Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
From: Northern Calif...
Quote:
Andreas_Wolf wrote:
Trevor said at AmiWest 2015 that Tabor development started before the fully compatible QorIQ T1 became available (else they would have opted for it). Sample availability of the T1 was announced for first half of 2013, which means start of Tabor development including choice of QorIQ P1 happened before the Applied Micro statement was published (even considering a potential delay of T1 sample availability by half a year).
Other than lack of experience with Applied Micro chips and a slightly higher price (but still cheaper than e500mc-based and also available back then P204x), I see no reason why A-Eon and Varisys couldn't have used a fully compatible PacketPro/APM86x9x/Mamba/PPC465 chip from Applied Micro instead of the Freescale QorIQ P1022/e500v2. Chips from the last Power Architecture generation from Applied Micro can still be purchased in volume on the free market, and this won't change in the midterm.
It may be that the Varisys people advising Trevor were not able to get early samples of the QorIQ T series chips, where perhaps other board manufacturers could get the early samples on the dates mentioned for their earliest availability. Trevor seemed pretty clear that no matter what dates the T series of chips were announced, or samples released, the actuality of getting samples was a different matter, and they were not available for the design of the Tabor board. I would not be surprised to find out that the design process for the Tabor board was started more than 2, or 2.5 years ago.
I can't speak about any of the rest of the discussion regarding other possible choices at the same time the P1022 was chosen, but like I wrote earlier, it is all water under the bridge now as a commitment to purchase the 1,000 CPU's has been made, so they will have to make the best of that choice to recoup the purchase and design of the Tabor boards.
I think way too much discussion and speculation has been written about the board already, and that users should wait for it to be released before passing judgement on the final product. This really confirms why the MorphOS Dev. Team is so smart about not releasing any information about what they are doing until it is almost finished and ready for users to consume.
MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
