Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2720 from 2003/2/24
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Cortex-A15 is due this year...
Yes, I meant the various upcoming ARMv8 incarnations for "high-end"...
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They did have several different ISAs (ARM, Coldfire, 68K, PPC, 8-bit) until fairly recently but they have been replacing their designs with ARM based designs for some time now.
It's clearly the trend!
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It's got to the point where there's really no advantage in designing your own CPU any more unless it's something really exotic or special (like console CPUs). It's far easier and cheaper just to license a design. That way you get a chip that you can still tweak but you don't have to worry about developing a compiler or apps or whatever.
Yes, huge advantages on the SW side, which of course is essential. But even if you license an ARM design (and other on-chip controllers) you can very much design your own CPU (as in "chip") around those, to target different markets and applications. IMHO there are only benefits in this, and that's why it will happen. PPC is now *deader* than dead, but it might just not know it yet...
MorphOS is Amiga
done right! 
MorphOS NG will be AROS
done right!
