> Why would you run AROS on an expensive Acube board, only to have it
> seriously outperformed by cheaper X86 hardware?

I have no idea :-)

Jim wrote:,
Quote:

Jason ended up giving his AROS presentation on the SAM460ex on Saturday, instead of Sunday, so he did not even set up his computers on Sunday, and he left to go to the airport around 10:30am on Sunday. I over slept on Sunday, after initially waking up at around 6:30am I fell back to sleep and did not wake up until 5 minutes until 10am, so I almost missed even saying goodbye to Jason McMullan on Sunday morning.

To be honest, I was so busy with people interested in MorphOS3.1, winning raffle prizes (I think I won 4, or 5 out of the possible 8 to 10 raffle prizes during both days by giving the SACC club a $20.00 donation to support their work in putting on the AmiWest Show each year), and trying to look around at all of the different display tables and buying a couple of things from Matthew & AmigaKit (I hate to see Matthew pack up much gear that he had shipped over to sell during the show), as I never want Matthew to bring Amiga gear over with him and have me not buy something from him before he returns to Wales and has to ship his remaining stock that did not sell during the AmiWest Show.

I only had a quick look at AROS running native on the SAM460ex, and the only thing I noticed was that Jason McMullan had not yet completed work on the video driver so that the resolution he was running at was not optimal for the monitor he had borrowed from one of the other people attending the 2012 AmiWest Show. I did not realize that Jason was not going to set up his display at all on Sunday, because his original plan was to do his presentation on Sunday and then leave for the airport to catch his flight home. I wish I had taken a closer look at the demonstration of AROS native on the SAM460ex, so I could answer some of your questions regarding it.

I don't want to offend all of the people who have purchased a SAM460ex with my comment that Jim quoted from my email to Jim, after he had indicated that many posters on the MorphZone.org forum were interested in the Native AROS demonstration that was rumored that Jason was going to do during some part of the 2012 AmiWest Show (Jim, that is twice now that you have copy and pasted part of a private comment between me and yourself into a public forum).

Although I stand by what I wrote to you, I don't want people taking it out of the context of my perception that not many people who post on the forums of MorphZone.org would own a SAM460ex, as it does not run any version of MorphOS, so only AmigaOS4.x users would use a SAM460ex, and there are not many people who run AmigaOS4.x exclusively posting comments on a MorphOS Centric public forum. I can easily understand why people who already own a SAM460ex (which by the way has adequate power to run AmigaOS4.1.5 at an acceptable speed, or maybe even at a fast speed, but it woud depend on what you are comparing it to, as there are only a limited number of computers that can run AmigaOS4.1.5 and the SAM460ex is perhaps the 2nd fastest new computer you can purchase, or the 3rd fastest available computer over all if you consider all current and past computer designs that can run AmigaOS4.1.5 on today.

Comparing computers that can run AmigaOS4.1.5 with other computers which are not capable of running AmigaOS4.1.5, makes no sense. It is like comparing a Ferrari with a pick-up truck. Only the truck is capable of carrying over 1,000 pounds of cement bags down a dirt road to a construction site without damaging itself, so it serves it's specific purpose well. Running AROS on the SAM460ex does not make any sense, UNLESS the person already owns a SAM460ex to run AmigaOS4.1.5 and he just wants to explore what running AROS is like, just like many X1000 owners are curious about how well their X1000 can run Linux, so a few smart guys with X1000's have taken the time and expended the effort to write, or modify existing Linux kernels, so they can boot many different versions of Linux on their X1000 computers, but I doubt that any Amiga users have purchased their X1000 computers only for running Linux on them, just as I strongly doubt that any MorphOS3.1 users will purchase a SAM460ex so they can run AROS native, instead of buying an x86 PC to run AROS Natively at many times the speed of a SAM460ex.

Jason McMullan already owned a SAM460ex and his programming skill set is ideal for writing AROS drivers, from what I can tell, after spending just a short time with him on Friday evening and a little time while we were setting up his AROS demonstration and I was setting up the many computers I use each year to demonstrate MorphOS, with the addition of my X1000 this year, that was sharing my table space with all the MorphOS3.1 computers.

Sorry for the long explanation, but I did not want my quoted comment about the SAM460ex to be misunderstood, without the context I was using to base my comment on fully explained. When you discuss AROS running native on the SAM460ex, you naturally must consider other platforms that can also run AROS. The same discussion is very different when you are talking about computers that are capable of running AmigaOS4.1.5. Since I own, use, and promote all flavors of the Amiga experience, including all of the Classic Amiga computer models, so I never want any of my comments used out of context, which is why I have written such a long explanation here.

Perhaps Jim also misunderstood my comment, as I did not write it out clearly within my email to him, which was short and did not include any long explanation, but I thought he would understand, since I believe it was this forum he was referring to, when he made the initial comment about people being very interested in the rumor of Jason McMullan demonstrating AROS Native on the SAM460ex.

[ Edited by amigadave 24.10.2012 - 04:50 ]

Addendum:

>> he instead announced that he is moving forward with more new computers
>> from A-Eon with Varisys as his partner and AmigaKit was also joining him
>> as a partner to produce new AmigaOne computers.

> True, he specifically said that they contracted Varisys to develop three new products,
> one of which will be an XCore processor card. I guess the remaining two will be
> standalone PPC boards for running OS4.

"we learned a bunch of things this year, including news on two systems coming from A-EON"
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=35667&forum=16&start=380#685510

Not sure why David would feel compelled to make such a long explanation.
Frankly, I'm baffled at the idea of running AROS on an expensive PPC when there is already a more mature, faster X86 version.
Sure the SAMs don't run MorphOS, but since they do run OS4.1 I'm not sure why Jason would want to expend this much energy on this.

Mind you, this is solely MY opinion, but as AROS is freeware designed to run on relatively low cost hardware, focusing on X86 and ARM makes more sense to me.

Since MorphOS and OS4 are commercial products, I can justify spending slightly more on the hardware needed to run them.

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

Curious.
Trevor mentioned months ago that he and Paul Gentle's firm were working on at least a couple projects.
But I don't think he's revealed too many of the details yet.
Considering that Paul mentioned an interest in Qorlq processor to me about two years ago, and considering the remarkable developments within those product lines, one can only wonder what those fellows are up to.

> Curious.

Why? 2 new systems plus 1 new XCore card amounts to 3 new products. So I'd say that this year's statement is very much coherent with last year's statement.

> Trevor mentioned months ago that he and Paul Gentle's firm were working
> on at least a couple projects.

True, and 3 is a couple, isn't it?

> Considering that Paul mentioned an interest in Qorlq processor to me about
> two years ago, and considering the remarkable developments within those
> product lines, one can only wonder what those fellows are up to.

...and not to forget considering this:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=745

I can imagine that Varisys base the Nemo successor(s) on their VM400 product, which would mean that the 2 new A-Eon systems could be a cheaper lower end system with P3041 chip running at, say, 1.2 GHz, and a more expensive higher end system with P5020 chip at 2.2 GHz, all using the same basic board design thanks to the pin compatibility of the chips. And if they want to avoid the awkward situation where the lower end board has a higher core count than the higher end board, they can very well use the pin-compatible 4-core P5040 chip running at up to 2.4 GHz instead of the P5020.

>Why? 2 new systems plus 1 new XCore card amounts to 3 new products. So I'd say that this year's statement is very much coherent with last year's statement.

true, but what's the Xcore board for? An Acube add on?

>True, and 3 is a couple, isn't it?

Actually, what Trev said was at least a couple. Apparently they may have been exploring more then the three they settled on.

>...not to forget considering this:

>No, don't want to forget that. But I'm still more interested in what A-eon pays to develop.
Paul's stuff can be pretty pricey. Although he did have a really neat Xcore design early in the life cycle of that product.

I am very impressed with Varisys and can't think of any other company designing PPC boards with a better record of bringing announced projects to market.
And Paul Gentle has been a good source for advice.

> what's the Xcore board for? An Acube add on?

There's a short note about that there:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=35667&forum=16&start=400#685542

According to this, there should be more info on the XCore board in that video (which I haven't watched yet):

http://blip.tv/bios/hazelwood-on-xena-and-xorro-6432644 (direct link)

According to a note from Lyle Hazelwood during Trevor's AmiWest 2012 presentation (direct link, Youtube), the XCore board has been specifically designed for the X1000's Xorro slot and thus won't work in anything else.

>> 3 is a couple, isn't it?

> Actually, what Trev said was at least a couple.

Even just 2 would be "at least a couple" to my understanding. So 3 is even 50% more than the minimum required to comply with that statement :-)

> Apparently they may have been exploring more then the three they settled on.

I'd be surprised if it's really more than the XCore board and the two new systems. That's not to mean that Varisys couldn't handle more, but rather that A-Eon can't pay for development of more at a time.

> I [...] can't think of any other company designing PPC boards with a better
> record of bringing announced projects to market.

There are dozens of companies designing PPC boards out there but I've yet to conduct a survey examining the announcement-release ratio of those companies to come to any such conclusion like you have ;-)


Edit: Added link to the AmiWest video.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 20.11.2012 - 23:26 ]

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

I'm astounded that they can pay for what they are developing now.
No, what I meant was that they may have considered other options.
Not that they actively poured money into development.

Its obvious they are thinking low end, high end, and Xcore add on.

And while I like Xcore, and have explored it, I'm no more into that then the Parallax Propeller or the multitude of ARM based MCUs.
I hope A-eon doesn't focus too much on Xcore.
Its a rather limited technology that may be less powerful then a FPGA.

I wish there was something better then OS4.1 to run on A-eon boards (or Ubuntu as I can run that on an X86 or ARM).
Maybe I've been a little hasty about AROS.

> what I meant was that they may have considered other options.
> Not that they actively poured money into development.

For instance? The netbook form factor is supposed to come from Hyperion. What would that leave for A-Eon? A tablet?

> I hope A-eon doesn't focus too much on Xcore.

That's my hope too. I think XCore is of no real use in the market A-Eon resides in with the X1000 and possible future successors.

> I wish there was something better then OS4.1 to run on A-eon boards
> (or Ubuntu as I can run that on an X86 or ARM).

No OS4 and no OS that can also run on x86 or ARM leaves only MorphOS, right? :-)

> Maybe I've been a little hasty about AROS.

You mean AROS/PPC running hosted on Linux/PPC on an A-Eon PPC board? But then, AROS also runs natively on x86 and thus wouldn't meet your premise of an OS you'd wish to run on any A-Eon PPC board.
Btw, about native AROS/PPC on the X1000:

"AROS is now running on PPC SAMs & Sam Crow has said he would see about getting it going on the A1 & X1000, something I asked about at Amiwest."
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36695&forum=16&start=120#686212

>> what I meant was that they may have considered other options.
>> Not that they actively poured money into development.

>For instance? The netbook form factor is supposed to come from >Hyperion. What would that leave for A-Eon? A tablet?

Well, as total speculation, even simpler boards like a micro-itx, a PCIe plug-in board, tablets like you mentioned, other processors (outside of the likely Qorlq components). Since they're pretty close mouthed its hard to say.

However, in all likelihood, pretty much what we've been speculating about (although the e6500 looks less likely now with the lowered clock speeds).

> simpler boards like a micro-itx

Is "micro-itx" a hybrid between micro-ATX and mini-ITX? ;-)

> a PCIe plug-in board, tablets like you mentioned

Okay.

> other processors (outside of the likely Qorlq components).

A-Eon was established to provide hardware for OS4, which is an OS running on Power Architecture. I don't think there's currently any better choice than using QorIQ chips for that.

> the e6500 looks less likely now with the lowered clock speeds

Comment regarding Trevor's AmiWest 2012 presentation:

"They were talking about the brilliant future with ppc dual core e6500"
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36670&forum=16&start=100#685249

(...with "core" meaning "thread" here obviously). So I still think A-Eon eventually aim for the e6500 core, but as the PA6T chip will not be available for much longer and the chips with e6500 cores have just started sampling, they desperately need(ed) the chips with e5500 cores as an interim solution to be able to start development of new hardware just after Nemo v2.1 was finalized. I wrote about that there:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7183&start=817

>Is "micro-itx" a hybrid between micro-ATX and mini-ITX?

Yes, mini-ITX, sorry

As far as everything else goes, I'd say you were dead on. The e5500 has a clock speed lead right now. Eventually, the e6500 may catch up and its multi-threaded. Also, the number of cores that will be offered on e6500 cored products almost borders on the silly.

But for right now. Both you, and I, and a few others like Magnetic and AmigaDave are apparently going to get our wish and see some new (and really cool) PPC products introduced.

Unfortunately they will run the wrong OS.

> The e5500 has a clock speed lead right now. Eventually, the e6500 may
> catch up and its multi-threaded.

Multi-threading may or may not be true for the e6500 core variant to be used in the T5 (provided the T5 has not been cancelled anyway, that is). Refer to:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=728

> the number of cores that will be offered on e6500 cored products
> almost borders on the silly.

...for use in desktop-centric systems like A-Eon's, yes. Should the T5 arrive, it will have less (but higher clocked) cores than T4 with its current maximum of 12 cores in the T4240. The 4-core T2080 is an interesting chip as well btw.

> Both you, and I, and a few others like Magnetic and AmigaDave are apparently going
> to get our wish and see some new (and really cool) PPC products introduced.

I don't know about amigadave, but judging by Magnetic's past postings on that matter I'm quite sure that new PPC hardware (and a port of OS4 or MorphOS to it) is not what Magnetic wishes for.

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

Actually, now that you mention it, as an upgrade path for MorphOS, BOTH Mag AND David would probably prefer a G5.
David already has one (and is eventually supposed to send me one), and you've pointed out to me that Magnetic has supported the G5 path.

I like the idea of a G5 port, but if I had to choose...well new hardware would be nice (regardless of cost).
It doesn't seem likely that we would see both paths pursued, does it Andreas?

> you've pointed out to me that Magnetic has supported the G5 path.

That was before he changed his opinion into better advancing the OS usability by spending resources for proper software development instead of porting the OS to G5 (or another ISA than PPC).

> I like the idea of a G5 port, but if I had to choose...well new hardware would be nice
> (regardless of cost). It doesn't seem likely that we would see both paths pursued,
> does it Andreas?

Yes, taking the scarce development resources into accout I think you're right on that. So I believe it's either a port to G5 Macs or to new PPC hardware.

Update:

> No prices for the QorIQ P5 yet.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6196&forum=11&start=174

Addendum:

>> I like the idea of a G5 port, but if I had to choose...well new
>> hardware would be nice (regardless of cost). It doesn't seem likely
>> that we would see both paths pursued, does it Andreas?

> Yes, taking the scarce development resources into accout I think you're right
> on that. So I believe it's either a port to G5 Macs or to new PPC hardware.

https://morph.zone/modules/news/article_storyid_1978.html

But then:

"Bounty timeframe: 3 months after the programmer receives the machine"

This sounds really ambitious.

Oh that is SO nice.
And AmigaDave owe me a G5 Power mac.
Not to mention I've got loads of video cards that will work in one.

Hey everybody, this is a natural for Radeon 9600 and 9800 video cards.

Update:

> https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=745
>
> I can imagine that Varisys base the Nemo successor(s) on their VM400 product,
> which would mean that the 2 new A-Eon systems could be a cheaper lower end
> system with P3041 chip running at, say, 1.2 GHz, and a more expensive higher
> end system with P5020 chip at 2.2 GHz, all using the same basic board design
> thanks to the pin compatibility of the chips.

A slide from Trevor's AmiWest 2012 presentation (direct link, Youtube) reads like this:

"Future PowerPC Possibilities
[...]
- e500mc : 32-bit, quad-core - Mid-level machine
- e5500 : 64-bit, dual-core - Power machine"

This goes very much in line with my speculations above. A quad-e500mc chip (running at 1.5 GHz, which Trevor mentions in his talk) would mean either the P3041 or the P4040 (P2041 wouldn't be pin-compatible), and a dual-e5500 chip (running at 2.2 GHz, also mentioned by Trevor) would mean either the P5020 or the P5021.
The codenames for those two Nemo successors seem to be "Cyrus" and "Breezin" (don't know which is which). Trevor adds: "These will not be ready for a long time."

Update:

>> the e6500 looks less likely now with the lowered clock speeds

> Comment regarding Trevor's AmiWest 2012 presentation:
> "They were talking about the brilliant future with ppc dual core e6500"
> http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36670&forum=16&start=100#685249
>
> (...with "core" meaning "thread" here obviously). So I still think A-Eon eventually
> aim for the e6500 core

From Trevor's AmiWest 2012 presentation (direct link, Youtube) on the prospect of A-Eon products based on chips with e6500 cores:

"That will be my wildest dreams. That will be a real replacement for the X1000 down the road, but that's not gonna be in the next year or two."

Addendum:

>> https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=745
>>
>> I can imagine that Varisys base the Nemo successor(s) on their VM400 product,
>> which would mean that the 2 new A-Eon systems could be a cheaper lower end
>> system with P3041 chip running at, say, 1.2 GHz, and a more expensive higher
>> end system with P5020 chip at 2.2 GHz, all using the same basic board design
>> thanks to the pin compatibility of the chips.

> A slide from Trevor's AmiWest 2012 presentation (direct link, Youtube) reads like this:
> "Future PowerPC Possibilities
> [...]
> - e500mc : 32-bit, quad-core - Mid-level machine
> - e5500 : 64-bit, dual-core - Power machine"
>
> This goes very much in line with my speculations above. A quad-e500mc chip
> (running at 1.5 GHz, which Trevor mentions in his talk) would mean either the P3041
> or the P4040 (P2041 wouldn't be pin-compatible) [...]

Apparently, the P3041 is more likely than the P4040 to be able to share a motherboard design with the P50xx:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=37074&forum=14#693507

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

Good thinking. I'm not sure they've even considered this yet.
Hopefully, Paul will have done a similar analysis or they check out that comment.
I'm convinced that you're right and that one board that could serve multiple CPUs at a variety of price ranges make the most sense.

> Good thinking.

...performed by olegil over at amigaworld.net :-)

> I'm not sure they've even considered this yet. Hopefully, Paul will
> have done a similar analysis or they check out that comment.

Looking at Varisys' VM400 product, which I've been referring to every so often here during the last 3.5 months, I'm sure that they have not only considered this but have even implemented this very idea already.
Whether they will use this idea for new A-Eon products can only be speculated of course, but it wouldn't make sense not to, especially considering that A-Eon has quasi-announced both a cheaper lower-end e500mc-based product and a more expensive higher-end e5500-based product to be released concurrently.

Update:

> APM86691 and APM86692 ("Black Mamba") got announced running at up to 1.4 GHz:
> http://investor.apm.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=78121&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1702760
> http://www.apm.com/products/embedded/multicore460/apm86692/

Not only was Green Mamba degraded from announced 1.5 GHz to 1.2 GHz, now also Black Mamba seems to have been degraded from announced 1.4 GHz to 1.3 GHz:

"In fiscal 2012, we introduced the APM8669x "Black Mamba", the highest performance member of our second generation of PACKETpro embedded processors. While PACKETpro is our second-generation of embedded processors, it is the first to feature offload acceleration of critical features at performance levels up to 1.3 GHz."
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/711065/000144530513001456/amcc0331201310-k.htm


Edit: Now also reflected on their new website:

"The Green Mamba offers all of the capabilities of the Black Mamba with the exceptions that it supports two GigE ports and a 1.2GHz max processor frequency. [...] The Black Mamba family consists of single and dual core processors that operate [...] to 1.3GHz."
http://www.apm.com/products/embedded/mamba-family/

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 28.10.2013 - 23:32 ]