@WolfToTheMoon

Yes, you're right - "99,9 % of OS4 users have some kind of a PC or MAC too"
I use my Amiga for fun and games and don't really use it for video editing, like it was used for many years ago cheaply. That's not to say others wouldn't. I think this simply comes down to a matter of choice for people.

While this roadmap is not very detailed and offers a hint of what's to come, many people would love to have as much memory, cpu power, video options, etc, etc as possible because of what you could do with you Amiga. I NEVER get just what I would need for a computer; I always build mine with the best and most of what's available that I can afford at the time. It's because it's what I want. Do I really need a PC with 64 GB of 1866 ram? Nope, but I got it because I can and it was a reasonable price. Same applies here.

Now I do hope that the next batch of hardware comes with the following (Standard):

- 4GB Ram or more
- Radeon Card Support up to X290 (With 3D)
- 2TB or more HDD
- 3.0 USB
- SATA III
- 5000 DPI Mouse
- Logitech Type Gaming Keyboard and/or Video Editing Keyboards
- 500 W or greater PSU
- Built in Sound Blaster type X-FI card with HD output

Now I do realize this is asking a lot, but hey, one can only hope or ask for it right? Thanks all.

Ed

_________________
Amiga 1200 - ACA 1233 68030 128MB Ram
8GB CF With tons of Classics

AmigaOne X5000

Raspberry PI 400 - PiMiga 1.5
"That which doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger" - Someone important, but I forgot who

@cdimauro

Quote:

Except cases like these, you'll not see new 64-bit applications that can freely run in a 64-bit address space AND be able to "collaborate" (share resources, primarily) with the old 68K and PowerPC software, included the o.s., like it happens now.

My point about 64-bit wasn't this. My point was using the latest 64-bit as that should be easier to source than an old 32-bit CPU. And also provide a forward thinking path.

After all, if the X1000 developers were thinking only of the current limitations of AmigaOS, they wouldn't have put a dual core 64-bit CPU on the board!

You could then argue that OS4 won't be running 64-bit applications or make use of the other core and you'd be right. Except for Linux. So what? If it's possibly cheaper then use it.

OS4 itself can make use of 64-bit registers. And in theory 68K and current OS4 software can be sandboxed in 32-bit space. Although it seems silly to sandbox OS4 apps when I thought this would have been handled in a new API for OS4 only. It just seems silly to me to have two versions of OS4, one a native OS3 clone and the other a new modern AmigaOS4.

Linux comes into this. According to the Linux CDs, somehow Linux has a 64-bit PPC kernel, but works with standard 32-bit applications. That is, one CD covers both 32-bit and 64-bit PPC, namely the kernel. Userspace apps somehow run on either 32-bit or 64-bit kernel. Well that's how it looks. Perhaps some insight there into how it's done.

Last edited by Hypex on 03-Feb-2014 at 12:30 PM.

@KimmoK

Quote:

Everywhere, almost. ;)

Then why is it so hard for us to get it and why so many PPC is dead threads?

Quote:

Everybody use them daily... (especially if they use cell phones)

PPC is in a cell? I thought they used ARM?

Quote:

Freescale T208x T4xxx chips have Altivec and 4...12 cores and I think they are available as samples for system designers.

Maybe they should source some samples. That would be enough to satisfy a batch of AmigaOne boards.

Quote:

And also modern POWER chips have Altivec/VMX, unless I'm mistaken.

That would make the next generation of AmigaOnes look like it is using old CPU. Or look like it is embedded which would compete with a Sam.

Quote:

You got it wrong. It's ARM. ;)

I meant on the desktop.

Quote:

(so far Intel has been strongly only on desktop/laptop)

They do make embedded chips. But there are PCs in kiosk boxes and pokie machines. Fridges with internet screens. Can't keep away.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Last but not least, Apple's ARM64 ISA is different from ARM's one, because they changed the pointers "meaning" to introduce some very interesting and useful things. 64-bit pointers only give 8GB of virtual address (which NOW is quite "enough" for anypne), leaving the remaining bits to be used as garbage collector's objects reference counting, plus quick data type check, and some other stuff.

This sounds like a bad idea. It sounds just like pointer typing which got Apple into trouble on 68K Why would they do that again? Apple cripped the 68K MAc address space by utilising the upper 8-bits for OS info leaving only 24-bits for the address and no upward 32-bit path.

IIRC this was part of the reason Apple had to dump the real Mac OS to get proper multitasking. Replace it with OSX. Apple employed some Amiga developer to get multitasking into Mac OS but after trying he said it was a lost cause, if memory serves.

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

That is not the biggest issue, the missing CIAA, CIAB, Paula, Alice chips is bigger issue, besides some of ExecBase structure are now forbidden to read from according to AmigaOS4.0 SDK.

Then that's not a software issue, that is a hardware issue. And games should only have problems. If OS software has problem then it is not written to be correctly AmigaOS friendly or it relies on banging hardware.

Last edited by Hypex on 03-Feb-2014 at 12:32 PM.

Quote:

Hypex wrote: PPC is in a cell? I thought they used ARM?

Cell processors have PPC. Oh, wait, you were talking about cell phones :D.

Quote:

Last but not least, Apple's ARM64 ISA is different from ARM's one, because they changed the pointers "meaning" to introduce some very interesting and useful things. 64-bit pointers only give 8GB of virtual address (which NOW is quite "enough" for anypne), leaving the remaining bits to be used as garbage collector's objects reference counting, plus quick data type check, and some other stuff.

Using the upper bits of 64 bit pointers would only be a problem when moving to 128 bit addressing (128 bit processors). I could mention about how much memory that would address and how unnecessary and wasteful it would be but some marketing genius will probably be contemplating it in a couple of years and then the next thing you know cell phones, cars and even the toaster will be 128 bit. A couple of die shrinks and 128 bit will be a performance enhancement up to twice as fast.

Quote:

This sounds like a bad idea. It sounds just like pointer typing which got Apple into trouble on 68K Why would they do that again? Apple cripped the 68K MAc address space by utilising the upper 8-bits for OS info leaving only 24-bits for the address and no upward 32-bit path. IIRC this was part of the reason Apple had to dump the real Mac OS to get proper multitasking. Replace it with OSX. Apple employed some Amiga developer to get multitasking into Mac OS but after trying he said it was a lost cause, if memory serves.

As I recall, the 24 bit addressing was a problem when the 68020 came out. However, it was fixed (made 32 bit clean) pretty early and I would expect had nothing to do with the abandonment of MacOS or the 68k. MacOS did add cooperative multitasking which Apple deemed good enough at the time. Preemptive multitasking must not have been a big factor in computer sales early on or the Amiga would have come out on top.

Last edited by matthey on 02-Feb-2014 at 03:49 PM.
Last edited by matthey on 02-Feb-2014 at 03:49 PM.

@edponpon

>- 4GB Ram or more
You could add that much (and maybe more) to curently supported HW, won't help much with a 31Bit OS

>- Radeon Card Support up to X290 (With 3D)
To what end ? Noone is gonna port current games to alt.os. Better have full drivers for cheaper passive card

>- 2TB or more HDD
Just buy such a HD ...

>- 3.0 USB
*shrug* can be had as PCI(e) card

>- SATA III
Nice if it's in the SoC, otherwise just buy a card...

>- 5000 DPI Mouse
>- Logitech Type Gaming Keyboard and/or Video Editing Keyboards
I'd rather have them not include any mouse or keyboard as these most of the time turn out to be utter crap!

>- 500 W or greater PSU
You got that wrong by 180° !!
- 50W or smaller PSU (that can still support the full system) !!

>- Built in Sound Blaster type X-FI card with HD output
Not sure what thats supposed to mean, pretty sure i don't need it.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@KimmoK

[Quote] I wouldnt mind i7 levels of power with 37watts power consumption[/Quote]

Umm.... lol, perhaps an i7 is for yoi then. Clearly i7 class performance, and fits the power envelope (be at it by a margin actually).
Latest i7 cpus scale down to single digit levels of consumption (although isnt so great at 4+ghz)

Last edited by fishy_fis on 02-Feb-2014 at 04:12 PM.

@Hypex

I'm quite sure your memory serves you wrong !

Apples could hold >24MB of RAM by 1993 and the ROM had been "32Bit clean" since 1989. Long before OSX and even before switching from 68k to PPC.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Hypex

Not really. Commodore endorsed poking and peeking EXecBase directly.

_________________
Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@matthey

When you go 64bit, the executable increase in size, etch instruction takes a lot more space. The result is that programs are larger and takes longer to load from disk. While in clock speed has not increased and so the program is not running any faster.

* What we can get from going 64bit is a clean Power ISA 2.05, no illegal instruction hits, no slowdowns because of it.
* We can also get program using more then 4Gbytes.
* Memory copy routines can possibly be speeded up.

AmigaOS Next Generation or OS5.x: ExecBase can be cleaned up, obsolete stuff can be dropped, and more secure ways to deals whit List and massaging can be implemented.
Sheard Memory can be cleaned up, Sheard memory does not need to available all the time, it can be changed to be on a request bases, this will improve memory protection.

To keep legacy to AmigaOS4.1 is to moved into virtual box, where its happy believing its the only OS running.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 02-Feb-2014 at 07:24 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 02-Feb-2014 at 06:23 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 02-Feb-2014 at 06:22 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 02-Feb-2014 at 06:16 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 02-Feb-2014 at 06:12 PM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: When you go 64bit, the executable increase in size, etch instruction takes a lot more space. The result is that programs are larger and takes longer to load from disk. While in clock speed has not increased and so the program is not running any faster.

x86 -> x86_64 increased about 15% in executable size. This is a variable length encoding though. Does anyone know how much code size will increase with 64 bit PowerPC? If there is enough free encoding space in the 32 bit fixed instructions then it may not be as much although executables tend to grow because of alignment restrictions for 64 bit as well. There ends up being a lot of wasted caches and memory as Cesare Di Mauro pointed out. Not to mention that latencies are increased and can only partially be hidden. This can be offset by die shrinks but PowerPC isn't keeping up.

Quote:

* What we can get from going 64bit is a clean Power ISA 2.05, no illegal instruction hits, no slowdowns because of it. * We can also get program using more then 4Gbytes. * Memory copy routines can possibly be speeded up.

I think 64 bit makes a lot of sense for the PowerPC. Part of the problem is that PowerPC is 20-40% less dense than the 68020+ so it needs a lot of memory. The lack of unaligned load/store on the PowerPC also increases code size. If moving to 64 bit PowerPC increased executable size by 15% like the x86 then executables would start to get really big. That's the problem with going big and it may make sense for servers and workstations. On the other hand, an enhanced 32 bit 68k CPU should be able to improve the already excellent code density of the 68k by 5%-15% resulting in executables that could be as little as 2/3 the size of 64 bit PowerPC (64 bit PowerPC executable could be 50% larger than 68k). A Gigabyte of memory is already a huge amount on a 68k Amiga. The 68k has unaligned load/store, doesn't need instructions to pre-fetch memory and the 68060 doesn't need an unrolled loop for maximum performance of a memory copy. Theoretical performance and maximum clock speeds of an enhanced 68k would be a little lower than the PowerPC but it would perform better with mediocre and poor quality code which brings the PowerPC to a crawl. Yes, 64 bit makes sense for the PowerPC but does 64 bit PowerPC make sense for the Amiga?

Quote:

AmigaOS Next Generation or OS5.x: ExecBase can be cleaned up, obsolete stuff can be dropped, and more secure ways to deals whit List and massaging can be implemented. Shared Memory can be cleaned up, Shared memory does not need to available all the time, it can be changed to be on a request bases, this will improve memory protection. To keep legacy to AmigaOS4.1 is to moved into virtual box, where its happy believing its the only OS running.

With all the 64 bit problems, virtual boxing, development time spent, lack of new software to support the new OS and lack of a PowerPC future with no guarantees that the AmigaOS will come out anything like it was before, it might actually be better and cheaper to develop an enhanced 68k CPU.

Last edited by matthey on 03-Feb-2014 at 03:43 AM.

@Hypex

>>Everybody use them daily... (especially if they use cell phones)
>PPC is in a cell? I thought they used ARM?

PPC in every cell (almost).
In GSM era there was i960 in most cells (cellular Base Stations).
In 3G era PPC took almost 100% of that market.
In LTE/4G era it seems MIPS has gained some foothold.
(last time I was at Base Station production lines (2012), 1/5 of the boards produced had multicore MIPS, 4/5 of the boards had single core PPC. With QorlQ, the PPC might make sense again...(advantage beyond the number of cores). If ARM64 bits prove to be any good, perhaps those can be used as well.)

So ... everybody using cell phone for other than offline gaming/photographing, most likely use PPC chip.

Last edited by KimmoK on 03-Feb-2014 at 08:17 AM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@matthey

20-40% wouldn't cause a PPC to need "a lot of memory". You can't get 32MB of memory these days, that was considered a lot 20 years ago.

A bigger concern is graphics, those are 32 bit now, in the old days we would be comfortable with 16, would make do with 8 and would run out of memory when using 24/32

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@matthey

Quote:

Cell processors have PPC. Oh, wait, you were talking about cell phones :D.

It's funny as I re-read what I wrote and the sane came to mind!

Quote:

Using the upper bits of 64 bit pointers would only be a problem when moving to 128 bit addressing

I think it's a problem when you max the RAM out in the address space (it's happened before) and in any case with an MMU you don't want to confuse it. There's also a certain AmigaOS structure that uses the top but for a flag reducing the max size to 31 bits. But since it's used by an old Allocation function I doubt it has any impact on OS4.

Quote:

As I recall, the 24 bit addressing was a problem when the 68020 came out.

Yeah, Apple made use of that smaller address sapce with their own OS hack.

Quote:

MacOS did add cooperative multitasking which Apple deemed good enough at the time

I had a black Mac OS9 PowerBook and it was very Amigalike. GUI. Auto-floppy. RAM Disk. And I swore it had preemptive multiasking. I could not tell the difference! But it was way better than the Windows 3.1 crap MS brought out. You could tell that really didn't multitask.

Quote:

Preemptive multitasking must not have been a big factor in computer sales early on or the Amiga would have come out on top.

No, but who knew what it was? There was a thread here where it linked to some YouTube page where some guys mother tested retro machines under emulation. She was kind of cute. LOL. Anyway she tested the Amiga and didn't like it. Wasn't impressed by the GUI and found screen depth gadgets confusing when they don't do anytihng. Plus she kept going on about how the floppy noise would have driven her nuts in the office. Of course the reasl thing sounds different, and only works when is being used; and most of all a real office would have attached a harddisk. But these are first impressions.

Quote:

olegil wrote: 20-40% wouldn't cause a PPC to need "a lot of memory". You can't get 32MB of memory these days, that was considered a lot 20 years ago.

Add an additional 15% to that for 64 bit PowerPC (x86 -> x86_64 is about 15%) and now you could be close to 50% larger than 68k. That does start to make a difference in total memory usage but memory is cheap these days as you say. Speed is more important but the 64 bit PowerPC could need 50% more caches than the 68k too. Program load times could take up to 50% longer (not counting data). Going the "big" route is powerful with enough resources like the Intel i series but is PowerPC getting that? It looks to me like the PowerPC is throttled to lower wattages and the ISA forever changed (with instructions dropped from hardware) for embedded markets and particular applications. The PowerPC is more difficult than most modern processors to develop for and to maximize performance yet the AmigaOS 4 users want a 64 bit PowerPC AmigaOS without any slowdowns. Good luck.

Quote:

A bigger concern is graphics, those are 32 bit now, in the old days we would be comfortable with 16, would make do with 8 and would run out of memory when using 24/32

I do use 16 bit (65536 colors) gfx on the Workbench of my 68060@75MHz AmigaOS 3.9 Amiga. It doesn't look bad and it's noticeably faster than 32 bit. I may loose a few Megabytes of memory with the gfx, AmigaOS and PFS buffers but 128 MB of memory still seems like a lot. With 1 GB of memory and a 68060@500MHz, I'm confident I could use a 32 bit Workbench comfortably without having to worry about memory and with little slow down. I hear PowerPC Amiga owners complaining with 1 GB of memory and they are concerned that 2-4GB of memory won't be adequate. I guess that's progress with 64 bit PowerPC next. I can still remember the promises of the Motorola guys at a certain St. Louis developer meeting as they guaranteed PowerPC was the future because of it's huge advantages. I wonder how many of them are still employed by Motorola? Instead, Motorola will soon be a Chinese company and Freescale is now licensing chip designs and ISAs from competitors.

@Kronos

Quote:

I'm quite sure your memory serves you wrong !

Almost, but I was on the right track. I checked my source, an old email from Olaf, where he shares a story. Short of the story being Apple hired Amiga guru Carl Sassenrath to bring multitasking to Mac OS since he demonsrated it could be done with AmigaOS. Apparently he found the internals of Mac OS to be such a dirty hack or kludge rather that he just eventually walked away as too many applications would break. And by comparison AmigaOS internals were squeaky clean.

And here we are...

Last edited by Hypex on 03-Feb-2014 at 01:43 PM.

@matthey

Quote:

I do use 16 bit (65536 colors) gfx on the Workbench of my 68060@75MHz AmigaOS 3.9 Amiga. It doesn't look bad and it's noticeably faster than 32 bit

I think that was my point.

Quote:

With 1 GB of memory and a 68060@500MHz, I'm confident I could use a 32 bit Workbench comfortably without having to worry about memory and with little slow down.

Unfortunately, there's no 68060@500MHz, the only thing that comes close is emulation.

Quote:

I hear PowerPC Amiga owners complaining with 1 GB of memory and they are concerned that 2-4GB of memory won't be adequate.

Most certainly NOT because of Workbench. Did you stop to think that when you get more CPU power you want to work on larger stuff and/or want to have more stuff open at a time? My Linux laptop here is running a 32 bit linux with 4GB of RAM, and I have currently used 2.5GB with just Chrome, LibreOffice, emacs, two pdf viewers and an xterm open. Of that, most is disk buffering, as the applications themselves only use 760MB memory.

$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       4075532    2537812    1537720          0     462300    1312360
-/+ buffers/cache:     763152    3312380
Swap:      6291452          0    6291452

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@matthey

Quote:

Does anyone know how much code size will increase with 64 bit PowerPC?

Each instruction remains 32-bits as is rigid for PowerPC. However, the increase appears when loading 64-bit values direct to register. Which on PowerPC is worse as it needs 5 serial instructions to do it. Four direct 16-bit loads and a swap. It doesn't have the luxury of CISC with one instruction folowwed by the full data word. One of the cons.

However, I think this can be work around by avoiding a direct load and just reading in from memory instead. Sure it's not from the cache and has more overhead in memory but reduces code size.

Addresses are less of a problem as they tend to use a base offset so that is loaded once and rest calculated off it. Provided the offsets are in 16-bit range.

@KimmoK

Quote:

PPC in every cell (almost).

With the demise of flip phones and the popular choice being Apple or Android these days is this still the case? In the two above example ARM is used and AFAIK both iOS and Android are locked to the ARM architecture.

I don't know if Windows mobile used Intel or of Motorola uses PowerPC in their phones, but them alongsaide the rest of the market; means it would be shrinking to ARM by comparison.

Last edited by Hypex on 03-Feb-2014 at 01:39 PM.