Quote:

OR, you can live in the US and buy them for $100 right now (no I am not kidding).
It makes buying other hardware to run our OS a hard sell.

Quote:

G5 is rare beast to find. Thanks everyone for VERY INFORMATIVE LESSON ON CELL.

I still do believe files can be merely compoled for cell and Altivec units (SPEs?) and great multimedia results coupled with nVIDIA could do the magic. It would be about time that one Amiga like OS starts to support at least one nVIDIA chip.

If 256MB XDRAM limit could be overbridged, Blue Ray support introduced and virtual memory as SWAP partition introduced (why do I smell linux) end result could be both great console and great multimedia showoff for MorphOS.

Not that I am forcing anyone, can aid it only via donations and hope.

ARM and x64 route mus be long and its far better idea then PVR Semi and Freescale support that will be just in hundreds. Or you wish power, so quad core X5000 as I hear these days, should be target that MIGHT overrun the famous or infamous G5

Cell actualy is newer and more modern design then G5.

> I didn't see the OS4 crowd talking about the e5500 core several years ago

That's because you didn't look :-)

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31890&forum=33&start=140#567042
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31907&forum=33
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31896&forum=33&start=160#569642
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=32910&forum=33&start=40#593765

> we have already moved to 64bit processors, and the OS4 community is about
> to adopt the same.

OS4 was on the PA6T way before MorphOS was on the PPC970.

> G5 is rare beast to find.

Maybe where you live. Other parts of the world seem to have better availability of used G5 Macs.

> I still do believe files can be merely compoled for cell and Altivec units (SPEs?)

Auto-vectorization (AltiVec, Cell SPEs) and auto-parallelization (Cell SPEs) doesn't really work well with most compilers (including GCC 4). The programmer still has to use his own grey matter for this and write the optimized code himself.

> It would be about time that one Amiga like OS starts to support at least one nVIDIA chip.

AROS has 3D support for several Nvidia GPUs since 2010:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Platforms/x86_support#nouveau.hidd_.28nvidia.29

> If 256MB XDRAM limit could be overbridged

It can't.

Yep, completely forgot about the PA6T.
64 bit, thanks Andreas.

And I never really thought to look at AmigaWorld.

As to Vox's contention that the Cell is more "modern" than the G5, well it is newer.

Its in order pipeline is a lower performing legacy of older devices, and many of the other features reflect ideas that didn't pan out (XDR ram, SPEs, etc).

And we are not really comparing processors, we are comparing whole systems 9where the pS3 really loses out).

BTW - why is this discussion continuing?
We know that a port to this platform is "never going to happen".

Quote:
nvidia won't be supported (fully). That statement has been continuously given by the team. Or at least there are no current plans to support it, of course there are some SENSIBLE reasons (aka "Not PS3") to support it, such as some iBook & PowerBook models having it built-in.

Quote:
Yep. Better buy a G5 with supported gfx card instead, and expect (single core) G5 performance
Quote:
Yes, I know Altivec is easy to program for (I got the official documentation books from Freescale) and SPE shouldn't be much different.

MorphOS has supported Altivec for a long time, and the majority of userbase has Altivec-enabled system. That means that every program out there supports Altivec by now, right?

What, no? Why?

No matter how "easy" it would be, it would have to be done. It's always easier to just compile the code (mostly) as-it-is for MorphOS, and release.

Nowadays most code is coming from "outside" (open source linux projects), and there higher end(G4+) PowerPC has really been going out-of-fashion lately... So not many projects bother adding any support, and neither do people who port them to MorphOS.

Also, Altivec is good for very specific tasks, if the program doesn't do much of that, there's no point of adding support.

And now, if there was also SPE support in the OS, and very small minority of userbase would have capable systems (as most would want a better system, such as Efika), how much less point would there be to waste time optimizing?

>>> I didn't see the OS4 crowd talking about the e5500 core several years ago

>> That's because you didn't look :-)

> I never really thought to look at AmigaWorld.

Where did you look for discussions by the OS4 crowd then? When it comes to English-speaking sites, Amigaworld.net is one of the 2 top sites (the other being amigans.net) for OS4-centric discussion.

> why is this discussion continuing?

Because there're still debatable arguments being presented, I guess :-)

>> why is this discussion continuing?

>Because there're still debatable arguments being presented, I guess

Same debate, no real new arguments.

>When it comes to English-speaking sites, Amigaworld.net is one of the 2 top sites (the other being amigans.net) for OS4-centric discussion.

I knew there was a reason I avoided that site!

>> When it comes to English-speaking sites, Amigaworld.net is one of the 2 top sites
>> (the other being amigans.net) for OS4-centric discussion.

> I knew there was a reason I avoided that site!

If you avoid OS4-centric sites, you surely can't know what the "OS4 crowd" has or hasn't been talking about, can you? This renders any statement that you didn't see them talking about this or that completely pointless.

>If you avoid OS4-centric sites, you surely can't know what the "OS4 crowd" is or isn't talking about, can you? This renders any statement that you didn't see them talking about this or that completely pointless.

I don't avoid ALL sites that discuss OS4.
I still hang out on Amiga.org frequently (even if that can get painful).
But the posters on AmigaWorld are just too confrontational (this coming from the very soul of contention).

>> If you avoid OS4-centric sites, you surely can't know what the "OS4 crowd" is or
>> isn't talking about, can you? This renders any statement that you didn't see them
>> talking about this or that completely pointless.

> I don't avoid ALL sites that discuss OS4. I still hang out on Amiga.org frequently

Visiting sites that also "discuss OS4" in passing isn't enough to see what the "OS4 crowd" is or isn't talking about. For this you need to visit OS4-centric sites like amigans.net and amigaworld.net.

Quote:

Cell is availiable, can be developed futher.

We could play with PS3 and one day develop real innovative machine
using main CPU all those programmable units. As far as I understand,
its NOT just Altivec, one unit could do MUI, other Reggae and so on (or game AI, rendering, visual effects, screen dragging ...) cooperate with nVIDIA gfx or in some other system some RadeonHD.

Needed drivers can be ported from Yellow Dog Linux.

Even if its experimental MOS 4 Cell special edition with limited
number of apps, GIMP, Blender and few Linux + some best AmigaOS 3/MorphOS apps
could really demo a nice and multimedia usable HW/SW combo.

As far as I understand Cell is smaller then G5 and some new board can be developed around it, as well as CPU itself is basis of supercomputer in chain, and alone as single Cell can be developed and scaled further. G5 and PA6T have reached its maximum and I am not that much impressed (yet) by X5000 CPU until proven wrong.

Quick Google shown:

http://www.psu.com/forums/showthread.php/18448-New-IBM-CELL-benchmark-may-2006-vs-G5

Quote:

http://www.yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6537

YDL is yet not well optimized, and Cell optimized MOS SE with some apps could be a real Cell showoff

Quote:

Maybe its even possible to do Cell PCI or PCI-E card for Pegs and SAM460x Even Efika

Cell alone can do much much more then most of CPUs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Cell#Possible_applications

[ Edited by vox 12.01.2014 - 17:53 ]

Cell might be neat in one way or theother, but in the field of personal computing it is just as much a dead end as PPC.

Quote:

More so, they are still planning new additions to various PPC lines, the Cell is toast.

Quote:

It's by far even more dead than PPC for desktop PC's. It was never meant to be a desktop CPU even back when it was new, it has poor performance by todays standards, and hasn't even the cell concept for parallel computing been made redundant and obsoleted by CUDA/OpenCL years ago already, and even more so on modern GPU's? Nobody is making new Cell HW, especially not desktop motherboards, and IBM even ditched the Cell development a few years ago. So I'd say it's even "deader than dead"!

> Cell [...] can be developed futher. [...] single Cell can be developed and scaled further.

By whom?

> We could one day develop real innovative machine using main CPU all those
> programmable units.

Who is "we"?

> one unit could do MUI

I believe GUI classes are too intertwined with the actual program logic to allow for execution by something like Cell SPEs.

> Needed drivers can be ported from Yellow Dog Linux.

The use of the SPEs from OtherOS is openly documented.

> some new board can be developed around it

Of course that would be possible, but who should do it and why?

> YDL is yet not well optimized

And it won't be optimized for Cell any better as Fixstars gave up on the Cell years ago. The last YDL version supporting Cell was 6.2 in 2009. Starting with 6.2.1 in 2010, YDL went x86+CUDA, so no PPC support at all. With 7.0 in 2012, YDL has switched back to PPC, but this time POWER7-only, no Cell nor any other PPC.

> Maybe its even possible to do Cell PCI or PCI-E card

There're already Cell PCIe cards. As for Cell PCI cards, who should make them?

Quote:

Hey mr moderator, you wanted to share some wisdom?

Cell is dead end, XDR is bad, BlueRay is awful?

Quote:

It sure is. Especially so for desktop PC's.

Quote:

I'm sure it had its points, however I only see DDR3/GDDR5 today (even the new Mac Pro, which is a monster, spec wise), perhaps for a reason?

Quote:

I suppose it's good for what it was meant to be, a next-gen dvd, but optical disks per se has become something of the past, or at least it's heading in that direction very rapidly. If I hadn't already been owning a DVDR unit that could be re-used from my old PC, I wouldn't have put one into the tower of the new PC I built. I hardly ever use it, and a portable one would have done just fine for those rare occasions, and it could be kept in a drawer the rest of the time. The only reason I ever used the bluray in my PS3 was because most game came in this way only. But they are slow, have fixed limits, gets damaged easily, you have to get your ass up from the sofa to change them, they cost money, they create pollution when being produced, and adds to the huge waste mountains when you discard them. Frankly, I don't se a lot of positive sides with bluray.

Quote:

They said the same about cd's and dvd's, both selling today and will in the future, as will bluray.

Quote:

Yeah, but noone uses them for computer purpose anymore. Whatever-drives often are an addon these days. I personally did not *burn* a media for quite some time, so I did not even notice my drive was broken for probably several years.

They may still sell disc based media these days, but the use of home made discs is quite rare. It is easier to store the stuff on local drives and use them on all systems instead.

Speaking about the topic. It has been said porting to a console won´t be happen. Also the PS3 is a quite bad target these days. The WiiU is more powerful, has the right 3 core cpu, 2GB of memory and other cool features like build in display, nfc, camera, mic, but it still will not happen, as it makes simply no sense.

Even porting to the X1000 would make more sense than porting to a game console.

Geit

@Geit
Quote:

Ok. How do you / did you install all the versions of MorphOS? I have always had to burn the damn disc.

Quote:

I copied the boot.img from the mac_ppc32 folder to boot: then rebooted. Then I mounted the ISO and ran Tools/IWizard but Jaca told me this method is very bad and not supported.

The other way is to make a 512MB FAT16 partition on a USB stick and copy the boot.img from the ISO along with the ISO image itself and boot it from open firmware.

http://www.meta-morphos.org/faq.php?id_cat=11&myfaq=yes&categories=Mac+mini#32

[ Edited by Intuition 13.01.2014 - 18:02 ]

Quote:

MorphOS supports booting from ISO file for quite some time.

Geit.

Quote:

How? No such thing is mentioned in installation guide.

Quote:

It is explained here for example. On Macs it basically works the same.

Geit

[ Edited by geit 13.01.2014 - 19:52 ]