Ok, I asked this question on A.o without any answer, so I'm asking it on the Amiga Fanboiz site. It appears that the XMOS processors arenot capable of floating point, communicate with the main board at speeds less than USB and have 64K of ram on board. The also appear capable of burning out you motherboard if you connect a voltage source to them while they are plugged into your computer. So I guess my question is what can an average user use XMOS for?

@persia

Then you add a floating point co-processor.

Well that FPGA on the SAM board has proved to be a big hit so who knows....

@NovaCoder

There's an FPGA on my Sam?

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Yes, apparently it's got an FPGA Lattice XP with 80 pin I/O expansion connector!

Which OS4.x makes no use of :(

Hopefully they'll do better with the XMOS on the X1000.

Undoubtedly this will be one of the first applications for the XCore chip (Xena). The Xorro slot will serve the important task of driving a circle of LEDs, just like in the video.

@Trev

Quote:

Trev wrote: @NovaCoder There's an FPGA on my Sam?

Look for a Lattice chip on the board. IIRC, this was intended for an industrial customer, not Amiga OS 4.

Hans

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@Hans

A SID chip....nice

Anyway, there's also this blurb for people who want to know more.

@NovaCoder

yes now OS4.x makes no use of it but I'm sure some one or company will come up with a clever use for it one day

Last edited by klx300r on 23-Feb-2010 at 05:24 AM.

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@NovaCoder

The reason OS4 makes no use of the FPGA on the Sam boards is that it is not possible to program the FPGA in-circuit through software. Hopefully this will not be the issue with the X1000.

@Trev

Quote:

Trev wrote: @NovaCoder There's an FPGA on my Sam?

Some sams were shipped without the fpga, like mine.

EDIT: I think I have Rev.C, look for your own.

Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 23-Feb-2010 at 08:01 AM.

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@persia

>communicate with the main board at speeds less than USB

That's true with the developer boards (that connect to USB). Do not mix them up with Xena.
To me it seems that the Xilinx chip is on the nemo board to handle the connection to the X-Core.
If more bandwidth is needed, then a bridge card can be used. A card that connects xorro and the inline PCIx.

>The also appear capable of burning out you motherboard if you connect a voltage source to them while they are plugged into your computer.

Not related to x1000 that has X-Core already on board.

People can burn any board by connecting insane voltages to I/O pins.

The industry has found X-Core to be pretty usefull chip. Only the future will tell what use Amigans will build around it.

Some of these should be doable with the help of the X-Core: http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=27379&forum=33
(with or without expansion on the Xorro slot)


For self studies: http://www.xmos.com/technology/xcore

Last edited by KimmoK on 23-Feb-2010 at 08:50 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 23-Feb-2010 at 08:45 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 23-Feb-2010 at 08:42 AM.

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@persia

Every process which can be addressed to the XCore rather than the CPU would be great.

Problem is that the onboard XCore is the slowest one of the three and its true that in general .. it is slow with low capabilities!

But it seems that Xorro might be a way to overcome this. If you can add a card with several XCores (at maxed out speed) on the fast bus then we can see interested projects appearing.

Honestly I would love to able able to run *smoothly* 8 different progies created by Hollywood and then loading the cpu with heavier processes (e.g. 720p playback + blender + OWB etc).

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The XMOS chip will find its uses, I'm sure. Some developer will find a use for it. Some users will find a use for it, some won't.

What is XMOS on the X1000 good for?
It is for whatever we make it do. We are creative, we'll make it do things no one ever thought it could do, things no one has yet used that chip for, things no one has yet thought of.

Look to our past, our tradition. Look to all of the strange purposes we found for the custom chips and expansion slots on the Amigas we've had. Parallel ports were for Printers, we used them for sound samplers and networking. Sound chips were for sound, we used them for random number generation, Morse code, packet radio. Who could have predicted what we've done before? Who can predict what uses we'll find for the X1000?

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@persia

IMHO the XMOS is primarily used for marketing. There will be no uses for that chip that cannot done by using an XMOS usb kit or a pci(e) card. It is an attempt to have something unique. The possibilities or limitations hve been chewed through in several threads already. All in all it seems as clever as adding a 8051 to a core i7 board.

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@Cool_amigaN

Quote:

Honestly I would love to able able to run *smoothly* 8 different progies created by Hollywood and then loading the cpu with heavier processes (e.g. 720p playback + blender + OWB etc).

My 1.5 GHz G4 often has more problems to do some hollywood things fluently (load often at about 100%) than to replay a 720p video (load about 70%).

Last edited by Zylesea on 23-Feb-2010 at 09:59 AM.

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@Cool_amigaN

Quote:

Some sams were shipped without the fpga, like mine.

That's wrong, all the Sam boards have a FPGA onboard, just check for U7 on your Sam.
What's missing on your board is the IO connector (J4)

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@persia
On the FPU thing, there are clear chances that the Xorro slot could be populated with a mini cluster of 2nd generation Xmos chips. While the latter are not defined yet, at the recent Xmos conference they clearly admitted they know about the FPU issue and rest assured it will be taken in consideration.

As for what the on board Xmos is good for here it goes: it is a playful little thing most programmers will love to tinker with and by doing so "out of fun" you inadvertely push down their throats (without notice ) how to program those things.
In short by having the Xmos on Board the Amiga programming community will be the only one that will be fluent in Xmos programming from the get go (something that can be exploited in many ways including the use of the aforementioned mini-cluster), having the thing as a "USB optional" had no chance of creating this beneficial situation.

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there are quite a few videos demoing what xmos could do on youtube, the "myxmos" channel http://www.youtube.com/user/MyXMOS has some intresting ones?

Developing a parallel computer for under $50?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgXefMKkzTw

It all sounds very intresting, its a shame that all this is completely over my head.

The only thing I would point out to Hyperion/a-eon is for how few very active amiga developers we have here now, should we really be tempting them away from updating and porting much needed apps and tools to the AmigaOS, should'nt all developers and resources be put into making the OS a more complete package before we go and start supporting another area of computing.

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@persia

Quote:

so I'm asking it on the Amiga Fanboiz site

And what did Amigans.net have to tell you then?



Quote:

So I guess my question is what can an average user use XMOS for

The answer is we don't know. Hyperion/A-Eon haven't been entirely clear about what it can do. We have had all sorts of ideas thrown around but not one concrete use yet. I would hope that A-EOn/Hyperion have some examples of 'cool stuff' to show us on launch. It would be pretty silly if they didn't.

I don't think the issues about frying the motherboard will be true - if they are then A-Eon are being monumentally stupid which - reading TrevorD's posts - is certainly not something they appear to be.

Wait and see - shouldn't be long now - then we'll have one band of people slag it off and another band try and have some fun with it and see what it can do.

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@all

Random conspiracy theory warning...!

Perhaps having Xcore on there was a requisite part of the X1000 hardware design deal.

A-Eon get XMOS to design the Nemo board at Bristol based mates rates...
XMOS get access to a small community of HW hackers, advertising on the back of AmigaOne X1000 and some immediate early sales...

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