I don't know about the rest of you, but until someone comes over to my house and slaps me in the face with a hand-delivered and hand-written affidavit stating that Freescale are ramping down their PowerPC (Power ISA) products and division, I am not prepared to connect the obvious dots that would lead me to come to that conclusion myself.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a head-shaped hole in my sand-pit in the back yard that is waiting for me to fit my head into it.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@NutsAboutAmiga, agami: nobody is talking about Freescale stopping production of PowerPCs. Like 68Ks and even 6800s, the production will not be stopped.

It's the EVOLUTION -> new micro-architecture that will be stopped. So, no more innovation. You'll have the same cores.

@NutsAboutAmiga

>I think if the production of PPC was stopped tomorrow
>there will be PPC chips to buy that is in some storage for a while

Freescale promise to have chips available for 10 years or so after release.
So, they need to have huge stock before stopping unless they simply go bankcrupt.

> there customers will need some time to adapt, maybe a year or more.

I think if I would start motheboard production today, Freescale would be my best bet to choose to be able to continue my niche production for 10 years.

((surely, in 10 years the product is seriously outdated as general purpose computer, but perhaps not outdated in some specific use, like A1200 as retro enternainment device today))

Other than the above...
Still keeping my eyes open for any positive news from freescale about future PPC cores, but so far nothing. Announced chips come available slowly. etc. but not much beside that.
-NGCore might be coming or not.
-20core e6500 chip might come or not
-web page keep on redirecting me to ARM and Chinese pages (hints me the very heavy focus on ARM etc)

Also it seems Verisilicon has not had huge success with 460core+OpenGL2.0 based SoC as it has not become generally available.

Fun chip for RPi kind of SBC builders is the single core T1014 with e5500 & 2D GFX out & PCIe & SATA etc. Might become available for some 30€ perhaps... Other offerings are the same as year ago.

Last edited by KimmoK on 21-Apr-2015 at 01:05 PM.

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

After google spy round about Freescale PPC future ...

2013 documents:
-We absolutely stay committed to our Power Architecture and our new e6500
core delivers an unmatched performance/power ratio for the years to come.
We continue to invest in this area.
-Layerscape is designed to be core agnostic to provide an abstraction layer
hiding the actual core choice. We will pick the right core for the right
segment/application in alignment with our customers and networking
expertise. Layerscape will see its first products mid/late 2013.
-ARM high end cores have been part of FSL portfolio for years and require
minimal incremental investment to leverage for Networking
-Freescale will use standard ARM offering where possible

NGC: MultiThreaded / higher SingleThread perf
LS2045P: (4core Power Architecture SoC)
LS3400P: (20core+hyperthreading e6500 based SoC)

2014 documents:
-"Freescale has infrastructure in place to support both Power and ARM"
-LS1 and LS2 - no Power cores mentoned
-LS3 - Power cores are in plan(s) for these

General mood is:
ARM, ARM, ARM, PPC, ARM, ARM... blah blah!

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

@KimmoK

What do you realistic expect?

@KimmoK

I would take everything Freescale announced pre March 2015 (when Freescale and NXP applied for SEC approval for a merger) with a huge pinch of salt. PPC development could very likely be shown the door in a post merger restructuring with a estimate of 1,500 layoffs in the first year and 2,200 in the following year(s).

It looks like they are going to be focus in on self driving cars and that type of CPU development is more then likely going to be ARM since they can leverage all the ARM development via license fees. The only competitor possible when considering capability and OEM cost would be Intel based and that's stretching it.

_________________
Dammy

@OlafS25

News what they do with their PPC line.
So far they say they continue with it but when reading between the lines, there is not much new coming.
(Their offerings should be usable for 10 years anyway, just not big new developments ...)

@damocles

PPC documents still get updated continuously, so the work continues. NXP and Freescale merger show it's effects late this year vs PowerPC. (it could mean pre-production state chips become discarded or something)

Not good development if we in future have only two architectures (ARM & x64) that see any progress.

Last edited by KimmoK on 15-May-2015 at 11:01 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 15-May-2015 at 11:00 AM.

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

@KimmoK

they will sell what they have as long as they make profit by it and do R&D for ARM and not invest in PPC. That was logically after they were sold to a ARM based company and talked about synergy. Synergy here means f.e. do development for both companies. PPC makes there no sense.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 15-May-2015 at 10:59 AM.

@KimmoK

On the other hand, neither NXP nor freescale necessary have "ARM development groups". ARM is a core designer who licenses their cores out to be included in ASICs. NXP and Freescale have ASIC designers who can take cores and pair them with peripherals to make SoCs. Freescale also have core designers who make new cores for their ASIC designers to pair with awesome peripherals.

Buying a company that does some things you already do and some you don't only to shut down everything you don't have already makes little sense to me. That would mean NXP bought Freescale just to shut down a competitor. The point of a take-over is growth, and that means they'll want to get all the things from Freescale that they didn't already have.

NXP don't have anything in the CPU market. Freescale have both ARM and PPC offerings that go way beyond NXPs experience (LS-A series, T-series, i.MX etc. All very good for their uses. But so far the LS-A requires double the number of cores compared to the T series to keep up. Not good news for AmigaOS derivatives until multicore support becomes a reality).

It's ultimately up to NXP how they play this, but even the most die-hard OS4 hater must surely realize that innovation would be stagnant if only Intel did desktop and only ARM did portable/embedded?

_________________
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.

@olegil

here we talk about PPC hardware (or better processors) and not "OS4"

in the 80s and 90s computer were (how I remember it) much more interesting than today where only few big platforms are left. That is also true for processor families. But that is not the topic, it is about big money and you need plenty of that to develop new processor generations. They have promised their shareholders to save money and it is basic economy where they will save money. If I had bought Freescale and make most of my money with ARM and think ARM is the future and Freescale has ARM and additionally another processor family that needs lots of money and has doubtful future then I would know what to do. That is logic decision and has nothing to do with "OS4 hate" or similar nonsense. That does not mean that no PPC processors will be produced, just that no new generations will be developed. And at some point (when it becomes unprofitable) the whole line will dropped finally. But that will certainly be still years in future,

@OlafS25

Repetition is not synergy.

Just saying.

_________________
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.

@olegil

that I write the same facts again?

Then you should not write "OS4 hater" nonsense either. Facts do not change by wishful thinking.

@OlafS25

No, I mean that NXP buying Freescale to consolidate on what they're already good at makes no sense. The ony thing that Freescale has that NXP doesn't, is application processors (ARM/PPC). On the MCU side they've got identical offerings already (by that I mean that if I were to mention a core, a speed and 5-6 interfaces available on the SoC you wouldn't be able to make a 100% sure guess if I meant a chip from NXP or Freescale).

So they can consolidate on the MCU things, no need to keep two competing development teams. But on the higher performance stuff NXP really don't have ANYTHING to bring to the table. No PCIe, no GigE, certainly no 10G in any form. There can be no synergy here, as far as I can tell.

_________________
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.

@olegil

Quote:

Not good news for AmigaOS derivatives until multicore support becomes a reality).

It's a reality for some already.

Quote:

It's ultimately up to NXP how they play this, but even the most die-hard OS4 hater must surely realize that innovation would be stagnant if only Intel did desktop and only ARM did portable/embedded?

Yet Intel is hot on the mobile market CPU and ARM is coming to traditional desktop via AMD. That's enough powerful and cheap CPUs to keep me happy for CPU choices for a long time to come. I don't see any signs of stagnation, just the opposite.

As a long ago PPC proponent let me tell you this, if you want to find who's hands are stained with PPC's blood, your going to have to dig up Jobs for a look see. It's just been a matter of time before it fades from production. That time might have come in a merger of the last company who cared about PPC.

_________________
Dammy

@olegil

oh ok I understand

Yes certainly they bought Freescale to get stuff they had not themselves already and to be bigger because bigger means automatically more competitive in such a market. PPC makes no sense for me there, at least if it needs additional infrastructure and staff for R&D and so on. By cutting R&D and concentrating it on one family you can immediately save money. Commodore did that too at the end (not a wise decision).

Nevertheless processors will be produced as long as they can make money with it so the situation for "OS4" is save for some time. But all who dream of "world power" based on PPC and OS4 should rethink that part (just a joke). On the long run the situation would become worse of course and the same will happen some day like with the processor used in X1000. But here we certainly talk about a more distant future.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 15-May-2015 at 11:35 AM.

@OlafS25

The way I see it, freescale has these families (ascending max performance):
ARM MCU
Coldfire MCU
ARM SoC
PPC SoC

NXP has this:
ARM MCU

So for there to be synergy, the ARM MCU business needs to consolidate, that is they need to (as a minimum) work towards a common goal. Cutting people here shouldn't have any long term downsides. Remember that SDKs is a big part of the cost involved as well.

(MCU = flash/SRAM-based, SoC = external storage. Both have internal peripherals, unlike x86/x64)

The thing is, ARM isn't competing with PPC on the highest performance stuff yet. The CEOs of Freescales customers are asking for ARM because that's what their shiny new smartphone has (a previous CEO of ours once insisted that we should use CE instead of Linux for our embedded webservers. We had a 486-based SoC at the time and were replacing this with an ARM. Needless to say noone took him very seriously after that). But when you start comparing the numbers you see that there's still a huge gap in performance.

On the other hand, the LS family was all about reusing cores they had experience with and redoing the peripherals with fewer bottlenecks, so for simple through-put numbers an LS2085A can beat a T2080 easily. However, once you start putting some processing in the datapath it's gonna struggle. This is why I'm still hoping for an LS-P family. (yes, LS doesn't mean ARM. The A at the end means ARM).

_________________
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.

@olegil

>The CEOs of Freescales customers are asking for ARM because that's what their shiny new smartphone has



PPC should be renamed as PowerARMchitecture.
(sales: "it's a RISC chip just like ARM, only more Powerfull, same code compiles, though...")


((some years back it was fun to say "I run my desktop on the same SoC we use for embedded device at work"... ))

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

@olegil

they are selling solutions to customers and these customers choose between available hardware. For desktop you have X86/X64 already, for mobile you have ARM. X86/X64 is really big money, Intel is a giant with lots of dollars in R&D. Where does PPC fit there in future? It cannot be produced in large enough numbers to compete by price compared to ARM and it cannot beat X64 processors by performance. It is (in todays world) between all chairs. Of course there is POWER8 still but besides IBM who has interest in that? And a-eon is a little too small for them to be interesting or relevant I guess . So PPC is on the final slow demise now but that does not mean that you will not get them in next years. Just they are more expensive and slower than alternatives.

As I wrote they will produce anything as long as there is enough need for it and they can make money. Just no R&D.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 15-May-2015 at 12:13 PM.

@KimmoK

I guess using "ARM" is protected somehow

@olegil

Quote:

The thing is, ARM isn't competing with PPC on the highest performance stuff yet.

Pity 7-CPU ARM chart hasn't been updated in awhile, still shows Tegra K1 vs Tegra X1 which is nVidia's latest.

http://7-cpu.com/

Want to compare 970MP's cost vs ARM?

_________________
Dammy