Quote:

While I understand what you are saying and you aren't wrong, I'd give A-Eonkit much more credit than that. A-Eonkit laid out real money to commission the development of custom boards. Eyetech OTOH took an existing reference board and slapped a boing label on it.

Quote:

Yes. Aeon boards are designed to be sold as a product. OTOH Dev boards don't always work terribly well.

Varisys are competent. Mai logic not so, they wouldn't acknowledge the bugs in their chips when they were pointed out to them.

Quote:

- AeonKit first wanted to call it "A5000"

- AeonKit made the boot-screen look like this. The words "Amiga" and "5000" are grouped together, have the same font, style and color, while the word "one" is typed in lower case, 1/4 of the size and in a very dark color and hanging by itself up to the right. The "X" was stylized to be part of a lens flare. It's an obvious effort to make you read "Amiga 5000". See this picture to better understand my point.

- When they write "AMIGA one" it's the same thing. Would it have been possible to make the word "one" even smaller and colored only two notches darker than the white background, they would probably have done that.

Put all this together and you'll start to see the picture. They are in the business of selling computer systems for very much money, and in the process they are very creative in their ways of projecting "this is an Amiga" onto them, since this trade mark (which they don't have any legal right to use) will make it much easier to sell them to people who "want have the most powerful Amiga", and this wouldn't be possible otherwise...

Probably not illegal, though balancing on the verge of trade mark infringement.

It's unethical though, for sure.

Quote:
Maybe the one or the other or both. And you know why. And "they" will do it again and again and...guess what? One day "they" will have the name . Or not. Depends on money, patience and the will to constantly nag. If I were you I would try to live with it.

Who really cares?
I'm putting a boing ball on mine regardless of the name.

Update:

> "The X3500 lives in silicon but we only have a few units for internal testing."
> http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=39529&forum=33#744691

"Trevor Dickinson is said to have revealed that the cheapest version of the next AmigaOne generation will not hit the market: The price of the P3041 quadcore based X3500 would have been too close to the other, P5020/P5040 based dualcore and quadcore models."
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2015-06-00068-EN.html

Both X3500s? Dual and quad core?
If so, good, the processor was inferior.

> Both X3500s? Dual and quad core?

There was only quad-core announced. Also, there is no QorIQ P3 processor other than the quad-core P3041. Or what do you mean?

Quote:

Sorry Andeas, I thought I saw a dual core version of the X3500 listed somewhere.
I have pretty much dismissed anything with a P suffix as dated, so I'm not that familiar with the P3041.

@Andreas_Wolf

Quote:

Surprising to see that *they are actually able* to cancel bad ideas! This is a skill they should practice a lot more often.


@Jim

Quote:

...or P prefix...

> I have pretty much dismissed anything with a P suffix as dated

But you're still going to buy the P5-based X5000, right? :-)

> Surprising to see that *they are actually able* to cancel bad ideas!
> This is a skill they should practice a lot more often.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=791 :-)

Quote:

Oddly enough, yes.
But then the replacement for that processor is a T series.
I should have given that more consideration, and mentioned the specific cores involved.
Since Freescale introduced the e5500 and e6500, I have seen no reason to utilize older designs.

Ah, you DO keep me on my toes, Andreas.
Believe it or not, I value that.
After all, who wants to be wrong?

[ Edited by Jim 29.06.2015 - 07:07 ]

Quote:

Ah yes, prefix, great another example of my "mastery" of my native tongue.

And yes, the X3500 was definately a mistake.
Not sure what the Varisys/A-eon crew was thinking when they planned a board around that cpu.

> the X3500 was definately a mistake. Not sure what the Varisys/A-eon crew
> was thinking when they planned a board around that cpu.

They did not plan a separate board for the P3041 but intended to benefit from the pin compatibility between the P3 and the P5. So they would have taken the same Cyrus (Plus) PCB and simply soldered the P3 there instead of the P5.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=789

Most likely the too small price difference keeps also X5000/10 out of scope.
It seems a-eon mentioned that there is two project being worked on around lower cost system.
(I imagine it's the co-operation with ACube and that we might see a design that can hold T10xx or T2081. Can be also with extra co-operation with the ppc laptop team.)

Addendum:

> QorIQ P5040 and P5021 announced [...]: [...]
>
> http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=P5040
> http://www.freescale.com/files/graphic/block_diagram/P5040_BD_IMG.jpg
> http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/P50405021FS.pdf
> http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/reports_presentations/P5040OVRVWPRES.pdf
> http://www.freescale.com/files/training/doc/dwf/DWF13_APF_NET_T0560.pdf
>
> SerDes lanes count has been upped to 20 (up from 18 on P5020/P5010) with 2 of them
> reserved for SATA [...].

There seems to be some ambiguity whether or not the number of SATA controllers of P5040/P5021 has been reduced since the announcement from 2 to 1. The text on the product website (link above) and the data sheet (May 2014) still say it's 2, whereas the block diagram (April 2014, link above) on the product website and the fact sheet (May 2014, link above) show only 1.
A-Eon's core Linux support team member Darren "Daz" Stevens says it's just 1 SATA controller on the P5040:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=40345&forum=16&start=80#763902

If so, it won't really be pin compatible. Maybe this will affect availability of a potential future 4-core version of the "X5000"? Not that it matters from an Amiga point of view...

> If so, it won't really be pin compatible.

There are more differences (e.g. number of SerDes lanes, number of PCIe controllers) as outlined by me in my original posting back then. http://www.freescale.com/files/training/doc/dwf/DWF13_APF_NET_T0560.pdf (also linked to back then) shows even more differences on page 11 (albeit that's still with 2 SATA controllers on P5040/P5021).
You are correct that pin compatibility is not 100% which means that while designing a common board for both is perfectly possible it would require some compromises to be made. (That's btw. similar to MPC7447(A) and MPC7448, which are also not 100% pin compatible.)
If one can live with the compromises, then a common board can be used for both P5020 and P5040. If not, the board design must be slightly altered for the P5040.

> Maybe this will affect availability of a potential future 4-core version of the "X5000"?

It may be that the Cyrus Plus boards will be slightly different for P5020 and P5040 in order to make the best of both SoCs and not restrict the capabilities of any of them.

Quote:

Like settling with the lowest common denominator in those areas, like only having 1 SATA, etc. However, AFAIK the "X5000" has 2, so they obviously didn't do that...

Quote:

Even if they don't have to start from scratch (far from it), it would still mean going back to the drawing table to design, prototype and test a de facto new/different motherboard. This could be time consuming and since they will pay a commercial company for doing all this and for all their "man-hours" put into the work, it will add cost that may very well be quite noticeable on the consumer end price for an extremely low volume piece of HW like this will be.

That was not the plan. The plan was to have one motherboard design, and then simply put one of the two pin compatible CPU chips in it, in order to create two "different" product options, with no extra cost other than for the other CPU.

Quote:

I think it may be quite probable that the 4-core gets cancelled altogether. The "X5000" is very expensive as it is, and upping the price tag even more just to gain two additional cores that will never be used in an Amiga context seems weird. So I don't think it will happen...

> Like settling with the lowest common denominator in those areas, like only having 1 SATA

In case of SATA you could route both interfaces where both work in case of the P5020 and only one works in case of the P5040. Whether this is possible depends on which signals are on the respective P5040 pins that are for the 2nd SATA on the P5020 and whether the function of these signals shall be used or can be switched off. I don't know these details in case of the P5 family, though.

> The plan was to have one motherboard design, and then simply put one of the two
> pin compatible CPU chips in it, in order to create two "different" product options

The original plan was with even 3 different CPUs (P3041, P5020, P5040).

> to gain two additional cores that will never be used in an Amiga context

...and 200 additional MHz ;-)

Quote:
really? what's the price?

-- eliyahu

> Then there are the new PPC476FP based products Andreas has mentioned.

Besides the Axxia series from LSI/Avago/Intel and the CCFC9000 from C*Core, there are apparently further PPC476FP-based SoCs, which somehow went under my radar for years. They have been made by none other than IBM. These SoCs are the PPC476FPE from 2011 and the PPC476GTR from 2013. Information is really sparse but that's what I could find out:

PPC476FPE:
1.6 GHz, dual-core, 3x PCIe, 1x I²C

PPC476GTR:
1.6 GHz, dual-core, 4x PCIe, 2x I²C, 1x SDHC, 1x SATA, 1x USB2, 2x USB1.1, Ethernet

Links:
http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2011-November/094464.html
http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2011-December/094542.html
http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2011-December/094543.html
http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2013-November/113051.html
http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2014-March/115797.html
http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/2014-March/115801.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:lists.ozlabs.org+ppc476fpe+OR+476fpe+OR+currituck
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:lists.ozlabs.org+ppc476gtr+OR+476gtr+OR+akebono
http://www.lauterbach.com/pdf/debugger_ppc400.pdf (page 58)

PPC476GTR?
Wow, that IS a hard one to get info on.
I just contacted IBM tech support and got the equivalent of 'huh?'.
And a reference to a different support line.

IBM REALLY doesn't want to market components.

I really like Trevor Dickinson and Matthew Leaman of A-Eon, but I worry a little about the choices they have made for new system hardware. That, plus the snails pace that Hyperion is able to complete ports to new hardware is a recipe for failure, but perhaps there are still enough devoted AmigaOS4.x users to purchase X5000 and A1222 systems, to save A-Eon from losing so much money that Trevor gets discouraged to the point of giving up his dream to provide hardware that keeps AmigaOS4.x development alive.

If by some miracle A-Eon sells out all the X5000 and A1222 systems they have planned to produce over the next couple of years, and IF A-Eon decides to continue building custom PPC systems in the future, I would hope that they get better advice from someone outside of Varisys (someone like Andreas Wolf & Jim), who has done tons of research on what is available, but is also well aware of the needs and wants of our community.

[ Edited by amigadave 20.01.2016 - 13:36 ]