> Who actually makes the chips for Apple?

I guess it's still the same company that manufactured the PA6T on behalf of P.A.Semi and which I mentioned 3 days ago. But there's a chance that they switched fabs. The Apple A4 is produced by Samsung for instance (A4 has (ex-)Intrinsity's/Samsung's Hummingbird core (enhanced ARM Cortex-A8 core) with on-chip peripherals probably designed by the former P.A.Semi team (except for the GPU)).

> Why don't we make our own PowerPC CPU? [...] Really, could it be possible [...]?

Last time I looked you had to acquire an architectural license from IBM to do that in a legal way.

Quote:

Well I wrote about boards rather than cpus. There is a shortage of new ppc boards suitable for MorphOS, but not of cpus.
The 86xx still would do nice, the QorIQ, while designed for communication stuff, has some options and there is also?the ibm 476 which seems rather nice. For low cost Applied Micro has nice offerings, probably their Titan will be nice, too.
Okay, ppc is currently not on par with Core i7 or the likes (well, there are the server chips by IBM, but that's another story...)., but there are plenty useful PPCs. What is not plenty is boards - boards that are interesting for general computing and not inside some high or low end router, car electric, game console, deadly missile or laser printer.

> the ibm 476 which seems rather nice.

Again the same question like 2.5 months ago: Do you mean the LSI Axxia? After all, the IBM PPC476 ist just a core.

> probably their Titan will be nice, too.

Seems you missed something:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7001&forum=3&post_id=75799#75799 (see edit note)

Quote:

I mean the 476 core which seems rather nice.Unfortunately that core got used by LSI only and while I don't know the cost of their chip I guess this 476 incarnation is not the best candidate for a new cost sensitive and powerful mainboard. Maybe we will see some other 476 based chip popping up (but I haven't heard of any).
But as sad, *I* would go for QorIQ if I had to design a ppc mainboard today. With regard to MorphOS and Altivec I would still rate the 86xx rather interesting, but 86xx reached EOL while QorIQ didn't.
Quote:

Indeed. Have been on vaccation most of August (it's alwysa a pleasure to be offline for about a month once a year).

> I mean the 476 core

Yes, that's what you wrote. But as you cannot put a CPU core on a PCB without having wrapped a chip round that core I assumed that you might probably not mean the PPC476 core as such but rather an actual (i.e. existing) chip with that core inside.

> Maybe we will see some other 476 based chip popping up (but I haven't heard of any).

Me neither. That's been the reason for my question.

> 86xx reached EOL while QorIQ didn't.

Yes, Freescale's Power Architecture roadmap explicitly paints the QorIQ P4 and P5 chip families as replacements for the MPC86xx chip family.

@thread

I mean at least another fruitful Amiga year.

Another PPC MorphOS spec (could be two, still), two PPC Amigas announced to ship, more news over NatAmi, ARES distro plus new AROS bundles (altogether with wifi nearly done).

So one's gotta get another legal fight. Year without a legal fight ain't Amiga year.

Addendum:

> it's said that "just the CPU is 400-450 euro".

Remarkably, in the coming Amiga Future issue #89 Trevor Dickinson dares to write:

"The PA6T-1682M is a [...] low cost [...] Power Architecture CPU"
http://www.amigafuture.de/album_pic.php?pic_id=16353

"I Believe"

Wow! Some people believe in UFOs, Bigfoot, and Atlantis too!
That slogan is a little too close to the promos for the X-files for comfort.

> "I Believe"

Higher resolution image for your pleasure, uploaded 10 weeks ago:

http://www.a-eon.com/pics/I_Believe.jpg

Funnily, this poster still refers to the year 2010. Somehow I've problems imagining there's still someone who believes in a 2010 release of the X1000 ;-)

Thankx for posting the E-mail Jim! I needed a cheer me up! BTW, how are your balls?

Funny coincidence. LinkedIn just gave me Bill McEwen as "people you may know". I passed on that one ;)

Jim, stay away from Bigfoot, he is actually real and hopefully working on new 3D drivers :D

As I've got an R400 waiting to be used, that is the best news I've received in a long time.
But I thought Frank did the video drivers.

>> Bigfoot, he is actually real and hopefully working on new 3D drivers :D

> that is the best news I've received in a long time.

Huh? What news?

> I thought Frank did the video drivers.

Code:

Btw, 2D drivers on the other hand are inside mossys:devs/monitors/ :-)

OK, I just assumed Frank had something to do with video card development as his last message to me mentioned working on the X600 cards for the G5 (in preference to the R400 series)


[ Edited by Jim on 2011/3/5 4:42 ]

> I just assumed Frank had something to do with video card development

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22vision+factory+development%22+mariak ;-)

And it seems you missed my comment about the 2D drivers (mind you, pampers talked about 3D drivers).

> his last message to me mentioned working on the R600 cards for the G5
> (in preference to the R400 series)

R600? Do you mean a personal message he sent to you? The latest public message by him regarding graphics driver development that I'm aware of is this:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7648&forum=3&post_id=80696#80696

Quote:

Please avoid new/more confusion :) I was obviously refering to the Radeon >X<600 model which is a R3xx based card used for example in the iSight iMacG5. I have no plans to work on R600 range card support for now.

P.S.: This is totally unrelated to the original topic, though ....

Sorry Frank,
I went back and corrected the post to read X600.
And yes Andreas, Frank and I have exchanged a few messages on the R400 series, because I have a modified ATI FireGL X3 with an X800 XL BIOS that I've got working on my G4 under OSX.

And yes, this is unrelated to the original topic and touches on a subject we'd discussed only to prove that it could be done.

Sorry for bringing up a confidential exchange.

> I went back and corrected the post to read X600.

I think it's bad style to alter the part of a posting that got already quoted. There're other ways to handle this, e.g. asterisking the erroneous part and footnoting it.

>>> his last message to me mentioned working on the R600 cards for the G5

>> Do you mean a personal message he sent to you?

> yes Andreas, Frank and I have exchanged a few messages on the R400 series

I ask you whether you talked about the R600 and you answer yes, you talked about the R400. That's too confusing for me to make any sense.

> Sorry for bringing up a confidential exchange.

pega-1 may disagree with me, but I don't think there's anything confidential in it given the fact that pega-1 himself published screenshots of MorphOS running on a machine with Radeon X600 GPU.

I think all the confusion was made by myself trying to make a joke as you mentioned that ppl do believe in bigfoot.

Sorry for that guyz.

> I think all the confusion was made by myself trying to make
> a joke as you mentioned that ppl do believe in bigfoot.

That may have been the trigger for the off-topic, but certainly not the one for Jim's confusion (X600 vs. R600, 3D drivers vs. 2D drivers) ;-)

Quote:

Not really confusion, just a foolish typo. Frank mentioned quite awhile ago that the highest cards likely to be supported would be the R400s (primarily because they;'re quite similar to the R300 series).
I just made a miss-statement.
In fact Frank recently sent me a return PM mentioning the X600 in the iMac as his current focus (with Bigfoot doing the 3d drivers). Which I guess means I'll have to wait for the X800 drivers.
BTW - The R400 works great in a G4 Powermac. You ought to see it running Doom3 under OSX. It's a really nice performer.

I really don't see how this is going to tarnish the Amiga name. It's not like these cheaply built products, put together by under paid college kids in China are going to become a wide spread product that everyone is familiar with. At most, you might see them in a Claw Machine, or a Big Lots at best. They are going to release un-noticed by the general consumer, a story that only Amiga die hards will be telling to their grand children...

...within a tent house in the post apocalyptic future.

Update:

>> it's said that "just the CPU is 400-450 euro".

> Remarkably, in the coming Amiga Future issue #89 Trevor Dickinson dares to write:
>
> "The PA6T-1682M is a [...] low cost [...] Power Architecture CPU"
> http://www.amigafuture.de/album_pic.php?pic_id=16353

"the PA Semi CPU [...] alone costs $500"
http://amigatronics.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/exclusive-to-amigatronics-28-questions-and-28-answers-with-trevor-dickinson-a-eon/

Assuming he means USD (500 USD = 345 EUR currently) it seems the PA6T has slightly decreased in cost since June 2010 when he made his '400-450 euro' statement. Could this perhaps explain his recent 'low cost' assessment? ;-)

Oopps sorry. That is a major typo. The PA Semi CPU is low power consumption but certainly not low cost.

"lost in translation" or proof reading error?

TrevorD

[ Edited by TrevorDick 09.04.2011 - 10:25 ]