Relax, this post isn't about JAVA (or "Amiga Anywhere" for that matter! )

In a context of Operating Systems and Hardware, this is exactly what Genesi has been working towards for a very long time. Everyone who has bothered to follow Genesi's developments the last years knows this.

In another thread on this site not long ago, someone asked about the differencies between UBoot and Smart Firmware . The shortest answer may be "A LOT", and without getting too detailed about technical stuff, some differencies are outlined here.

But it seems like things have evolved further since that article?

This is AURA, and suddenly it is possible to use the exact same boot image/root file system on totally different hardware.


Here is QNX running on the Dual G4 Marvell Discovery V Development Board:




And here is *the same*, this time running on an Efika:




More info here:
http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2007/07/application-ready-silicon.html

For the HW manufacturer, this could mean an *instant and effortless* access to these Operating Systems (for a starter).

Could this be something for ACube (or ACK)? QNX on SAM440 anyone? MorphOS? Open Solaris? NetBSD? Any and all of those Linux distros?

For the OS developer, this could mean an *instant and effortless* access to a lot of hardware, for instance the Pegasos, the Efika, the AMCC 440EP Yosemite Board (SAM's mother), the Freescale HPC 1 and HPC 2 (Panda's mother) boards, the Dual G4 Marvell 64560 board, as well as any upcoming boards from Genesi (Pegasos 8641D, "Tetra Power" quad core G5, and any upcoming derivates from the Efika) as well as motherboards from *any other HW manufacturer*!

Could this be something for OS4?

Comments?

Pegasos is dead, Pegasos8641D and TetraPower is stopped, EFIKA is no desktop, OS4 is somewhere over the rainbow...

@takemehomegrandma

So how is the hardware handled? Do the two boards have the same NB and SB? Or does the QNX kernel adapt dynamically to different hardware?

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@DJBase

Well, I take it that you don't like this idea then?

Quote:

Pegasos is dead

Its growth has indeed stopped, hence it won't become any bigger than what it is today. But there are still a lot of pegs out there, and in some very interesting places as well (the Freescale tech center in China, a few universities, many developer communities, and god knows where) that could be interesting for an OS developer to reach. And if it gets AURA, then maybe you won't look at it as a point of sale by itself, but more like "added value for free"!

Quote:

Pegasos8641D and TetraPower is stopped

I would say "on hold for the moment but not necessarily abandoned". AFAIK this is mainly due to negotiation with the CPU manufacturers about terms and conditions. These things can change.

Quote:

EFIKA is no desktop

So what, don't you think I don't know what the Efika is? The Efika will have more impact and play a far greater role for Genesi than the Pegasos ever did! Not to mention its upcoming derivates.

But I'm afraid you kind of missed the whole point with my post! The post wasn't about Genesi motherboards. There *are* coming new boards from Genesi, but the point is that AURA will be a product *by itself*, just like v1 of their firmware. See the Genesi products page.

@tonyw

Quote:

So how is the hardware handled? Do the two boards have the same NB and SB? Or does the QNX kernel adapt dynamically to different hardware?

The same way motherboards are handled on the PC, the firmware sets them up and the operating system doesn't have to touch them.

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@tonyw

Quote:

So how is the hardware handled?

By AURA as it seems.

Quote:

Do the two boards have the same NB and SB?

The boards couldn't possibly be more different; not a single similarity exist on them (well, except the POWER instruction set in the CPU's (and AFAIK, AURA is not even locked to this particular CPU instruction set, but that is a side track in this context )).

Quote:

Or does the QNX kernel adapt dynamically to different hardware?

If I understand this correct, the QNX only deals with the AURA interface. Adapt your OS for AURA and it runs on all AURA hardware.

Is this some sort of Bios similar to Phoenix, MrBios etc?

Is there any AURA BIOS for AmigaOne, PowerMac, Daystar, PowerComputing, BeBox, Amiga PowerPC accelerators or x86 PC?

There are new standards by AMD (Torrenza) and Intel (Geneseo) to put POWER 7 / PowerPC 405 CPU on ordinary PC board. Will Aura BIOS support the new standards?

@takemehomegrandma

No, the idea of AURA is good but I don't see a decent hardware for it or will it ported to x86 boards as-well? I mean Linux is a pain on Pegasos or EFIKA because its slow and PowerPC isn't well supported too. MorphOS/OS4 are fast but missing too much apps. AURA even doesn't support all Genesi products.

@DJBase

Quote:

will it ported to x86 boards as-well?

Why not? And why stop there?

Quote:

AURA even doesn't support all Genesi products.

AFAIK it hasn't been released yet.

http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2007/07/aura-is-system-enablement.html

@takemehomegrandma

Does BBRV pays you to advertise every time he came up with something in his blog?

And to be 'ontopic' this has nothing to do with OS4, but very clever trick to include into the name. The operating systems job is to create an independent layer between the hw and applications. Don't have to reinvent the wheel, this aura thing looks very nice but somewhere you must always have to crate the connection between the apps and the hw. Do you know what HAL is for?

IMHO this idea is just as useless as the EFIKA in 2007.

@takemehomegrandma

IMHO such a system is great as long as youre not using hardware banging stuff like 3D games, video cut systems, demo scene apps and some other tools written mainly in assembler and C/C++

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@Chip

Quote:

this aura thing looks very nice but somewhere you must always have to crate the connection between the apps and the hw. Do you know what HAL is for?

This seems to be a HAL between the OS and the HW, hence QNX (for instance, as seen above) is ported once (adapted for AURA) and can then run on *any* AURA enabled hardware. I think the keywords here is "time to market", and this goes both for HW developers (like ACube) and (also OS developers to a degree, at least "small" OS's like OS4 and MorphOS).

@cHaOs667

Quote:

cHaOs667 wrote: @takemehomegrandma IMHO such a system is great as long as youre not using hardware banging stuff like 3D games, video cut systems, demo scene apps and some other tools written mainly in assembler and C/C++

Isn't direct hardware banging by applications illegal in most OS's? And I can't think of no 3D games or video editing software that I know is banging the hardware directly, at least not post Amiga classic and on this side of the millennium shift.

But when it comes to OS's running on AURA I don't think one excludes the other; I *think* the OS *can* access the hardware if needed. At least that was surely possible in v1 of Smart Firmware. But I think the whole point is that this should *not* be necessary. It seems to work fine for QNX, the *premiere* RTOS out there...

@takemehomegrandma

If you port an OS, it doesn't mean you have to rewrite the whole thing. You just need to fix the HAL and add the missing drivers ( if there is any ) and woala. Same amount of time needed as for creating the changes in AURA.
Anyway, this AURA thing is already available and known as: VMWARE. Nothing new.

Last edited by Chip on 16-Jul-2007 at 09:22 AM.

Hi Chip,

Actually, this is VMware: EFIKA Open Client Demonstration.

You can look beyond the video for more information and a useful tool here: EFIKA Open Client - VDI Total Cost of Ownership Calculator.

VMware and AURA are different products based on different concepts. We will publish more on AURA soon.

Sincerely,
R&B

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@bbrv

It looks more like Remote Desktop system to me, nothing new, but I guess that where most of your costumers are.

VMware is emulator that does not run remote, just typical hardware emulator.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

VMware is not an emulator, it's a virtual machine.

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@Chip

Quote:

Chip wrote: @takemehomegrandma If you port an OS, it doesn't mean you have to rewrite the whole thing. You just need to fix the HAL and add the missing drivers ( if there is any ) and woala. Same amount of time needed as for creating the changes in AURA. Anyway, this AURA thing is already available and known as: VMWARE. Nothing new.

But this is all development which has to be done by the OS developers. Consequently MOS/OS4 (taking the two most relevant examples) would have to do all the hard work to adapt their individual HALs to any new board.
Also, this work would have to be done by each OS dev team. (OS4, MOS, QNX, Linux, etc) - duplication of work and effort with the end user waiting to be drip-fed each OS.

With this AURA scenario, the hardware manufacturers can just decide to port AURA to their Motherboard and have instant access to all the AURA compatible OSes - the end user does not have to wait for each devteam to complete their HAL support, and there is no duplication of effort.

This sounds like a great idea, assuming I understand it correctly.

I wonder if there are any performance overheads...

EDIT - fixed typo

Last edited by Boot_WB on 16-Jul-2007 at 04:30 PM.

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@takemehomegrandma

I was thinking way back in the days of Autoconfig TM, (plug and play for Amiga), the concept was easy, and the kernel was the BIOS, the firmware on the upgrade cards where the drivers, no files/drivers need to be installed.

I always liked that design because OS does not need to wait for the BIOS, and the drivers are loaded when hardware is plugged in.

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