Quote:

Looks like a very good guess to me. Could it be that Hyperion has contracted with a hardware company to redesign the pa-semi board linked above to add a FPGA near the slots for what ever purpose and end up with the AmigaOne Power-X? Maybe ACK took his preliminary designs to Hyperion and talked them into backing production of them?

[ Edited by amigadave on 2010/1/3 14:45 ]

It wasnt that far away when it was suggested MorphOS should be ported to SAM

@ pampers

Yes, MorphOs is quite on track, but it is also very interesting to see what the other competing side is doing now. And while in recent months there was little progress or good news on their side, it seems they made a progress now. And the way they set it in scene is not too lousy. They gain the interest they planned to gain.
What enevtually will come out of this theatre play is another story. But I doubt there are many butterfly fellows out there who don't have at least a remote interest what the other camp is doing (for whatever reason this interest may be motivated).
And personally I am quite curious whether they will provide a hardware with the PA 1682 - which is said nobody can get get hold of. A little speculating can be entertaining, but I doubt things in Amigaland which change over night radically and with the *now* available MorphOS 2.4 there is not much to fear.
And I am very interested (and highly (highest!) sceptical) what they will present on the software side: Do they have a solution for SMP, will or have they they boxed their OS? If it is the PA Sei chip: how do they support 64 bit? What about gfx drivers - there are only PCIe slots on the board, so they need drivers for more recent gfx chips? Many things unresolved.

@Pampers

I agree. MorphOS is very strong atm with the MacMini. It's brilliant, and it'll get even better when the rest of the G4 macs get support.

And I do understand that it's too early to say "yes" or "no" to MorphOS on the A-EON, as you rightly point out, it's nothing more than a sales pitch atm. And it could happen that the board only is available as a bundle.

However, I think that a lot of users like myself would love to save some deskspace by having one box, all our os' on. I rather have a QuemuPPC installable version of OS4 and MorphOS, but I consider that just as likely as a merging of MorphOS and OS4 (Not that nessecarily wanted, just an example of something very unlikely - like flying pigs, also not nessecarily wanted ).

I would love to see that new board running both MorphOS and AOS4 after all. But lets wait and see the details of this new product first.

> If it is the PA Sei chip: how do they support 64 bit?

The PA6T also has a 32 bit mode, just like the PPC970.

> there are only PCIe slots on the board

Look closer, please :-)

Quote:

Oh, you're correct on the ports - I indeed oversaw the pci 33 MHz slot, the Xorro one I just dind't mention because it is nothing regular.
And yes, the PA has a 32 bit mode, but if going 64 bit, then use 64 bit. Hence my question: How will they provide 64 bit support?

> I indeed oversaw the pci 33 MHz slot

There are even 2 of them :-)

> the Xorro one I just dind't mention because it is nothing regular.

I didn't allude to that one.

> How will they provide 64 bit support?

Maybe they won't? That's what I wanted to get across. But if they will, they could do it like AROS did :-)

With a track record of Ben Hermans at bashing MorphOS (e.g. see http://pastebay.com/80143, found this via google search btw ..) and him involved in that company, it is extremely unlikely that MorphOS team will ever support any A-EON products. At least not with me participating ....
So yes, there is something blocking such a port in principle as originally asked in that thread.


[ Editiert durch pega-1 an 2010/1/4 2:12 ]

@ Pega-1

With ppc being a rather dead end anyway (I doubt a handful of PA boards will change that), I think you are best off with getting ready to do the architecture switch soon, now that we have plenty of Apple gear to bridge the time until you provide us with an architecture independent solution .
Okay, if the 8610 board by Codex/bplan/community sees the light of day it would be fun to see that one supported, too. But the unevitable is on due anyway I'd say...

Havent the mos developers already stated that they do not have the skills to give mos smp support? so it seems useless with a-eon support even if it turns out that it's an okey machine

> Havent the mos developers already stated that they do not have the skills to give
> mos smp support? so it seems useless with a-eon support

You could very well support only one core and let the other(s) idle ;-)

@SMF

It's not really about the skills but rather about available resources and doing it properly. The QBox should be developed further, so that it becomes a real "user-friendly" environment, which as you can imagine requires *a lot* of work.

I'm still curious to know what solution Hyperion will come with, though.

[ Edited by Fab on 2010/1/4 2:46 ]

@Fab

Thats not exactly the answer i read the last time, then it sounded more like when smp support got required to get added we had hit the end of the road. so does this mean smp support is in the roadmap now?

@SMF

The Amiga API was never designed SMP in mind.

well, it wasn't designes for SMP, but it souldn't be a problem to use SMP with AmigaOS like systems... there are message ports and semaphores, so if there would be an application, that would use more cpus, then i don't see it as a big issue. i guess, mos would run with no troubles on multicore cpu (as it would be powerpc compatible), and all the basic stuff can work on the single core, but some special applications would use the second (or the others) core without big problems...

bye, MarK.

Quote:

Will it be a lot faster than a PowerMac? Will it be a lot cheaper? If not, what's the point? It's not like PowerMac's are difficult to get a hold of, and you can have it at dual 7448's @ 2GHz if you want. And why would anyone want to put money into Ben Herman's pockets?

Quote:

I think it was.

Quote:

I suggest reading Fab's post once again (or if that doesn't help - a few times more), and you'll see why it won't happen.

@ MarK

Amiga and SMP are incompatible by design. The only way to achieve at least something that resembles "multi processing" in a clean way is to box in the Amiga environment (the OS and the apps), and add the bells and whistles outside the box. MorphOS is boxed. The Friedens said some time ago that they will use a box approach. But it takes more than just a box, and the result won't be anything that a Windows user, MacOS user, Linux user, or indeed anyone else, would recognize and acknowledge as true *SMP*.

well, but AmigaOS already had this... remember PowerUp cards? there was 68k as a main cpu, and PowerPC was used from the beginning as just some kind of coprocessor, to make some computations faster. with a small list of new exec.library functions (like LaunchOnOtherCpuAsync(function,args)) would be enough for simple SMP :)

but these are really just my ideas as I know, how cpu 68k and ppc works, then i don't see this as a big issue.

bye, MarK.

> it souldn't be a problem to use SMP with AmigaOS like systems... [...] all the basic stuff can
> work on the single core, but some special applications would use the second (or the others)
> core without big problems...

I've the feeling you're describing ASMP, not SMP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_multiprocessing

> AmigaOS already had this... remember PowerUp cards? there was 68k as a main cpu, and
> PowerPC was used from the beginning as just some kind of coprocessor, to make some
> computations faster. with a small list of new exec.library functions (like
> LaunchOnOtherCpuAsync(function,args)) would be enough for simple SMP :)

Okay, now I *know* you mean ASMP, not SMP :-)

PowerUp cards had separate kernels for PPC and 68k and application development was cumbersome. It always is if using 2nd core/cpu requires using (too many) special tricks in coding. After all there were only few useful PPC applications for PowerUp/WarpUp.

For sure the future is on multiple cores and MorphOS must go there in the future in way or another. But Aeon Amigaone probably is not the one.

MorphOS is on a much better road right now.

Having MOS for the Mac is a great way for the MOS team to make money to keep interest in the project, they can polish and complete the os and not worry about a new processor right now. Timing is great also for MOS, the economy for me is going to be crippled for some time and I, and many people, won't have $2,000 to spend a new box now.

My prediction is that A-EON will sell mostly to the base, with very limited growth beyond that and MOS will grow into new users via the Mac platform.

MorphOS Team's attitude is plainly honest and sensible. Of course, it's much more exciting to announce a new computer that (supposedly) has came out of nowhere, but excitement doesn't go well with actual computer system development.
Again, kudos to the Team, I'm very proud of having chosen MorphOS many years ago.