Personally, I'm surprised that they went with a company that is producing a processor that will not continue to be developed. While I was really excited by the announcement of PA Semi's PPC processor, once they were bought by Apple and announced that their processor would continue to be supplied for existing designs but not further developed, I figured it wouldn't make sense to develop new hardware based on that product.
Just yesterday I contact a UK company that builds PPC boards (mainly because the head of the company had designed an XMOS based PCIe sound card). He basically discouraged me from looking into the PA Semi based board he had designed because he was having trouble obtaining the processors. I don't understand how A-EON is able to secure these. The last time I heard a statement from PA Semi, they were only assuring a supply of processors to important contacts (like military applications).
That's why I assumed that the processor would be Titan based. Applied Micro has finally gotten these into production and intends to continue to develop the line. While the PA Semi processor is pretty powerful, the Titan's no slouch and it is low power and able to be passively cooled.
While Applied Micro's not promoting their processor for PC application, they seem well suited to our use and they're being produced by one of the few companies still developing lower end PPC processors. I'm also really impressed with the new gating technology AMs licensed for these products. It's allowed them to build a low draw product on a cheap, mature 90nm process. As 65 and 45nm processes mature, AM should be able to allow Titan scale the processor's speed up.
If I had my say, any new MorphOS board would be based on these processors (not PA Semi's).
I willing to bet that many of the readers on this site feel the same way. Probably due to the fact that MorphOS users have more common sense the AOS users.

> Personally, I'm surprised that they went with a company that is producing a
> processor that will not continue to be developed.

Beware, it's still not official that they use the PA6T. Up to now it's just my and other's educated guess, based on the specs and hints revealed so far.

> Just yesterday I contact a UK company that builds PPC boards (mainly because the
> head of the company had designed an XMOS based PCIe sound card). He basically
> discouraged me from looking into the PA Semi based board he had designed because
> he was having trouble obtaining the processors.

It's not Varisys you're speaking of, is it?

> I don't understand how A-EON is able to secure these.

Seems it's quite a story, actually... ;-)

> I'm also really impressed with the new gating technology AMs licensed for these products.

http://www.google.com/search?q=intrinsity+apple ;-)

Yep, you obviously know this company.
Trust me, after spending several years working for a company that sold 68K based computers in the late 80's and early 90's (and actually had product to sell and a customer base), I always take my initial contacts with individuals in small companies somewhat sceptically.
We had competitors that announced products that never got produced (or if they did had major flaws).
If Varisys, as an organization, has some peculiarities, I'm not sure I want to know. I was impressed by what I saw on the internet (and in exchanging e-mails), but I'm not too familiar with the company yet.
It would disappoint me to run into another phony front.
I used to have to deal with "competitors" that had no real products (and often compared their vaporware to our shipping hardware unfavorably).
The main reason I trust you Andreas, is that in interacting with you I've come to realize you're far more informed than I am and I respect your opinion and your accomplishments.
It takes me awhile before I trust people, because I've dealt with too many people (many apparently respected by others) who seemed to rely on baffling others with bull****.


[ Edited by Jim on 2010/4/9 3:47 ]

@ mobydick

Guess what? My sparkling mint 1.67GHz 17'' 1680x1050 PowerBook runs in circles around the hardware in the subject of this discussion. And what's more? In case it breaks, I can repair it on the spot, in the city I live in (and I've got several companies to chose from, even the official Apple service center). What else? It actually costed less than the new yet inferior (and unportable) hardware.

IMHO Apple hardware is the only target that makes sense for PowerPC MorphOS at the moment.

@Andreas_Wolf

I fully understand MorphosDevTeam doesn't look after new new-Amigas. AROS people port AROS to Sam boards and it causes shortages (read: insufficient manpower / time) around the main (PC) version which is pretty silly I think. They too should stick to PC (and notebooks especially) support.

As jacadcaps said, I too see PPC Apple as the only direction now.

@mobydick

I don't think so. Still, I'm worried about the dev pace. But there's a plenty of decent hi-end Apple hardware which is also cheap. 80% AmigaOS fans (including myself) cannot afford one (with the Sam bundle) So I think that despite what you said MDevTeam took fantastic direction to enable MorphOS user with CHEAP and POWER computers.

Bravo!

@thread

I am happy that if everything goes as planned, this fall, three pcs of HW will be in production for AmigaOS. I support this of course, also remember the time with no HW for OS4 at all, now there's three coming.

Also ACube rose specs a bit upwards which makes a "better" Amiga than e.g. SamEp or SamFlex. Another point plus.

Anyway not sure if I can afford OS4 system this year, but I am vere very glad that next year, I will be having more choice.

[ Edited by DiskDoctor on 2010/4/9 11:29 ]

Quote:

I think the same.

@jacadcaps

Quote:

What MorphOS builds planned for other architectures do you know of?

What do you know?

> Yep, you obviously know this company.

Sounds as if my assumption that Varisys would be the still unnamed Nemo designers won't turn out true. Actually, I should have known this, because it was said the Nemo designing company was 15 years old, whereas Varisys has been founded by Barnes only 10 years ago (probably as some kind of Transtech spin-off).

Quote:

He probably knows a great deal, but as for you and I, we can only speculate:

LINK

> if everything goes as planned, this fall, three pcs of HW will be in production for
> AmigaOS. I support this of course, also remember the time with no HW for OS4
> at all, now there's three coming.

Which OS4 hardware is the third one coming besides Sam460ex and X1000?

Quote:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5367

Quote:

so the Sam440ex-Flex is still in production, that will make 3.

are you tired Andreas that I have to send links and quotes to YOU ?

edit : typos

[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2010/4/9 15:43 ]

> so the Sam440ex-Flex is still in production

No news to me there :-)
Besides, did ACube rename the Sam440ep-flex to Sam440ex-flex? That woud be strange, as there is no such thing like a "440EX" processor. It seems they are using both designations for one and the same board since they announced the Sam460ex.

> that will make 3. are you tired Andreas that I have to send links and quotes to YOU ?

I read DiskDoctor's "now there's three coming" as ..errm... "three coming", not as "one already there and two coming".

Quote:

I think the term "is in production" gives an erroneous picture of a manufacturing plant with a long conveyor belt, that spits out products around the clock, day out day in, week after week. That's not really the case in Amigaland, where production is made in small batches whenever demand/orders reaches a certain threshold and/or it's decided at all worthwhile.

Acube announced the "termination" of the Sam 440ep, but in the same announcement (or in a forum comment, I can't remember) they also stipulated that, sure, they could make another production run if only they would get an order for 30 units or more (this seems to be their threshold for starting up the "conveyor belt". BTW, in the same sense Genesi/bPlan could easily make another batch of Efikas, but it won't happen). So if you look at it that way, OS4 has four options (if you count the "X1000"). My point is that once OS4 is announced/released for the Sam 460, they will hardly sell another 30 units of the 440, but most certainly *only* units from the 460 batch, which makes the term "in production" not quite accurate perhaps?

And will the "X1000" really get here? Who knows, but I have my doubts. I think it's most realistic that we in one year from now will see a 440 *or* a 460 based board for sale from Acube to Amigans (has OS4 been officially confirmed for the 460 yet BTW?), but that will be the only *single* option for OS4.

In a year from now, MorphOS will probably be available for Mac Mini, PowerMac and PowerBook, and there will still be plenty of PPC based Macs in the second hand market by then.

> Acube announced the "termination" of the Sam 440ep, but in the same announcement
> (or in a forum comment, I can't remember) they also stipulated that, sure, they could make
> another production run if only they would get an order for 30 units or more

Yes, it's even on their website:

"Availability: Sam440ep is available only under bulk orders, minimum quantity 30 boards."
http://www.sam4x0.com/sam440ep.html

Note that the Sam440ep-flex page states: "Availability: now". So there should be a difference between Sam440ep and Sam440ep-flex regarding availability. I conclude that in case of the Sam440ep *one single* order must at least contain 30 units to start production, whereas in case of Sam440ep-flex the number of orders that reach the threshold for production start is irrelevant as long as the threshold is met in sum. In light of the small numbers in Amiga market that makes for a difference I guess.

> My point is that once OS4 is announced/released for the Sam 460, they will hardly sell
> another 30 units of the 440, but most certainly *only* units from the 460 batch, which
> makes the term "in production" not quite accurate perhaps?

So let's wait for the announcement of "termination" of the Sam440ep-flex once the Sam460ex is out. I guess the Sam460ex won't replace the Sam440ep-flex in the same sense the Sam440ep-flex didn't replace the Sam440ep ;-)

> has OS4 been officially confirmed for the 460 yet BTW?

From 5 days ago:

"Hyperion Entertainment is very pleased that these two options will be availble to AmigaOS users."
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31239&forum=4&start=60#550719

Maybe there are more recent statements by now. I don't know.

There seems to be a lot of negativity towards any Amiga related new PPC HW developments.

What's the plan for MOS compatible HW future?

(Especially after the reverse engineering of every liguid cooled G5 PPC macintosh.)

And in the meanwhile, when is it expected to have MOS running on a 2Ghz HW? SMP? AMP?

(ok, ok, SMP happen sooner on MOS than on AOS (if you ask any MOS team member), but any schedule/roadmap?)

[ Edited by KimmoK on 2010/4/10 19:09 ]

[ Edited by KimmoK on 2010/4/10 19:10 ]

[ Edited by KimmoK on 2010/4/10 19:12 ]

Quote:

Maybe it's just that most of it seems quite underwhelming in comparison to the hardware MorphOS is already running on?

Quote:

AFAIK there are Powermac G4 cards at 2 GHz available...
Anyway the question is not when will MorphOS run on this or that, but when is MorphOS capable of doing current things. How about hd video? 720p works nice on my MorphOS Mac mini. Or what about youtube html5? It works pretty nice on my set up now. These are the things that matter, not the actual clock rate.
But generally speaking faster hardware is of course always interesting. But while the Sam 460 is a step into the right direction it is not too intersting IMHO. Way too little cpu power for that price. For 250 EUR it would start to get interesting.

> AFAIK there are Powermac G4 cards at 2 GHz available...

"When it comes to 3rd party add-ons it's very unlikely they will be supported from the beginning, or even at all (unless some 3rd party does the drivers). This includes the add-on CPU cards."
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6990&forum=11#71891

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 20.04.2011 - 07:16 ]

Sure, and I didn't even mention performance, but thanks for bringing it up.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 20.04.2011 - 07:39 ]

Lets say price/performance ratio then, the original efika while not having spectacular performance was at least cheap.

Addendum:

> MPC7448 @ 2.0 GHz (overclocked) vs. one core of PA6T-1682M @ 2.0 GHz would
> be an interesting comparison.

Now we know it's 1.8 GHz, not 2.0 GHz:

http://www.a-eon.com/x1000.html

Interesting, but they still make some secrecy about the cpu. And the page design... Well, taste differs. At least there is some kind of website now.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 20.04.2011 - 07:37 ]