer works. Cant see past, oh, I forget..3 or 4 subdirectories?

This is a great road map in my opinion

I was present at Alchimie,

Some importants things has been said (which was not listed on the top)

For Gfx card support, it will include only Ati cards, also for PCIE powermacs.
Fab talk about shaders support to be added in tinygl.
Fab said that gallium will not be used..

Fab has explained also that a future morphos version is in work, it will take a long time.
Some work has been done on a virtual machine (Qemu maybe)
The Goal is to have a completly new 64bit operating system whith smp and memory protection and virtual memory support.....
A big effort will be done to have the much possible actual components integrated into the new
operating system.

But this will close definitively the Abox wich is limited to his original concept, working again for such features on Abox is a big waste of time for him.

Fab explained that Powermacs will not have smp support...it's not in the road, asmp is possible but softwares must be rewritten for this, but in fact for him it's not impossible ...for mplayer and blender rendering for example.
Fab didn't say if asmp will be really added in the future.

Fab explained also that a grunch like application should be included in morphos but only for third party applications.

The next architecture is not chosen, even we can expect that they work on X64 for now (with qemu)
Fab said it will depend on machines available on the market....
X64 or Arm or ....

Fab also said that Sam460 port is in progress but this is a one man work for now, it will be a bit long.

Thank you Fab for your keynote.





[ Edited by acepeg 12.11.2013 - 21:26 ]

Are you saying that MorphOS as we know It isnt the future? That all will change drastically and will be support other architecture? Perhaps I dont understand well cos my little baby is playing around but dont know if i like what I read.

Ill read it tomorrow again! ;)

Quote:

Thanks for sharing this. Beside the coming advancements of current MorphOS I really like to see that the MorphOS team is actually doing some work for the post ppc/Abox time which will inevitably come one day. I think with current MorphOS and current hardware support it will be rather easy to have the required patience.
I am also gladto hear Sam460 support is not canceled (I still think it is very good to have a non EOL RoHS compliant hardware).

If PPC path have to die....why wait for it and no change to other architecture now? Is this a lost time?

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No, of course not, development is continuing in he direction it has been.
As things progress, we will see added hardware.

And I was not kidding about not asking too many question.
Will we see iMac support?
I never had the nerve to ask.

Graphics cards?
Well, just follow the dotted lines guys.
And Andreas is oh so right (like that is anything new), how much graphics power do we need for the platforms we have?

I enjoyed the public confirm of some recent suspicions.
A quick thank to those who relayed the information.

Personally, I'm really pulling for ARM. While AMD64 has really made the X86 instruction set more attractive, I would still prefer to stay with RISC.

And since I'm pretty sure I can't convince anyopen to waiting to see if OpenSparc or Open RISC bare fruit...Arm is the next best thing.

As for the plan in general, to me, the shader support is definitely the most major new feature, and probably the biggest to implement. Of course f.ex. non-native screenmode support for PowerBooks is nice too, as there are way too many badly written games not supporting "any" resolution

Should also be great for people who have PowerBooks with broken display. Not sure if DVI out worked at all yet, or was it so it could only output the native resolution, which many monitors don't support...

But overall, the list is rather short. But then again, I think it's better to announce a "manageable" amount of new features, rather than lots of big things that would eventually end up taking years to complete

@acepeg

Erm, about shaders, i didn't exactly say that... I said the driver infrastructure had been reworked to make it easier to deal with shaders (in fact i think the currently released r300 driver even makes use of this already to implement some features, but i may be wrong on that) . But i didn't say that full shaders support would come anytime soon. It's really a lot of work.

As for the future architecture, i mostly insisted on the fact it was still in thinking phase. One shouldn't hold his breath for this, this is a looong and hard way to go.

As for SAM460, it was a proof of concept. I don't know if it's being worked on or not. I don't have information about this.

[ Edited by Fab 13.11.2013 - 05:27 ]

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To make a long story short, we obviously evaluate future options for MorphOS alongside our current developments as well. This doesn't mean that the current path is about to die anytime soon.

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I wouldn't hurry with that too much, there's still lots of to do with PPC and it'll be adequate for years. It'll be fun to use mature system finally and hopefully finetuning it will continue for a long time.

I guess going to other architecture would revert us 10 years back waiting to things to be written again, and as we saw all people aren't that patient. I don't quite like this eternal longing for something else, while we could polish what we have to better :) No architecture will be eternal, so after the switch, some people will start to talk about next.. some people just can't be happy ever.

@jPV

I am not sure how we are supposed to fine tune single core sub 2Ghz machines which are by far the vast majority of MorphOS systems, in order to prolong their usability. Can someone guarantee that they will be sufficient for everyday web browsing experience? Will we ever see any (port of a) relevant semi-modern game that will match those low and sub standard hardware requirements? Will they be able to play HD videos that are already the norm? If we finally get an office suite, will we be able to manipulate bloatware documents and spreadsheets, or it will be slow as a snail?
Now, picture the above in 3-4 years time frame. Will they be sufficient?
Sometimes, I get the feeling that even if there was an ultra modified and blazing fast Odyseey version, my 1,6Ghz G4 would again hit its limits on many webpages (from YT to to my heavily customized Gmail account and to from my eBanking service to Facebook on HTML5 for example). Hell, even my Core2Duo@2,4Ghz starts to show its age from time to time! At this pace, personally, I wouldn't be surprised if in about 1,5 year from today, cheap smartphones will be reaching the territories of the most advanced (single core) PPC raw power or even outperformed them.

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I think that happened some time ago...