Recently saw this in the news:
ARM-powered Touch Book with the removable screen
* 9.4" x 7" x 1.4" for 2 lbs (with keyboard)
* ARM Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip
* 1024x600 8.9'' screen
* Storage: 8GB micro SD card
* Wifi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth
* 3-dimensional accelerometer
* Speakers, micro and headphone
* 6 USB 2.0 (3 internal, 2 external, 1 mini)
* 10h to 15 hours of battery life

Imho, looks pretty cool. Nice morph-able net-book-design.
And, imho, it will be much more cooler with morph-OS on board

Very interesting design... Makes every other netbook look boring. Have in mind that, given all these new ARM-based little computers are almost the same, having an edge on desing, like this, can make you stand out in the crowd.
If I take Pegatron/frescale product now, and put it aside this, it pales in comparison.

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Too bad that the necessary PPC emulator running on the onboard ARM cpu would morph the performance of MorphOS way too low.

I don't see why MorphOS can't run on ARM...

There is a point where native development takes over. Running an m68k emulator - well, this has been laughed at by many people for being an absolutely pointless technology in this day and age. Trying to stick with PowerPC - I don't see anyone making PowerPC systems anymore.

Since the vast majority of exciting apps on MorphOS seem to be open-source, SDL ports or at least native PowerPC compiles, there's no reason it can't be moved away from PowerPC. It may clean up the API to throw away the m68k legacies, it would certainly clean up the calling conventions and weird little hacks to try and keep m68k apps happy.

With appropriate documentation for the kernel and libraries available somewhere (someone break out TeX :) it could do quite well as an alternative, open-development system with more affordable licensing and a distinct focus on multimedia and gaming etc.

@Neko

What I have always liked about the PPC is the way it scales from "G2"/ARM class CPU performance up to quite decent performance with the G4/e600 cores. But AFAIK the ARM architecture doesn't offer anything with real muscles?

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 06.07.2011 - 19:50 ]

> CherryPal and Acube do

...and Fixstars.

If MorphOS goes ARM and does not run m68k-apps anymore, I might as well use AROS... it would make my hobby 150 euro cheaper, for doing more or less the same.

So in other words I'm not going to use it if does not have "Trance for ARM" or whatever emulates the 68k in MorphOS unless it has a very decent uae port with a JIT.

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Lovely it would be. But perhaps it's no easy task.

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Matt, it looks like you are bashing the kind of things that now get in your new bussiness direction.
You were an strong advocate of PowerPC technology just a couple of months ago (if not less). Now, you publicly disregard it. I think this is a clear case of low professionalism... But, if I think it better, it looks like HIGH professionalism, precisely.
Anyway, that's how business goes. But I feel PowerPC is a good technology, only badly handled by its very owners...
Hey! Just like the Amiga was!

Have you counted the number of times you've heard "please make a 8610 computer"? Well, 99% of them were because of YOUR own comments!
Now, this technology is completely forgotten. It might be very good but, if its no longer developed, it could be "300% better" (it isn't) than any existing techology today, but will be completely uninteresting in just some months.

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This is an interesting point. I'm sure that the Team has thought about it before. Such a crowd of geniuses think a lot! I've asked it already many times, and didn't get a satisfactory answer: Why, technically, does MorphOS have to be PowerPC?

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Like I said before, a really distinct operating system. I'd like to see how much flavour does PowerPC make in MorphOS recipe.

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Personally, I wouldn't advocate a *migration* at this point (I'm still looking forward to the PPC Mac Mini port ) but perhaps a *fork*?

An eventual ARM fork would of course have to have all applications natively (re)compiled for that architecture (which will result in a similar app count as AROS initially), and because of that it wouldn't be the same for an "Amiga nerd" as the current MorphOS *PPC* is, but it could perhaps prove to become a way forward, *post PPC*...?

(And BTW, please keep various strange UAE discussions out )

I have MorphOS because it's amigacompatible ... most of us, if not all have it because of that.

I don't mind the fact that MorphOS migrates to another architecture, but 68k compatibility is half the fun for me, so I would find it disappointing when it's gone.

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I think everyone here feels pretty much the same as you about that (including myself), and that's why I said *fork*!

That is a sweet netbook. You can even stick in to your fridge . . .

Unfortunately it doesn't come with a cool OS . .

But I still think its

Eeeh.. If MorphOS should abandon PowerPC
for anything it should be x86!

Porting it to another dead-end architecture
would just prolong its misery..

MorphOS needs high volume, and ARM won't
help you with that. Just because it's ported so
some random ARM netbook, doesn't make it
run on mobile phones!

Cellular phones require expensive secret GSM/UMTS/
whatever technology which the MorphOS Team will
never get their hands on..

Stick with PowerPC or port it to x86 if you want
it to have a chance in future. Everything else is
IMO completely pointless. Really.

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I was thinking a MorphOS port to ARM *could* have some point, because ARM runs in beg endian mode, too. This would help to integrate a 68k emulation just like under ppc MorphOS. But as it seems the big endian mode of the ARM is not perfect (but I haven't read too much about that). The "native mode" of ARM is little endian.
And if ARM doesn't offer the full benefit of the big endianess, then I do not see much of a point in porting MorphOS to ARM, *then* a port to x86 would make pretty much more sense (x86 will continue to be the main cpu architecture for teh foreseeable time).
Well, next is the Mac mini port. We'll see what comes afterwards.

Addition to my earlier post why a MrphOS port to ARM *could* still make some sense.
As it seems ARM is entereing the netbook market this year. For ARM there is virtually only Linux available. And as we all more or less know Linux suxx (well, some ppl may disagree, but we all may agree that many ppl think that Linux suxx some serious donkey balls). Those ppl may be in some demand of another OS. Windows will proabalbly enter the ARM netbook market, too (once there is a serious market). but w/o the advantage to have all those x86 apps around. So, the biggest benfit of Windows will be void there.
Thus, on this "new" architecture there might be a relatively high share of ppl who may be open for an alternative OS. Question would be: Would they get satisfied by a MorphOS ARM? I am undecided. I think MorphOS is better than many ppl say, but it surely has its weaknesses.
If I would be a gambler I'd probably propagate a fork to ARM. But lucky me, I am not the one to decide .

@ Zylesea

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More importantly, you are not one of the developers who would have to develop and maintain all these forks

On a more serious note, it does not take a psychic to predict that most desktop computers will be sold with more than 4GB of system memory in the not-too-distant future. If I had my own OS and anticipated a labor-intense and time-consuming port to a different processor architecture, 32BIT ARM chips would seem like a rather backwards choice to me.

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Well, the Amiga has been moving backward since a decade anyway... The contrary would be surprising...

The OS is also moving backward, with compatibility (ie: past) in mind, not with the future in mind. In that case 32BIT ARM seems like a perfectly good choice... And Amiga applications don't need that much RAM anyway, right ?

> as it seems the big endian mode of the ARM is not perfect (but I
> haven't read too much about that).

Search for "true big endian" (as opposed to just "big endian") and "true little endian" (as opposed to just "little endian").

@ Andreas Wolf

Yes, I think i got it now. ARM chips are able to load and process big endian data, while addressing und such stuff are always little endian. I gues it is pretty useless for MorphOS (in the regard to yield a transparent 68k emu as with ppc).
We're on ppc, we're doomed. Well, doomed, but havig fun, I'd say

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That's the spirit!

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IMHO x86 makes sense in a desktop context, but MorphOS can't compete on the desktop market; the OS lacks many important features, and on top of that it lacks 100% of the applications.

MorphOS is a low footprint, extremely lean OS that can really do magic to the user experience on cheap, low performance hardware. This is where MorphOS can shine, this is where it can make sense. This is the strengths one could capitalize on!

One of the things I like with PPC architecture is that it scales from very low performance SoC designs up to quite decent performance "desktop" CPU's. The same MorphOS can happily run on a $15 "G2" CPU @ 400MHz as well as a Pegasos2 or Mac G4 @ 1.5GHz. We "Amiga Nerds" likes the *power*, since we are using MorphOS as a desktop OS, while the low power chips (like the 5121e) is what could make sense for MorphOS in a commercial context. The PPC offers it all.

However, it looks like the future of PPC isn't too bright anymore, so eventually MorphOS will have to jump somewhere else. Unfortunately, the ARM doesn't scale as high, and the x86 doesn't scale as low. Commercially, I can see how MorphOS potentially could make sense on the ARM architecture, but ARM driven netbooks and other kind of devices may not be what a MorphOS *desktop* user is dreaming about, because the lack of raw power? The x86 offers the power but it doesn't fit in the ARM marketplace, and commercially I can't see how MorphOS could possibly compete on the desktop market.

So if MorphOS would jump to a different architecture, and if the ambitions are above forever being merely a hobby project, then I would vote for ARM.

Well, what if a MorphOS ARM fork would simply cut the ties to the 68k legacy altogether and start with a clean slate? Could you really reach a good enough emulation speed on a chip with such low performance anyway?

BTW (speaking of restarting with clean slates), Anubis is going ARM:

http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2009/03/anubis-on-aura-on-arm.html

> Anubis is going ARM

Yes, already known for 1.5 months:

"That same package is ready for the i.MX515 [...] The Anubis Dev team also wants to develop their system for this platform."
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2009/02/amigaos-morphs-to-pegasos.html

"Michal Schultz [sic!] has proposed to port [...] Anubus [sic!] to our new i.MX515 based hardware"
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2009/02/communities-build-volume.html

http://projects.powerdeveloper.org/project/imx515/736

:-)