If IBM wouldnt offer the level of customization required by Apple and caved to the video game console market in favor of lower margins in the millions of units sold, then I wouldnt count on anyone ever using them again in a consumer level.

First off not a single consumer level OS is currently supported, secondly no software is being made on that same level. They blew it with Apple and sold out to the video game console manufacturers. The two largest of which are now back on X86 class chips. Its not going to happen.

> [...] video game console manufacturers. The two largest of which are now back on
> X86 class chips.

It's not "back" for the PlayStation. PS1 and PS2 were MIPS, and PS3 was PPC. No x86 in this lineage before the PS4.

And this is a purely economic phenomenon.
The development of cheap APUs helped foster this.
Curiously, X86 designs began to look like the XBOX360's combined cpu/gpu core.

Excuse me, but what is the point of PPC in 2014, really?

There are no consumer products anymore that uses them since both the Playstation and X-Box have abandoned it. This means that no matter what anyone do, any consumer computer using PPC will be very very expensive. Maybe price isn't a problem for high end servers and such, but today when you can get a nice enough intel computer for a couple of hundred euros/dollars, why would anyone want to invest in a computer where the CPU alone costs several hundred euros/dollars (except for a handful of rich computer nerds)?

Quote:

Several hundred?
The one I'm looking at starts at around $150.
What's the point?
Simple, its compatible with our current ISA.
And there is no shortage of OS' for X86 or ARM, PPC for the end user is now pretty much ours.

Still pretty expensive. And it wont help if we take the A-Eon ruite and make our own mother board for a handful of users. The beta board testing cost would be enormous, which is why the X1000 is so expensive.

Then it makes more sense to "just" port MOS to the X1000 and X5000. But that still makes little sense to me.

An ISA shift in the long run to commonly used hardware is IMHO the only way to go.

> The beta board testing cost would be enormous, which is why the X1000 is so expensive.

In board development, the bigger chunk of the total costs is usually spent before the beta testing phase starts.

Quote:

Absolutely, just the calculations necessary for every trace get pretty intense.
Design is definitely the most rigorous part.

And Yasu, as the X5000 is not available yet, what makes you think it would not be supported?
This has always been a possibility.
Look at the current work being done on the SAM460 port (and those machines are relatively hard to get).

@Andreas_Wolf

You know that's what I meant

@Jim

Pure assumption since the X1000 isn't supported. My guess is that the MOS Team doesn't see much point either or just don't want too (so much work). Buying a G5 gives you much more bang per buck.

[ Edited by Yasu 17.02.2014 - 16:31 ]

Quote:

Yes, buying a G5 is a better economic solution, but they are not new.
Personally, I already have a PCI-E 2.3 GHz Dual Core G5 waiting in the hope that one day we will see support for those models (most of the bang of an X1000, with a faster processor).

But I'd consider buying an X5000 if support.
If only to say I had MorphOS running on an AmigaOne.

>>> The beta board testing cost would be enormous, which is why the X1000 is so expensive.

>> In board development, the bigger chunk of the total costs is usually spent before the beta
>> testing phase starts.

> You know that's what I meant :-)

No, I don't :-)

>> as the X5000 is not available yet, what makes you think it would not be supported?

> Pure assumption since the X1000 isn't supported.

At least the X1000's Hermans factor is missing with the successors, but that's not to say this alone would create enough incentive of course.

> Buying a G5 gives you much more bang per buck.

As Jim has already indicated, that's also true for the Sam460 yet MorphOS is in the process of being ported to it.

> If only to say I had MorphOS running on an AmigaOne.

Then buy a Sam460 (aka AmigaOne 500) with MorphOS and save expenses :-)

Quote:

I keep coming back to that idea myself quite frequently.
And I already have an X1300 video card.
If we don't see X5000 support, I may do just that.
It can replace my PowerMac G4's as my "low end" system, while I keep the G5s for more demanding applications.
If I am only using Odyssey, I hardly need G5 level performance AND the high power draw

Yeah, that would fit in nicely, Sam460, iBook, and PowerMac G5.

Silver members revealed:

http://www.open-power.org

This one among them:

"The company intends to extend its product line by developing future OpenPOWER-compliant systems based on IBM’s POWER microprocessors"
http://servergy.com/servergy-joins-the-openpower-foundation/


Edit: Gold members revealed:

http://openpowerfoundation.org/membership/current-members/

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 05.04.2014 - 01:27 ]

Xilinx two steps down from Altera.
Interesting.

@ Gold - PowerCore, I don't recognize that one.
Any info?

> PowerCore, I don't recognize that one. Any info?

See posting #14 in this thread. You even replied to that.

China Core, yeah I remember them.
In fact, I suspect a Taiwanese ARM licensee of slipping that group information.
They are actually one of the Gold member that might run with this, they have previous RISC experience.

Oh, and before we hear a repetition of the "what relevance does Power technology have" comments, its fresh and its not X86.

> IBM Opens Up POWER Architecture For Licensing
> The article mentions Nvidia favouring this development. Fair enough, but why?

"NVIDIA today announced that it plans to integrate a high-speed interconnect, called NVIDIA NVLink, into its future GPUs, enabling GPUs and CPUs to share data five to 12 times faster than they can today. [...] The new interconnect was co-developed with IBM, which is incorporating it in future versions of its POWER CPUs. [...] "NVLink enables fast data exchange between CPU and GPU, thereby improving data throughput through the computing system and overcoming a key bottleneck for accelerated computing today," said Bradley McCredie, vice president and IBM Fellow at IBM. "NVLink makes it easier for developers to modify high-performance and data analytics applications to take advantage of accelerated CPU-GPU systems. We think this technology represents another significant contribution to our OpenPOWER ecosystem." With NVLink technology tightly coupling IBM POWER CPUs with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, the POWER data center ecosystem will be able to fully leverage GPU acceleration for a diverse set of applications, such as high performance computing, data analytics and machine learning. [...] Today's GPUs are connected to x86-based CPUs through the PCI Express (PCIe) interface, which limits the GPU's ability to access the CPU memory system and is four- to five-times slower than typical CPU memory systems. PCIe is an even greater bottleneck between the GPU and IBM POWER CPUs, which have more bandwidth than x86 CPUs. As the NVLink interface will match the bandwidth of typical CPU memory systems, it will enable GPUs to access CPU memory at its full bandwidth. "
http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/Releases/NVIDIA-Launches-World-s-First-High-Speed-GPU-Interconnect-Helping-Pave-the-Way-to-Exascale-Computin-ad6.aspx

It will be interesting to see how NVLink relates to POWER8's CAPI, which "is an overlay that will ride atop the PCI-Express 3.0 mechanicals to provide coherent memory addressing for CPUs and external coprocessors like Nvidia GPUs".

Nice, now if you were going to build a new age Amiga and you wanted a truly different approach...
Hmm, the time to start planning would be right about now.
Processor and Graphics? Well Andreas has pointed to one idea.
But what kind of I/O and Audio systems would you want?

It would be nice if they where to produce some computers that may be a little expensive but passable for personal computers. Maybe that really could be a chance for MorphOS. There aren't that many non-unix(like) systems out there for PPC.

Quote:

One thing I love about MorphOS is the ability to shut it down without damaging the integrity of the filing system.
In the last two weeks I've had two different versions of Windows completely freeze necessitating a restart which then forced me into chkdsk routines that took several really annoying minutes to complete.

Quote:

It's still a lot better then some versions ago when the same procedure took up to 30 minutes ... Yay, that's progress: annoying your users just a little less then before ...

Quote:

;)

Update:

> first POWER8-based systems are supposed to ship mid-2014

POWER8-based systems announced for June 2014:

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/43702.wss

>> It'll be very interesting to see what Tyan bring out. You might finally see a sensibly
>> priced POWER system.

> I think Tyan wil be making POWER server boards rather than PowerPC workstation boards.

Yes, seems so:

"The OpenPOWER Foundation [...] today took its first steps to deliver transformative system designs based on IBM’s new POWER8 processor. At the Open Innovation Summit today [...] the Foundation showed the first reference board and OEM systems [...]. [...] At the summit, the OpenPOWER Foundation presented its first white box server details including a development and reference design from Tyan, and firmware and operating system developed by IBM, Google, and Canonical. [...] IBMnoted it will be deploying systems leveraging this OpenPOWER hardware and software stack in Softlayer later this year."
http://openpowerfoundation.org/press-releases/openpower-foundation-unveils-first-innovations-and-roadmap/

Excellent article with a picture of Tyan's POWER8 reference board in ATX form factor:

"At the Open Innovation Summit event [...], the foundation showed off the first reference system board based on Power8 chips [...]. The very first thing that the foundation had to do was create a reference server board that OpenPower Foundation members could use to build and test software. MacKean admitted that it looked a bit like “something you would get at Fry’s,” referring to the famous electronics chain headquartered in San Jose. MacKean said the reference board would have a lower cost than developers and system builders were used to seeing for something with as much performance as this board packs. Chuck Barlett, worldwide technical support director for Tyan, said at the summit that this ATX form factor motherboard will be sold to software developers and to whitebox server makers, hyperscale datacenter operators who design their own systems, as well as to IBM for future systems. Moreover, IBM and Tyan are donating the specifications of the reference system to the OpenPower Foundation and members will have access to it and be able to use it to make customizations of their own. [...] Motherboard maker Tyan is creating its own system boards, which other server makers will be able to buy to create Power8-based machines [...]."
http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/04/23/ibm-google-show-power8-systems-openpower-efforts/
http://www.enterprisetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/openpower-tyan-reference.jpg

Another two articles by the same author:

"The feeds and speeds of the board were not made available, but we can take a gander at it and make some assumptions. As you can see, it has one processor socket and it looks like it has two Ethernet controllers on the motherboard. My guess is that they are 10 Gb/sec ports because there is no way a slower speed is going to make sense. I am not sure what the port is to the right of the two LAN ports, and that looks like a keyboard and video ports on the far right of the top edge of the board. The Power8 reference board has four memory slots [...]. To the left of the processor, that looks like one x16 and one x8 PCI-Express slot. The reference board appears to have four SATA ports and the regular power connectors. [...] Bartlett said that Tyan would be selling this board as the basis of systems for software developers to port existing code or create new code. Tyan is also going to make whitebox servers based on this system and these will be targeted at IBM customers as well as hyperscale datacenter operators looking for Power8 alternatives to Xeon E5 and E7 processors. Perhaps more importantly, Tyan and IBM are donating the specifications of the reference motherboard to the OpenPower Foundation so that other members can use them to create their own motherboards and systems. Tyan did not provide availability dates for the board, but MacKean said that it would cost less than developers and system makers might expect."
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh042814-story02.html
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh042814-story02-fig02.jpg

"Chuck Bartlett, worldwide technical support director for Tyan, said last week that its Power8 motherboard will be sold to software developers so they can test their code and that it will also be made available to whitebox server makers, hyperscale datacenter operators who design their own systems, and to IBM for future systems. IBM and Tyan have agreed to donate the specifications of the reference system to the OpenPower Foundation, which means that members will have access to the specs so they can make customizations of their own. The Tyan reference board is called the SP010 and a spokesperson for Tyan says that this is a tentative name for the board and adds that it is aimed at small and medium businesses, virtualization, and data analytics. The SP010 has one single-chip module (SCM) variant of the Power8 processor, which, by the way, we learned is code-named “Turismo.” The Tyan board has four DDR3 memory slots, four 6 Gb/sec SATA peripheral connectors, two USB 3.0 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet network interfaces, and keyboard and video. The ATX board measures 12 inches by 9.6 inches, which means it can easily fit in a standard rack or tower server."
http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/04/28/inside-google-tyan-power8-server-boards/


Edit: added more articles

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 08.05.2014 - 21:53 ]