Takemehomegrandma:
The Atom-devices are based on a Netbook-standard
set by Intel. Via is trying to get their out.

You could use any of the millions of x86 Netbooks
produced each month.

Could you please give a few examples of other uses
than Netbook where MorphOS and ARM would fit?

No, the ARM is not enough for high-def media players..

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The i.MX515 ARM-devices are based on a "Netbook-standard" (let's call it "reference design" instead, for that is what it is) already set by Freescale.

Millions of ARM netbooks will be produced, I see no reason to doubt that. The 2009 holiday shopping season is the target, and I guess we will see after that, like towards spring 2010. AFAIK, the Atom netbooks doesn't compare in cost/profit margins, power consumption, etc (but obviously has the power of Windows). And one other thing, the "netbook boom" has yet to come (if it ever does, many predicted the boom to take place a year ago already, but the *boom* hasn't really happened yet).

Other devices would be LCD/Plasma TV's (720p is, and will be, the DTV HDTV standard of importance), PVR's, STB's, handheld devices (PDA's, phones, etc), In Shop Displays, Info Kiosks, On train/in flight entertainment, or a fuckload of other consumer electronics devices where ARM is used. I mean, give me a TV with a HDD, USB, Ethernet (and optionally WiFi and Bluetooth) and *MorphOS* and I would die with excitement. Think of the possibilities compared to the locked down to a bare minimum "OS's" in these devices now. And I look at all these kind of devices and I ask - Where is the x86?

I actually agree with Matt above, and further suggest that there is a strong motivation for a migration to ARM, as PowerPC is fading into a dead end and ARM is ascendent.

The irony of course being that this is the first time I'd turned on my G3 in months to say this. And of course Neko is going to turn around, insult me, and we get back to our usual routine.

@ironfist

Actually, you're wrong on a few levels.

1) VIA is in the process of releasing their second-generation netbook reference. VIA's cloudbook reference is one of the oldest netbook platforms out there, pre-dating the Atom based designs.

2) ARMs are used in high-def media setups already, so you are misplaced there. Please refer to the Marvell and TI offerings, and the upcoming nVidia designs, off the top of my head. I believe others are working on it as well.

3) Commodity development boards are already available. I've purchased a Beagleboard myself for some IO experimentation. When you can get a 1Ghz ARM platform for $100, the times, they are a changing.

|||

[ Edited by Velcro_SP 06.07.2011 - 19:53 ]

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I don't think anyone is suggesting being tied to a Genesi product, for-se, but that migration from the PowerPC to ARM platform would bring far more benefits than drawbacks. Genesi does not come close to offering even a fraction of the ARM systems on the market. You have development boards from Marvell, Samsung, Freescale, TI, all available to work from. Look at the Beagleboard sometime, an embedded joy for $150.

My concern with PPC remains the lack of vendors for key components, and the reliability of them. While the CherryPal looks good, agreed (and I might buy one myself anyways) what happens beyond that? The PPC based Macs are aging, the PPC amigas even moreso. There is not a huge development pool of vendors to supply us with the necessary hardware, and those that do often times lack the leveredge to make full use of what they have. ARM does not have any of these problems, and the only real problem comes one of perception and upper scalability, only coming in speeds of up to 2Ghz. But, considering we're limited to G3 and G4 era PPC's anyways, there is no loss there.

> ARM does not have any of these problems, and the only real problem
> comes one of perception and upper scalability, only coming in
> speeds of up to 2Ghz.

ARM up to 2 GHz? Where? I see Marvell currently at 1.2 GHz and Qualcomm (not released yet) at 1.5 GHz. (*)

> considering we're limited to G3 and G4 era PPC's anyways, there is
> no loss there.

G4 currently scales up to 1.7 GHz (MPC7448).


Edit:
(*) Also Intel are currently at 1.2 GHz regarding their ARM processors.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf on 2009/3/23 4:10 ]

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Just looking at the roadmap. The fastest ones I've seen in person have been Marvell's 1.2Ghz dual core model (78200). But, consider for a moment, the prototyping kit for the 1Ghz Marvell is $99, and think of the options from there.

2Ghz ARMs will be shipping in the next year and a half, while G4's have stalled, same speed now as they were years ago. I just am tired of the dead ends, the bickering, the halted starts. When we are looking at the 7448, a chip now 4 years old, and that is the best we can come up with, we are in trouble.

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I understand that MOS should not be tied to a dead end CPU and please don't take what I am about to say in the wrong way or context, but one of the things I would hope the MorphOS community would try to avoid is the short life cycle that is perpetuated in the Windows world where you are expected to upgrade your computer every 1-1/2 to 2 years, or less, just because there is a faster CPU available, not because you need it to do what you normally use your computer for. With the increased efficiency of MorphOS we will always be able to do more with less computer resources, just as the Amiga did for years, and as such I would hope that our life cycle would be greater. Maybe 3 to 5 years between having to upgrade machines.

Just a rambling thought, for what it is worth.

[ Edited by amigadave on 2009/3/19 18:08 ]

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I will agree here. Products are rushed, for little gain in too many cases. Part of me is fustrated because PowerPC is a dead end, with the only two producers already migrating their focus away from it into other ventures. And where will that leave us in 5 years, in 10 years? When will we realize that none of these big companies care about our needs? I have been a strong proponent for siezing control, not just of our OS, as MorphOS has done by freeing us from the Amiga, Inc foolishness, but of the rest of the system. While initially we use someone elses ARM technology, the vision should be for our own license, so if and when we have vendor issues, we go to another fab without much interruption. Take control of our product, and we take control of our market. Vertical integration to protect us from the outside forces, and to deliver the value that I know we can.

> PowerPC is a dead end, with the only two producers already migrating
> their focus away from it into other ventures.

That's not true, for none of the "only two producers" IBM (Cell, upcoming PPC476 and PPC A2), Freescale (e200, e300, e500 (esp. upcoming QorIQ)) and AMCC (PPC460, hopefully upcoming Titan (not cancelled yet)).

There is a certain cool factor with a netbook, but I really don't see a positive outcome in uprooting the small community we have in forcing a complete change in direction. It might be something to consider on a long term road map.

If MorphOS were available and running on Mac Minis right now, I'd purchase one (and a new license) just for the speed boost. (My Peg 1 works well for most tasks, but there are occasions where I wish it were faster.)

I think a good move (short term) would be to assemble a team of people together to promote a mac mini friendly MorphOS realease by spreading the "good word" on Mac sites and generate possible interest in the people who have not switched to faster machines. That could possibly increase our user base and also possibly increase our pool of developers. (When such a release happens.)

If an architecture move didn't include losing what we do have for software right now it wouldn't be such a big deal. Starting from scratch with what little resources we have to rebuild it just seems like a bad idea.

Quote:

This is one of the best things I've heard lately. MorphOS is already an independent product, self contained, call it what you like. Our hardware dependency is a shame, and it should be avoided.
What should MorphOS Team do? Build a hardware team (yea, easy!). And, if that route is taken, imagine what would be easier: Building a PowerPC based computer, with all the provider problems we all know, or go the ARM route, with a much broader base of suppliers, and best of all, licencing schemes: We could even have our "own" CPU. And, as "Downix" says, if we had problems with our CPU supplier, we could switch no another one with little drama.
Of course, the CPU is only part of the computer, but the key here is that building your own ARM based computer is indeed a possibility.
And I like PowerPC a lot. But also realize that:

1.- There are clever indeed chips out there that are not PowerPC.
2.- Huge power from x86 doesn't make sense in MorphOS.
3.- ARM has very big momentum now.
4.- It's about time to give freescale the answer they deserve: Quit.
5.- Control of our destiny. Also in hardware, as in software, the Team already has.

By the way, "Downix", are you Nathaniel Downes, formerly related to Genesi? Your first words about Matt Sealey are interesting...

I have written this before, but I will repeat it again. What we need more than new hardware, or a switch to a different CPU/platform is more users and developers and applications in this tiny community of MorphOS users. I think the quickest route to that goal is to take advantage of as many PPC Mac models as the team can quickly get MorphOS3.x working on. Then hopefully there will be more users and more new programmers creating content and applications for MorphOS and if the team will accept new members to develop MorphOS itself, then maybe they will be able to find those extra coders to help port MorphOS to a different architecture faster. This will also make it more cost effective to sell any new hardware that may eventually get created for MorphOS as a bigger user base means more potential buyers will want to upgrade to the new hardware.

Maybe I am wrong about the size of the MorphOS user base, but it seems to be very small to me. I am trying to learn more programming so I can contribute by helping others work on new programs, porting existing programs from other OSes, or creating new programs myself.

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For which market? There is virtually none, not even if multiplied by 10 or 50. At least none that would justify or sustain production of your own silicon. There is much, much momentum inside the processor market. Powerful processors are mostly driven today by Intel, Intel and again Intel. *They* dominate the market and they will continue to do so. So, *if* breaking with a big endian processor and leaving the niche under this nice stone called ppc, then it seems wise to me to go the most popular way. the way with the most benefit.
x86 based computers are everywhere and will continue to be everywhere (at least for a long, long time). You don't get yourself in some weird dependency. Support x86 and you will never ever (next 50 years at least) again have a hardware shortage.
ARM will dominate the mobile phone other 32 bit emebedded market, but I don't want MorphOS neitehr on my mobile nor on my navigation device or the dishwasher (well, that one probably conatins a 8051, but I guess it is clear what is meant).
Anyway, one step after another. First lets get the Mac Mini port, and then we will see what comes next. But I doubt neither x86 nor ARM will be a good option for MorphOS. Both architectures will yield to a binary incompatible fork from MorphOS PPC. If ARM would fully support big endian mode, I'd have voted for ARM. But since it is de facto little endian I don't see much benefit in ARM over x86.
But, okay, if breaking with binary compatibility anyway and do the required changes in MorphOS it would be wise to change the OS to maximum portability anyway. Then it could easily support ARM and x86. but this would be some kind of different OS (because it would be stupid then not to take teh oppartunity to change some annoying internals of MorphOS which are still in there for legacy reasons). Then you could straightly turn to Anubis (which I think is an interesting attempt with a good approach).

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The one and only.

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ARM does support Big Endian, so I am quite perplexed by your comments there. Only the XScale model does not. That eliminates 1 series out of dozens. And nobody is proposing that we get silicon, at least, not at this time. But having the option, should it present itself, would be a worthly long term goal.

But porting to the PPC MacMini, you realize that you are insisting on focusing all effort on a machine that was discontinued over 3 years ago? The existing models are aging, and will be that much older when we are ready for it. That is my concern. I would note, I own a PPC Mac myself that would likely be able to run MorphOS with a MacMini port, so I would directly benefit from the effort, and I'm the one saying it is not the wisest investment in time and energy at this stage in the game. Our market is too small to gamble and waste energy on dead ends.

> It's about time to give freescale the answer they deserve: Quit.

You mean refusing to support Freescale's ARM (i.MX)?

> "Downix", are you Nathaniel Downes, formerly related to Genesi?

http://www.amiga.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=24205&forum=21#forumpost308291
http://www.amiga.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=24205&forum=21#forumpost308434

;-)

@ downix

Indeed, now I am quite confused. I read somewhere that ARM's big endian mode would basically just be the possibility to load big endian data correctly (i.e. e.g. word order is correct), but addresses themselves, representation of internal states and counters would be in little endian schem. Now I read the "programmer's model for Big_Endian ARM" from arm.com and from that document I understand it that way again, I originally thought it would be.
ARM >= ARM6 can be operated in true big endian mode. But as said, I *am* confused now.
My take on it is as follows:
What would happen if a 68k app running on a hypthetical MorphOS ARM with transparent 68k emulation would try to access, say, 0x00000004? Would it get a pointer to exec base or would it get elsewhere? If it gets some other than the exec base pointer, then I guess a 68k (or ppc) emulation is in some serious trouble. If it works, fine, then there is no endianness problem. But I was not able to disentangle this problem myself. I cannot predict the behaviour of ARM from the docs I read (I definitely don't claim to have fully understood what I read!!).
If you or someone else can enlighten me in this case, that would be appreciated very much.

> 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.

Don't jump to conclusions about ARM's endianess(es) ;-) I just wanted to point out that there's a difference between just "endianess" and "true endianess".
Given the existence of a (non-official) big-endian ARM (ARMeb) port of Debian there must be true bi-endian ARMs able to operate in true big-endian mode.

Hint: Don't believe everything Neko is telling. He is not only wrong about ARM generally being non-true big-endian but also about Power Architecture generally being non-true little-endian.

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The way to look at it is this way: ARM replaced multiple BE architectures in the past, from the 6502 to the 68k itself, in multiple machines, all with minimal performance impact. See the Palm for prime example. Palm's OS is, frankly, even simpler than MorphOS or the Amigas OS, yet it did the transistion pretty smoothly, wouldn't you agree, and during a period with far weaker CPU's than we have today.

And what you you mean Power being non-true little-endian? **eyes his OS/2 for PPC CD, pure LE PPC baby!**

> what you you mean Power being non-true little-endian?

Misunderstanding? It's definately not me meaning this. Quite to the contrary. Read Neko's comments here and here. This is what I and obviously Zylesea/[ujb] refered to.

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I know, I was trying to join in the comments.

@r1vver

I don't think the team has plans to port to ARM anytime soon.

MorphOS on ARM would require a decent 68k emulator and llvm support to make any sense.

ARM cpus are pretty weak compared to PPC and despiting the fact that PPC desktop market is dying I don't see ARM desktop market flourishing (I don't need to run MorphOS on my Cellphone or my clock).

Even if switching to other cpu architecture was an easy thing and the m68k emulator was already available it would cause a lot of confussion to the users. Some kind of LLVM abstraction would be desirable before jumping to other cpu architecture.

The number of MorphOS/amigaOS users is pretty pathethic, do you really expect developers compiling versions for each MorphOS flavour? I have seen what happened with AROS-PPC/AROS-x86_64/AROS-x86/OS4/MorphOS/OS3 and I don't see many developers creating binaries for so many architectures.

Even if ARM sounds cool x86 machines make much more sense for desktop usage, users can get x86 based hardware easily.

If MorphOS left PPC it would have to jump to the x86 ship. But PPC ship still floats

I don't care if G4 Mac Minis stopped being sold 3 years ago as it's a kickass machine -in amigaos terms- that will run rings -in terms of speed- around any ARM machine for at least 3 years. It has been produced in millions of units and it's cheap. Pegasos/Efika are much more expensive compared to Mac Mini.

The only reason we stick to PPC is because MorphOS runs on it. We would prefer that our hardware was cheaper and easily available. It's a pity MorphOS didn't run on Mac Mini when it was released but it's the most affordable machine we can get ATM. MorphOS on Mac Mini can play 1080p videos so I think it's decent ATM.

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ARM doesn't support Big Endian in anything but a bullet-point feature sense.

The same is true of PowerPC processors which supposedly support Little Endian operation.

The basic promise made in supporting these features is that it reorders bus transactions so they fit the right data format - memory is laid out in Big Endian, but when you load it into a register, it is flipped automatically and in the register on your Little Endian processor, you have Little Endian data.

On PowerPC, you can fudge this manually without changing modes at all if you know the data format ahead of time (stwbrx, lwbrx). I'm not sure what the equivalent is on ARM.. maybe it doesn't have it, maybe it does.

Instruction opcodes are still Little Endian in ARM whatever mode it's in. Internal registers and devices are all Little Endian. All that changes is how it routes data from memory into the cache and then the register. It is a limited subset.

The SOLE reason for these features is because both ARM and PowerPC targets can and do run as device targets (e.g. on a PCI bus with another host processor doing the control) and they need to be able to interoperate with those buses. It does not magically turn your system into a Other Endian chip, it just aids interoperability - the same way that running Samba 4 on a Linux box does not mean you have a Windows 2008 Domain Controller, it just means you have a subset of the functionality which look for all intents and purposes like you do (you are basically not running Windows, so don't expect every feature of Windows!)

However absolutely NONE of this is relevant to MorphOS. MorphOS is for all practicality endian-independent - the only reason it gets thorny is trying to mimic PowerPC and/or m68k operation. So, the solution is.. drop those things in the trash where they belong. MorphOS has plenty of developer support and a huge amount of open-source software out there that can simply be recompiled. AROS is proof positive of this - it runs on x86 AND PowerPC, and it certainly does not run the PPC in little endian mode.

Do many people really still want to run 15 year old software from an A1200? Would they buy a Netbook and want this feature?

Maybe you would. The other million customers would not give a shizzle either way.

As for the bleating about "the MorphOS guys should get a hardware team together", what on EARTH have you been smoking lately? I recommend you stop. The MorphOS team, if they wanted to port to ARM and take control of an ARM license and develop an SoC core, can make a business case RIGHT NOW and Genesi and bplan will take in on for them. bplan have ALWAYS been around for the MorphOS team to do this kind of project. We have the contacts inside Freescale and ARM, ODMs standing by to produce millions of units.