Quote:

Care to elaborate?

Edit: Oh, you must mean this user list from moobunny. Could have been better to not paste it here.


[ Edited by itix 13.06.2012 - 05:53 ]

"more and more stuff seems to constantly surface as the farce rolls on."

It's pretty sad life if you have the urge of dig out only the bad.

@minator

Couldn't care less. But I think it's interesting to see how many they are. These are confirmed owners, as far as I can tell (did not do the list myself, but the only protest so far was about being listed as user instead of betatester). I'll be happy to add more as they are spotted. And this is "free for all" - if you don't like it, don't read it!


@KimmoK

"It's pretty sad life"

My life isn't sad at all, couldn't be better at the moment, and why should my life have anything to do with the X1000? Trust me, it never will!

"if you have the urge of dig out only the bad."

I'm hardly "digging", the shit just keeps floating up to the surface, apparently as soon as there is some kind of twitch in the lame "X1000 project" body.

Alright, where is the *good* then? Its performance? Its price? Its bang for the buck? Its features? Its availability? The financial strength of the entities behind it (the ones promising a warranty), who are so weak that they can't even make the product available for real (up to half a year delivery time on pre-orders, WTF?!), but has to sell one through pre-payment on some e-mail list to be able to build another through pre-payment and sell this, and so on? I'd really like to see these entities cope with a warranty issue concerning more than a few single products! What if a new "Articia S" issue would surface, so you would have to recall/modify a whole bach? Yeah, right, "warranty", it would be Eyetech all over again. Or is "The Power of X"? Or the SMP capabilities in OS4? The level, features, stability, support etc of OS4 in general? Not really, right? IMHO, the X1000 is killing what's left of the active OS4 crowd. They see that there is no viability in this, no reliability, no self-sustainability, no future whatsoever for a platform that put all eggs in *this* basket, they think "Oh, if *this* was the answer, then the OS4 platform is truly doomed" and moves on. X1000 is to blame for this, or better put: The strategy that they (Hyperion) constantly pursue of strictly keeping OS4 tied to under-performing, *ridiculously overpriced*, weird HW, built in batches of 30-50 units, that almost never reaches full OS support, the kamikaze-focus on PPC as the savior and the only way to a future, is killing it, and the X1000 is merely the latest (and by far the *biggest*) blow they exposed OS4 to, merely the latest moronic mistake (and by far the *biggest*). There is no credible future for OS4. People see this, and are leaving. You see signs of this if you know where to look, and look over time. Hyperion and the X1000 is driving them away...

takemehomegrandma,
Quote:

Yes it is. Count your posts in.

> a platform that put all eggs in *this* basket

The OS4 platform has its eggs in 2 baskets actually, A-Eon basket and ACube basket. The Sam460ex is currently available to buy and has not been discontinued so far.

> The strategy that they (Hyperion)

That's not by chance the same "they" who allegedly attempted to "try to sell us" hyped numbers, is it?

> constantly pursue of strictly keeping OS4 tied to under-performing,
> *ridiculously overpriced*, weird HW, built in batches of 30-50 units

Is that how the port to the Pegasos 2 came about? ;-)

@takemehomegrandma

I see x1000 mainly a platform to develop SMP/multicore stuff on. And to build support for modern things like for PCIex16 GPUs, large RAM, etc.
For users it should not be that interesting because of the price.

x1000 seems to perform as (realists) expected. xcore/xena tools (+HW) seem to be coming out little by little (even though it's not known what all it will be used at this point).

x1000 is so expensive and complex that it's production is not simple to arrange. I doubt it's possible "temporary unavailability" is a big problem, because rare people can afford it.

(but for example I see it more appealing than any water cooled "wind tunnel" G5 Mac, even if MOS or AOS4 existed for G5. But I buy neither.)

I have not monitored/compared if AOS4 development has slowed down in general. New third party stuff at least appear at good pace, almost daily (perhaps the strongest point of AOS4 branch). OS updates seem to come in ok pace. And there seems to be new HW in production and more are in the works, as we know. +AOS4 supports also legacy and peg2 and who knows what in the future.
And it's the only Amigalike OS I can for example access my NAS GUI.

Stability, speedup, drivers are the weak points. AOS4 has no matured as nicely as MOS. At this rate also AROS can catch up AOS4.(reminds me that I should re-check it)

Every flavour has it's own strengths and soft spots. I love the fact that there is AOS variant that stays on PPC also in future (untill I see better x86/ARM SOCs at least.

[ Edited by KimmoK 13.06.2012 - 12:26 ]

> x1000 seems to perform as (realists) expected.

I disagree, as I think that I'm a realist and I can assure you that computationally the PA6T underperforms compared to what I expected from it. So could you please refer to some 2011 or older postings/statements from those you call "realists" where they correctly estimated the kind of performance that has manifested in 2012?
Maybe I should have become overally more suspicious when I found out about the relatively (compared to G3/G4/G5 that is) low DMIPS/MHz per core figure of the PA6T two years ago.

> it's the only Amigalike OS I can for example access my NAS GUI. ;-)

Why wouldn't that work with MorphOS or AROS running OWB?

@Andreas_Wolf

I think there was me and others expecting slightly better than Atom 1.6Ghz performance, while hoping for even better.

As it's kind of "mobile" version of G5, it was perhaps silly to expect it to perform like G5 or G4 per Mhz...

As we have seen it scales better in multicore stuff than any other PPC (because of large shared cache and faster buses).
(I'm little surpriced that PA6T (2006 design) can get similar RAM speeds than three year old (2010) PCs)

>>it's the only Amigalike OS I can for example access my NAS GUI.
>Why wouldn't that work with MorphOS or AROS running OWB?

I do not know. I should re-try with newer MOS OWB.
(on AOS4 it works only with timberwolf second beta)


btw. I think the topic was something like should MOS be running on x1000? IMO: clearly no. Effort should be put to support some other new HW (like SAM460 or some even more affordable around 1Ghz PPC HW).


[ Edited by KimmoK 13.06.2012 - 14:13 ]

@Andreas

Obviously there are no similarities between the X1000 and the Pegasos2 whatsoever, if anything at all you could say that they both represents a doomed CPU architecture for the desktop market. Little girls cell phones runs in circles around the old €1000+ Sam440 systems, the Sam460 doesn't even reach the old Pegasos2 performance AFAIK (and lacks all kinds of stable drivers), not that it matters, it has already came as far as it could get. OS4 is shrinking, the lead OS developer asks community members for aid in developing the OS(!!). Is the twin brothers even around there anymore, or are they just hoping to cash in some Timberwolf bounty money before they leave permanently? The next step along this line for A-eon would be to have community members come over to the factory to solder together their own systems, putting up their own money at risk. The latter is of course already in place with the pre-payment scheme, they just need to follow it through all the way. The X1000 can only be afforded if you sell your first-born, it competes with 2005 level HW in performance, it's not self-sustaining, as a "product" (which it obviously isn't) it can't live or breathe by itself. There are AmigaOne XE owners still using their systems (although they probably die off at an increasing pace by now). If the X1000 follows the same pattern, these 2005 level X1000's will be what any "high-end" OS4 users remaining in 2020 will be using (all 58 of them). It can't play the HD media we have today, and it sure as hell won't play whatever will be there in the future. And they will probably still wait for true SMP. And for some miracle to happen for PPC, so that Amiga can make the comback the world has been waiting for. Everyone that isn't blind can see the poor situation it's in, and the complete lack of a future it has laid out in front of it. I just hope that Trevor Dickinson uses the money he scores from this to create a "amigaone Y2000", with a "Yorro" busboard ("What is Y?") based upon some deprecated USB1.0 bus with a $2 chip or whatever ("Woah, think about what this could mean for OS4?"), costing at least, hmm... FOUR thousand dollars (if not Five? Hmm, some will pay anything, just collect their money and leave!). Then the last few OS4 users would drop off in a few years, and it would finally be over. They have been working hard along this path for many years now, striving persistently, with one insanity after another. A new "most ambitious project", yet another PPC machine with *terrible* bang for the buck ratio, drivers developed after 2 years, etc; yes, that would be the final death blow, the mercy kill to end the OS4 misery.

> I think there was me and others expecting slightly better than
> Atom 1.6Ghz performance

Okay, so you've been wiser than most others, including me :-)

> As it's kind of "mobile" version of G5, it was perhaps silly to
> expect it to perform like G5 or G4 per Mhz...

Regarding G4: Why? The G4 up to 1.67 GHz was used in mobile devices as well.
Regarding G5: You're probably right.

> I should re-try with newer MOS OWB.

Yes, please do and report back.

"Regarding G4: Why? The G4 up to 1.67 GHz was used in mobile devices as well."

Yes but G4 was designed for desktop. And as it has shorter instruction pipelines and better Altivec it has big advantage per Mhz (narrow bus limits that advantage only for large data and multi threaded operations).

>>> The strategy that they (Hyperion) constantly pursue of strictly
>>> keeping OS4 tied to under-performing, *ridiculously overpriced*,
>>> weird HW, built in batches of 30-50 units

>> Is that how the port to the Pegasos 2 came about? ;-)

> Obviously there are no similarities between the X1000 and the
> Pegasos2 whatsoever

Then Hyperion's strategy can't have been be so constant or strict, right?

> €1000+ Sam440 systems

Weren't they slightly below the 1k EUR mark?

>>> a platform that put all eggs in *this* basket

>> The OS4 platform has its eggs in 2 baskets actually, A-Eon basket
>> and ACube basket. The Sam460ex is currently available to buy and has
>> not been discontinued so far.

> the Sam460 doesn't even reach the old Pegasos2 performance AFAIK

...which has no bearing on its availability and thus the fact that opposed to your claim the OS4 platform has some eggs also in the ACube basket.
Regarding performance of Sam460ex vs. Pegasos 2 see:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=6235&start=34 (posting #36)

> The next step along this line for A-eon would be to have community
> members come over to the factory to solder together their own systems

If this was the next step after the current situation, which step would be purchasing just the populated Nemo boards and building your own system around it?

> The X1000 can only be afforded if you sell your first-born

2500 to 2800 EUR seems rather cheap for a child, provided it's in sound condition of course ;-)

> a "product" (which it obviously isn't)

...to the minds of you and the ones sharing your obscure definition of the term "product".

> 2005 level X1000's

I still think they're more like 2007-level.

>>> As it's kind of "mobile" version of G5, it was perhaps silly to
>>> expect it to perform like [...] G4 per Mhz...

>> Why? The G4 up to 1.67 GHz was used in mobile devices as well.

> Yes but G4 was designed for desktop.

...yet is at 1.67 GHz obviously low-power enough for mobile usage, so its characteristics can't be too far off a dedicated mobile chip. So why was it silly to expect the PA6T at 1.8 GHz, that is two years younger than the MPC7447A/B, to be able to beat the G4 in per-clock performance?

> it has shorter instruction pipelines

True, shorter than PA6T. But then, PA6T and G5 have the same length, yet G5 has better per-core performance than G4 in most cases (as long as AltiVec is not involved that is), so this isn't very convincing.

> and better Altivec

True, G4 AltiVec has best per-clock performance, but I'm referring to non-AltiVec performance (see for instance Dhrystone benchmark which doesn't use AltiVec at all).

takemehomegrandma,
Quote:
As I already mentioned, this thread has partly turned into pure comedy. Reminds me of some kind of Ahmadinedschad parody...

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

Probably it's all managed from Bielefeld...

Update:

>> And one nasty thing... the 3D support is coming first&foremost for
>> r700, IIRC. And r700 GPUs are disappearing from average PC shop

> How does that matter when the X1000 already comes with it pre
> installed? I take it AmigaKit have stocked at least as many of those
> cards as A-Eon have PA6T chips in their possession ;-)

Seems I was overly optimistic regarding the availability of R700-based graphics cards:

http://www.a-eon.com/news/25-06-2012.html

"A few months ago I got an email from Trevor (A-Eon Technology) letting me know that supply of Radeon HD 4000 series cards was getting so scarce that supply could no longer be guaranteed. This made adding support for newer series urgent, and so an agreement was made in order to deliver this As Soon As Possible (ASAP)."
http://hdrlab.org.nz/projects/amiga-os-4-projects/radeonhd-driver/radeonhd-development-log/new-blogentry/

It is never ending game.

It is = Pay for Radeon Drivers

> the previous message from March 31st on that very page stated that
> the next batch was due in Q2, now it is July to the end of 2012, so
> if *anything*, this is an announcement of yet another *delay*

Seems they really managed to deliver the first unit(s) of the second batch in Q2:

http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/viewtopic.php?p=14179#p14179

:-)

A1-X1000 owners do not have to pay extra for RadeonHD drivers.

TrevorD

This news probably means that when the supply of r700 video cards runs out for AmigaKit, the later deliveries of the 2nd batch of "First Contact" AmigaOne X1000's might have the newer Radeon HD video cards installed in a few X1000's.

Just a guess on my part, as I doubt that AmigaKit, or A-Eon has pre-purchased 100, or more Radeon HD 4650 video cards, but I could be wrong.

> This news probably means that when the supply of r700 video cards
> runs out for AmigaKit, the later deliveries of the 2nd batch of
> "First Contact" AmigaOne X1000's might have the newer Radeon HD
> video cards installed in a few X1000's.

True, as 2.5 weeks ago (which was, interestingly, 8 days prior to the related public announcement) A-Eon's AmigaOne X1000 specs page has been revised from reading

ATI Radeon R700 graphics card
2GB RAM
500GB Hard drive

...to reading

ATI Radeon Evergreen or Northern Isles graphics card (option)
2GB or 4GB RAM (option)
1TB Hard drive
[...]
Revised specifications valid from July 2012 and are subject to change.

As it seems, the first machine(s) of the 2nd batch already delivered in June still came with R700 graphics card.
Btw, the page still reads "It is 26 years since the launch by US computer company Commodore of the Amiga A1000" ;-) * ** *** ****

* changed to "27 years" on July 7th 2012
** should read "28 years" now in 2013
*** should read "29 years" now in 2014
**** changed to "over 30 years" on September 20th 2015

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 24.06.2021 - 11:03 ]

Update:

>> those "Accelerators" are listed for the POWER7+ as well.

> First public glimpse on the POWER7+:
> http://semiaccurate.com/2012/03/21/ibm-power-7-spotted-and-it-is-a-monster/
> ...but still no info on the "Accelerators" unfortunately.

Some recent info, this time also with speculation about the mysterious accelerators:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/16/ibm_power7_plus_preview/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/20/ibm_power7_plus_processor_preview/

Official information:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/31/ibm_power7_plus_processors/

Seemingly and somewhat to my surprise, nothing of the Cell SPE kind.


Edit: Added 2nd and 3rd link.

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 01.09.2012 - 18:11 ]

>> "they" who allegedly attempted to "try to sell us" hyped numbers, is it?

> Probably it's all managed from Bielefeld...

And now even the amigabounty.net team seems to be involved in the conspiracy suspected by takemehomegrandma:

"whoever "they" are, anybody knows?"
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=701665

;-)

Update:

> Description of the relevant FTF 2012 session (FTF-IND-F0016) now online:
> "This session describes new instructions for extended support for misaligned
> vectors, support for handling head and tail vectors, and the long-awaited capability
> to move from general purpose to vector registers. Learn about the performance
> improvements resulting from enhancement to both AltiVec and the e6500 core."
> http://www.getregisterednow.com/FSL/CEX/Session.aspx?li=1

From the relevant FTF 2012 session slides:

"AltiVec e6500 core technology is essentially the same as AltiVec technology from the 74xx processors except the following:
· Adds new instructions for computing absolute differences [...]
· Adds new instructions for moving data from GPRs to VRs [...]
· Adds new instructions for dealing with misaligned vectors more easily [...]
· Adds new instructions for dealing with elements of vectors [...] These allow loading/storing of arbitrary elements to arbitrary addresses
[...]
Little-endian byte ordering is not supported on Power ISA AltiVec definition.
Data stream instructions [...] are not supported on Power ISA AltiVec definition.
[...]
IVORs added for AltiVec unavailable interrupt and AltiVec assist interrupt.
Move from GPR to VR [...] instructions move data from 2 GPRs into a vector register.
Absolute difference instructions [...] compute the unsigned absolute differences. These
are useful for motion estimation in video processing.
Extended support for misaligned vectors [...]
Extended support for handling head and tail of vectors [...]
External PID instructions for loading and storing VRs [...] for moving data efficiently across address spaces.
[...]
Data Stream Instructions [...] were present in the first definition of AltiVec technology for PowerPC processors. These instructions provided software initiated streaming prefetch controls. In Power ISA these instructions are no longer defined, and streaming is performed by variants of the dcbt instruction or by hardware prefetchers. Cache stashing could be considered an alternative as well. For Freescale EIS, these instructions are treated as no-ops since they may be present in older code and do not change architectural state.
[...]
Original AltiVec technology on the e600 core included an AltiVec unavailable exception. IVORs are the equivalent exception mechanism in e500-based cores. The AltiVec unavailable interrupt occurs when an attempt is made to execute an AltiVec instruction and MSR[SPV] = 0. This can be useful in reducing context switch overhead by not saving AltiVec registers unless a process actually uses AltiVec instructions. [...] In general, AltiVec vector instructions generate very few exceptions
[...]
Moving GPRs into a Vector Register [...] was a source of frustration in original AltiVec technology. The explanation was that the interconnect between GPRs and VPRs was not warranted when data could be moved quickly via store and load from L1 cache. Still, the capability was desired by many customers. These new instructions will make it simpler to program with AltiVec.
[...]
Absolute Difference Intructions [...] are useful for motion estimation in video processing.

AltiVec e6500 limitations
· Operates in big-endian only
· Does not have data streaming (dst type instructions) They are executed as NOPs
[...]
New Load and Store Instructions
· Reduces the effort to load and store unaligned (not quad-word aligned) data
· Reduces number of registers needed for permute and mask vectors
· Reduces the effort to deal with the head and tail of unaligned strings or vector arrays
· Improves performance through:
- Fewer instructions
- Less register pressure
- Less context to save
· Makes programming AltiVec technology simpler
[...]
Summary
· AltiVec technology is being "advanced" into the e6500 core (after skipping the e500 -- which had SPE, the e500mc, and the e5500) from the e600 core.
· New instructions to move data from GPRs to VRs will reduce complexity and instruction count.
· New load and store instructions simplify misaligned accesses and reduce complexity and instruction count."
http://www.freescale.com/files/training_pdf/FTF/2012/americas/WBNR_FTF12_IND_F0016.pdf (pages 4-14 and 32)
http://www.freescale.com/files/training/doc/dwf/DWF13_AMF_NET_T0015.pdf (pages 32-50)
http://www.freescale.com/files/training/doc/ftf/2014/FTF-NET-F0139.pdf (pages 15/16-25/26)

"AltiVec technology for the e6500 core is essentially the same as AltiVec technology from the e600 core, except for the following:
- Adds new instructions for computing absolute differences [...] These speed up in the inner loop of motion estimation video processing
- Adds new instructions for dealing with misaligned vectors more easily [...]
- Adds new instructions for dealing with elements of vectors [...] These allow loading/storing of arbitrary elements to arbitrary addresses
- Instructions for moving data from GPRn to vector register [...]

AltiVec technology for e6500 limitations
- Operates in big-endian only
- Does not have data streaming (dst type instructions) They are executed as NOPs"
http://www.freescale.com/files/training_pdf/FTF/2012/americas/WBNR_FTF12_NET_F0117.pdf (pages 45/46 and 48)
http://2012ftf.ccidnet.com/pdf/0381.pdf (pages 45/46 and 48)
http://www.freescale.com.cn/cstory/ftf/2012/pdf/0381.pdf (pages 45/46 and 48)


Edit: added more PDF links

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 21.04.2014 - 18:59 ]