Addendum:

> http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2015-04-00032-EN.html :-)
> There seems to be L3 cache support even, as opposed to OS4.

No support for the P5's L3 cache in OS4 yet:

http://blog.a-eon.biz/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Video.jpg

Addendum:

> I'm going to tell how I perceive this "quite a story" came along in
> chronological order: [...]

"the motherboard's development was almost scuppered when Apple purchased PA Semi. Shortly after the acquisition Apple announced the PA6T CPU would only be sold to preexisting military and industrial customers who already had orders in place and after that the line would be discontinued. [...] Paul Gentle wrote a personal message to Steve Jobs asking him to reconsider the decision not to supply the PA6T CPU for the Nemo development. He received a one word reply from Jobs which was short and to the point which simply said "Sorry". Gentle refused to give up and wrote an impassioned email to Jobs stressing the future success of Varisys, a small British development company, depended on the supply of the PA6T CPU for the Nemo development project. This time Jobs sent a more lengthy but still negative reply saying that if the future of Varisys depended on the supply of PA6T CPU for one project then their business model was broken. It looked like the end of the line for the Nemo motherboard. However, not too long afterwards the PA Semi CTO contacted Gentle to say that he had been given approval to supply the PA6T CPU for the project and the Nemo development was back on track."
http://blog.a-eon.biz/blog/?p=8898

Varisys' success depending on Nemo? Really?


Edit: similar text in Amiga Future magazine (center column)

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 04.01.2019 - 13:31 ]

Yes, Paul managed to secure the PA6T cpus and he was one of the few people with experience designing with this chip.
Since they were hard to obtain he suggested I look at Qorlq cpus, before the e5500 core was even announced.

So, how old do you think the idea behind Tabor was when it was first proposed?

[ Edited by Jim 18.05.2016 - 19:19 ]

Quote:

You might want to consider the recipient. Steve Jobs was not known to be a stranger to hyperbole either

Quote:

Hyperbole?
Looks more like a poorly informed poster.
I exchanged messages with Paul at Varisys long before I knew they had any connection with Aeon.
Varisys' future is in no way dependant on projects funded by Trevor.

Rather, Aeon's success depended on finding an engineering firm with experience in producing quality PPC motherboards.

> Looks more like a poorly informed poster.

Trevor Dickinson poorly informed about what Paul Gentle told Trevor Dickinson?

> Varisys' future is in no way dependant on projects funded by Trevor.

While likely true this clashes with what Trevor wrote Paul told him he had written to Steve Jobs.

> Aeon's success depended on finding an engineering firm with experience in
> producing quality PPC motherboards.

There are many. The key in finding Varisys was their experience with the PA6T specifically.

No all it does is confirming suspicions that Nema is just a revision of another P6T design that may very well been make or break for Varisys.

> it [...] is confirming suspicions that Nema is just a revision of another P6T design

Varisys' pre-Nemo PA6T design is a known product and Nemo surely can't be regarded as a revision of this, unless any design with a certain SoC is regarded as revision of a previous design with that same SoC, which wouldn't make sense.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7183&start=658
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=11&topic_id=7569&start=27
http://web.archive.org/web/20101225035735/http://www.varisys.co.uk/vm31.html

Quote:

Andreas, do you have any references for these statements?
Without contact Paul directly, which I would not do as it would be inappropriate to quiz him about statements a business associate made, I cannot verify them.

But the limited scope of A-eon's production does make them seem questionable and self aggrandizing.

Further, would Steve Jobs really intervene in order to allow Varisys to obtain the kind of purchase amounts that are usually covered by the order minimums of manufacturers like NXP?

The more I look at it, the more A-eon looks not like a vanity project, but a way of inflating Trevor's reputation.

Quote:

As I have said before, Nemo is the realization of specs created by Ack Systems and Amiga
Inc.

> Andreas, do you have any references for these statements?

Nothing beyond Trevor's claims from his blog article. Do you think his reproduction of what Paul Gentle told him is incorrect?

> the limited scope of A-eon's production does make them seem questionable and
> self aggrandizing.

Yes, that's what they appear as. But unless they are completely true, we don't know who told the untruth, Trevor in his blog, Paul in his talk with Trevor, or Paul in his letters to Jobs.

> would Steve Jobs really intervene in order to allow Varisys to obtain the
> kind of purchase amounts that are usually covered by the order minimums
> of manufacturers like NXP?

Trevor doesn't state Jobs' intervention as fact, and neither does he claim Paul stated it as fact. It's an assumption and stated as that.

Quote:

Thanks for the response.
I don't want to appear to be attacking Trevor.
He could be mistaken about his role as company savior, and Paul may very well have said that to him.
It is a nice chunk of business when you consider what Trevor has paid Varisys (and A-eon's apparent margins in general).
But I don't know that it is enough to afford to pay salaries to several employees.

Personally, I would think that the real salvation of Varisys would have come in their buy out.

As to sourcing the PA6T cpus, as a previous customer, Paul might have been able to secure these on his own (without the magical intervention of Jobs).

Trevor HAS paid Varisys for the development of three motherboard.
And paid well.

I am don't want to knock the guy (and would even lay the decision to use the P1022 at Paul's feet - it was the type of cpu he stated his preference for over the PA6T).
Then again, that preference probably helped cinch the decision to use the P5020 and P5040 on X5000 motherboards.

BTW - Full apologies to everyone (especially André) for my consistent inability to always be soft spoken, polite, and politically correct.
In the businesses I have been in, being able to 'cut through it' has often been more valuable than considerations about bruised feelings.

[ Edited by Jim 19.05.2016 - 18:53 ]

>>> it [...] is confirming suspicions that Nema is just a revision of
>>> another P6T design

>> Varisys' pre-Nemo PA6T design is a known product and Nemo surely can't
>> be regarded as a revision of this

> Nemo is the realization of specs created by Ack Systems and Amiga Inc.

As you know, a mere feature list is tremendously far from a working board design. Furthermore, a direct comparison between real Nemo features and ACK's published feature list shows these differences:

- CPU GHz: 1.8 vs. 2.0
- PEG: 2 (1x16 or 2x8) vs. 1 (x16)
- PCIe: 2x1 vs. 1x2+1x1
- PCI: 2 vs. 1
- GbE: 1 vs. 2
- USB2: 10 vs. 6
- PATA: 1 vs. none
- CF: 1 vs. none
- I/O: SB600 southbridge vs. dedicated chips for SATA2 and USB2
- custom CPU+I/O: Xena+Xorro vs. none
- serial/debug: 2xRS232+1xJTAG vs. 2xUART
- Firmware: CFE vs. U-Boot

The only feature that is exactly the same is the RAM slots.

Quote:

And the type of processor (except for its precise speed).
And that was part of what lead me to contact Paul.

So...I give full credit to Trevor for digging up exactly the right company for the job.

And the SB600 came as no surprise to either of us as we had already been discussing its potential use with the MPC8640/8641 (by that I mean US, not the entire forum).

How many years has this been, btw?

> I don't know that it is enough to afford to pay salaries to several employees.

It's not necessarily been paid for full-time working hours.

> As to sourcing the PA6T cpus, as a previous customer, Paul might have been
> able to secure these on his own

Yes, that's what's strange about Trevor's (or Paul's, if correctly reported by Trevor) story. Varisys had purchased PA6T chips before, so should have been eligible for Apple's "final call".

> Trevor HAS paid Varisys for the development of three motherboard.

It's even four: Nemo, mATX Cyrus, ATX Cyrus+, Tabor.

> I [...] would even lay the decision to use the P1022 at Paul's feet - it
> was the type of cpu he stated his preference for over the PA6T

Availability and compatibility aside, 1.2 GHz e500v2 doesn't seem like proper replacement for 1.8 GHz PA6T.

> that preference probably helped cinch the decision to use the
> P5020 and P5040 on X5000 motherboards.

That wasn't a question of preference. In 2012/2013, there simply was no other sensible CPU choice to make for a new, high-performance (in PPC terms, that is) desktop PPC board than QorIQ P5. (I've never seen any PPC476FP-based SoC for sale on the respective manufacturer's website or at semiconductor distributors, so minimum purchase quantity would likely have been too high for A-Eon anyway.)

> I give full credit to Trevor for digging up exactly the right company for the job.

They were recommended to A-Eon by P.A.Semi, so half credit should suffice ;-)

> the SB600 came as no surprise to either of us as we had already been discussing
> its potential use with the MPC8640/8641 (by that I mean US, not the entire forum).

Others were earlier:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4306&forum=11&start=7
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6124&forum=32&start=12

:-)

> How many years has this been, btw?

About 6, I guess.

>> I don't know that it is enough to afford to pay salaries to several employees.

>It's not necessarily been paid for full-time working hours.

True enough. After all, condider the Friedens arrangement with Hyperion.

>> Trevor HAS paid Varisys for the development of three motherboard.

>It's even four: Nemo, mATX Cyrus, ATX Cyrus+, Tabor

Also the X3500 board, and any design explorations that were not pursued.

>>I [...] would even lay the decision to use the P1022 at Paul's feet - it
>> was the type of cpu he stated his preference for over the PA6T

>Availability and compatibility aside, 1.2 GHz e500v2 doesn't seem like proper replacement for 1.8 GHz PA6T.

I got the impression that Paul's preference was one related to pricing, availability, and the end cost of the product.
And he didn't specifically mention the e500v2 core, just the Qorlq line.



[ Edited by Jim 20.05.2016 - 10:12 ]

>>that preference probably helped cinch the decision to use the
>>P5020 and P5040 on X5000 motherboards.

>That wasn't a question of preference. In 2012/2013, there simply was no other sensible CPU choice to make for a new, high-performance (in PPC terms, that is) desktop PPC board than QorIQ P5. (I've never seen any PPC476FP-based SoC for sale on the respective manufacturer's website or at semiconductor distributors, so minimum purchase quantity would likely have been too high for A-Eon anyway.)

Yes IBM products are unobtainable useless you are a "qualified" buyer.
IBM's marketing methods must be modeled after the Stanley brothers.

There were no Freescale cpus at the time that could match the PA6T (P5s were not available at the time).

And Applied Micro's announced developments often never saw the light of day, or the products capabilities were scaled down.


As to the SB600, that would be my hubris showing.
I should not have underestimated the knowledgeably of some my fellow posters.
At the time, I knew the SB600 was a functional equivalent of the ULi Southbridge used in Freescale evaluation designs.
It had less pins, so there was more multiplexing of pin inputs and outputs to produce the same connectivity.
As such, it wasn't a direct swap, requiring some re-engineering.
But it was the only real logical choice (as the SB450 was not really competitive with ULi components or the later SB600).

So as a natural choice, my default to it was not that original.



[ Edited by Jim 20.05.2016 - 11:10 ]

> Also the X3500 board

That was supposed to be the same board as the one for the X5000.

> he didn't specifically mention the e500v2 core, just the Qorlq line.

Okay, I mistook what you wrote for meaning he recommended the QorIQ P1 line (which only comes with e500v2) as PA6T replacement. Back then, QorIQ line consisted of P1, P2 and P4, i.e. e500v2 and e500mc. I guess he had the e500mc-based P4 in mind in terms of PA6T replacement.

>> I've never seen any PPC476FP-based SoC for sale on the respective manufacturer's
>> website or at semiconductor distributors

> Yes IBM products are unobtainable useless you are a "qualified" buyer.

I was more referring to LSI than IBM.

>> In 2012/2013, there simply was no other sensible CPU choice to make for a new,
>> high-performance (in PPC terms, that is) desktop PPC board than QorIQ P5.

> There were no Freescale cpus at the time that could match the PA6T
> (P5s were not available at the time).

Not in 2010 when Paul Gentle recommended QorIQ over PA6T, yes, but they were in 2012/2013 when the Cyrus specs were conceived. I won't back away from my opinion that even without Paul's recommendation, A-Eon would have decided for the P5 in 2012/2013, simply because there was no feasible alternative for high-performance (in PPC terms, that is) desktop PPC.

>A-Eon would have decided for the P5 in 2012/2013

What else would you have for a high end PPC system then?
Of course you are right.

And it was the core everyone was interested in at that point.

I still find Tabor confusing.
Edit - Sorry anout that last comment.
I let myself drift into general commentary on A-eon boards.

[ Edited by Jim 21.05.2016 - 12:16 ]

Quote:

I think you meant to write Paul Gentle recommended PA6T over QorIQ, not the other way around, in 2010.

It is not often that you make any posting mistakes, so I will take this rare opportunity to point out this slip up, in return for the many times you have corrected my mistakes in the past. (I have made very many)

[ Edited by amigadave 24.05.2016 - 20:21 ]

>> in 2010 when Paul Gentle recommended QorIQ over PA6T

> I think you meant to write Paul Gentle recommended PA6T over QorIQ,
> not the other way around, in 2010.

Doesn't "recommend A over B" mean "recommend A instead of B", similar to how "prefer" would be used ("prefer A over B" or "prefer A to B")?

Jim in April 2010:
"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."

Jim in July 2010:
"Recently when I discussed PPC based systems with the owner of Varisys (the designers of the X1000 motherboard) I got this response: "In terms of PPC we are thinking QorIQ here for higher end designs.""

amigadave in March 2013:
"I wonder why the people responsible for making the design decisions for the final X1000 motherboard design ignored Paul's advice to stay away from the PA6T and look at using one of the QorIQ chips instead?"

The majority of my posts are laced with opinion and conjecture.
But these comments our fabulous indexer has repeated are not some of those.
Paul specifically recommended the Qorlq line several years ago and as things have developed it still is a good recommendation.

edit - I do not normally quote email messages, but to clarify I want to post the second line from that old message.

"Hi Jim,

In terms of PPC we are thinking QorIQ here for higher end designs.

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=P4040..."

So, the P4040 with its e500mc cores is what was originally referenced.
Yes, it is not as powerful as a PA6T.
But look how the Qorlq line has expanded.

And right now NXP continues to license technology that would work well with future PPC Qorlq cpus (but will probably be used on their ARM cpus).

Postscript - I was surprised to find that I still had those.

So...it is my assumption that Trevor had a specific cpu (PA6T) in mind and went looking for a design firm with experience with that cpu.
I don't think it was Paul's recommendation.

[ Edited by Jim 25.05.2016 - 20:11 ]

>> I guess he had the e500mc-based P4 in mind in terms of PA6T replacement.

> the P4040 with its e500mc cores is what was originally referenced.

Thanks for confirmation.

> it is my assumption that Trevor had a specific cpu (PA6T) in mind and went
> looking for a design firm with experience with that cpu.

No need to assume when that's what Trevor has been telling all along. As said, Varisys were recommended to A-Eon by P.A.Semi according to Trevor.

> I don't think it was Paul's recommendation.

Yes, according to Trevor, the PA6T was what the OS4 developers wanted. Paul's recommendation was the addition of the xCORE stuff.