Order of the Butterfly
Posts: 365 from 2003/3/28
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bigfoot wrote:
Hi Bigfoot!
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Two major such limitations are the lack of 64 bit support and the lack of SMP support.
32 bit CPUs are between being outphased and completely dead already, so staying stuck in 32 bit land is not a real possibility. Modern CPUs, with the exception of some really low-end chips, are all at least dual core, and many have 4 cores or more.
An OS that doesn't support this will also be firmly stuck in the past.
A 32-bit quad core processor will cost you all of $4 these days - and that's the public price.
There are still duals which they must be near giving away.
Expect these to be phased out in favour of 64-bit parts very rapidly. They're only starting to appear now in high end devices but they'll be low end in no time.
That said, at least for now, all the ARM 64-bit cores are capable of running in 32 bit mode and I believe this is also true for x86.
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To answer the question of "is it still happening": No one, or at least I believe so, on the MorphOS team thinks there's a future in PowerPC on the desktop. That makes the path forward pretty clear: Adapt or die. The only question is how long it will take, given our rather limited resources.
Interesting, Hyperion pretty much said they want to stay on PowerPC systems because they'll feel more exclusive.
