Click Here
home features news forums classifieds faqs links search
6071 members 
Amiga Q&A /  Free for All /  Emulation /  Gaming / (Latest Posts)
Login

Nickname

Password

Lost Password?

Don't have an account yet?
Register now!

Support Amigaworld.net
Your support is needed and is appreciated as Amigaworld.net is primarily dependent upon the support of its users.
Donate

Menu
Main sections
» Home
» Features
» News
» Forums
» Classifieds
» Links
» Downloads
Extras
» OS4 Zone
» IRC Network
» AmigaWorld Radio
» Newsfeed
» Top Members
» Amiga Dealers
Information
» About Us
» FAQs
» Advertise
» Polls
» Terms of Service
» Search

IRC Channel
Server: irc.amigaworld.net
Ports: 1024,5555, 6665-6669
SSL port: 6697
Channel: #Amigaworld
Channel Policy and Guidelines

Who's Online
36 crawler(s) on-line.
 134 guest(s) on-line.
 3 member(s) on-line.


 NutsAboutAmiga,  Rob,  retrofaza

You are an anonymous user.
Register Now!
 NutsAboutAmiga:  1 min ago
 retrofaza:  2 mins ago
 Rob:  2 mins ago
 _ThEcRoW:  11 mins ago
 OlafS25:  25 mins ago
 Gunnar:  32 mins ago
 Kremlar:  47 mins ago
 dirkzwager:  1 hr 13 mins ago
 clint:  1 hr 19 mins ago
 vox:  1 hr 25 mins ago

/  Forum Index
   /  Amiga OS4 Software
      /  Sam's ETA ?
Register To Post

Goto page ( Previous Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 Next Page )
PosterThread
umisef 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 30-Oct-2006 15:48:38
#41 ]
Super Member
Joined: 19-Jun-2005
Posts: 1714
From: Melbourne, Australia

@COBRA

Quote:
Why do you think there is no L2 instruction cache in modern CPUs?


Because the L2 cache is typically unified on modern CPUs (i.e. it is both data and instruction cache).

Believe me, you *don't* want to run a JIT compiler on an L2-less CPU. Not only does JIT-compiled code tend to be somewhat verbose (and thus easily exceeds L1 sizes), but you also end up fairly often needing to do translating (and *that* code will have dropped out of L1 quite handily).

Quote:
OS4 is not an embedded OS.


Better tell that to some people at Hyperion...

Quote:
which means inter-task communication is magnitudes of times slower than on OS4.


Except it isn't. Not when you actually look at the bigger picture.

In the bigger picture, any data passed from process A to process B will be accessed by process B (otherwise what's the point of passing it). That access will be at least as time consuming as the memory copy. In the case where you physically copy the data, you are likely to end up with the copy being in L1 or at least L2 cache (which might very well be considerably closer to the CPU than A's version). So typically, copy-and-access takes at most twice as much effort as access-the-reference. No "magnitudes" involved.

And then you start looking at what OS4 is actually running on. It's using PC133 memory at the moment; Sam (to get back on topic) will use DDR-266, but of course only 32 bits wide, so it takes twice as many transfers to fill a cache line. And that's it. No hardware whatsoever with DDR2, or 128 bit wide memory accesses, or even just really clever chipsets.
Thus, the purely theoretical top stream bandwidth of any OS4 hardware is 133MHz*8bytes, or just over 1GB/s. In reality, about 1/4 that for currently shipping hardware.

Meanwhile, QNX runs on recent systems. For example, my work just took delivery of an A$2000 (US$1,500) Core2 Duo system, which can bring in no less than 72 mlllion randomly picked 64 byte cachelines each second on one core, rising to 100 million cachelines when using both cores (or probably when streamlining the test program a bit more). Even on the one core, that's about 4.5GB/s worth of non-sequential memory reads (about 1/3 of the purely theoretical 12.8GB/s you get from DDR2-800 with 128 bit width). In the time a G4 A1 can read 64 bytes from RAM into cache, this box can (easily!) receive a 64 byte ethernet packet on its PCI-e dual GbE interface card, extract the sending IP, look up info about it in a hash table, look up the destination address in a hash-like table, apply fully configurable hierchical rate limiting (taking into account the information looked up) , update a variety of statistics, and forward the packet out through the network card's other port. And it then has a little time left over to do whatever else needs doing.

So no, in reality, message passing under QNX does not actually take twice as long as under OS4, simply because the memory interfaces on current (and announced) OS4 hardware are at least half a decade out of date compared to what QNX runs on. In reality, copying the message in QNX and the accessing the copy takes considerably less time than passing a pointer under OS4 and accesing the message in the sender's context.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
COBRA 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 30-Oct-2006 15:53:41
#42 ]
Super Member
Joined: 26-Apr-2004
Posts: 1809
From: Auckland, New Zealand

@Crumb

Quote:
No, I didn't. You should check your calculators...


You did, since you quoted a price excluding OS4 :) So according to your calculations it's still 200 EUR cheaper.

Quote:
The Sam is not low-end.


Depends on your definition of "low-end" :) Since it's lower performance and cheaper than any of the G3/G4-based boards made or going to be made, it's the low-end board in the Amiga market. Since our market is currently so small, making comparison to Mac/PC prices is pretty useless.

Quote:
So you think OS4 is superior to windows because when OS4 runs out of memory it will hang or display a "not enough memory" message instead of allowing you to swap out the apps you use less uh? The OS4 swap system is soooo "clever"


OS4 (at least the last public release) has no swap system implemented yet. Nevertheless I have only 256MB of RAM and I often run 5-6 different applications at the same time, I also had a play with GIMP, etc. and never even got close to running out of memory. Interesting, huh? :) How is it that if you have 256MB of RAM WinXP eats most of it straight after boot, even before any applications have been started? Do you still not see why it's completely useless to make comparison?

Quote:
Unfortunately as SAM440 is just vapourware we can't even get Linux speed benchmarks.


So then what's the point in making conclusions about performance?

Quote:
But as we don't have Sam440 it's the only similar test you can do.


You know perfectly well that there would be a huge speed difference, so it's not a similar test and is still completely useless.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
COBRA 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 30-Oct-2006 16:39:44
#43 ]
Super Member
Joined: 26-Apr-2004
Posts: 1809
From: Auckland, New Zealand

@umisef

Quote:
Believe me, you *don't* want to run a JIT compiler on an L2-less CPU.


I didn't say that the L2 cache does not improve performance, obviously it does, otherwise they would not put it into the bigger CPUs! What I was saying is that RAM speed counts just as much, because the translated code usually becomes considerably larger than your L2 cache so the fact that the Sam's memory bandwidth will be several times higher than the uA1 will make the missing L2 cache much less noticable. After all Petunia performs very well even on a CSPPC@180MHz (no L2 cache there either), it's actually been developed on one of those. But it's pretty pointless in speculating any further, let's get back to it when Samantha is out, with actual test results, I'm very interested myself.

I do not agree with your argument about OS efficiency, QNX's message passing will never compete with something like OS4's and their PPC kernel even uses Altivec (if available) to speed up the data copying, but it really shows when you want to exchange large amounts of information. Depends on what you're doing, really. Most embedded systems do not use Core2-Duo CPUs, but much lower-cost ones usually in the 10MHz-400MHz range with no L2 cache, often not even L1 cache. I'll give you an example, we're developing some telecommunication devices at Siemens. One project uses Embedded Linux on a 200MHz ARM CPU and they're having problems servicing an interrupt within 180 microseconds, they are unable to keep this requirements, while in my project we can easily do it in a much shorter time on a 10MHz $3 CPU using CMX RTOS (which has an AmigaOS-like message passing mechanism). PPC chips are also used in projects here, usually ranging from 40MHz chips to 400MHz. How would QNX perform on such a chip compared to OS4? You should only make comparison of OS'es on the same hardware.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Crumb 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 30-Oct-2006 17:29:55
#44 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Mar-2003
Posts: 2209
From: Zaragoza (Aragonian State)

@COBRA

Quote:
You did, since you quoted a price excluding OS4 :) So according to your calculations it's still 200 EUR cheaper.


You forget to add VAT and the 120Euros of OS4 to Sam440. Then the difference between both boards is just 120Euros

Quote:
Depends on your definition of "low-end"


Depends on real world, as you compete in the computer market, not in a fantasy imaginary world with rainbows, talking rabbits and teletubbies jumping in the hills.

On real world I can buy a motherboard+cpu+ram+gfx card much faster and cheaper (less than 200Euros) than Sam440. That is real world. And that is low end.

Quote:
Since our market is currently so small, making comparison to Mac/PC prices is pretty useless


Developing our custom hardware when there's faster and cheaper hardware out there is pretty useless

Quote:
OS4 (at least the last public release) has no swap system implemented yet. Nevertheless I have only 256MB of RAM and I often run 5-6 different applications at the same time, I also had a play with GIMP, etc. and never even got close to running out of memory.


Because you don't use big apps that need resources.

Quote:
OS4 (at least the last public release) has no swap system implemented yet


I know that. That's why you need more than 256MB to play Quake3 while a 128MB PC will be faster and won't need as much ram as you do.


Quote:
How is it that if you have 256MB of RAM WinXP eats most of it straight after boot, even before any applications have been started? Do you still not see why it's completely useless to make comparison?


You must have your WinXP badly configured because a fresh install of WinXP won't eat never 256MB.

You can't even open CSS web pages so what are you comparing? I can use Photoshop, Premiere, SoundForge and other apps with Windows and 512MB of ram without problems.

BTW, and unlike Sam440 I can put 1GB of ram on my machine and it will be cheap. And I bet that regardless of your satanized windows swap system I will be able to use professional apps and get work done faster than the fantasy Sam440.

If you run a decent mail program like rebbeca you won't eat much ram, just like if you use Opera you won't each as much ram as IExplorer. And you use LiteStep you won't eat as much ram as Explorer.

YAM can't show HTML mails. No decent Amiga Browser exists.

Just wait until any serious app is available to watch your memory decrease.

Or simply launch Quake3 with some memory hungry mod

Oh! you won't be able to play all mods without 512MB of ram.

Try to open 10 websites (something usual when you seek information) that use CSS, use some compiler, various long documents opened in an office suit, etc...

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
ironfist 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 30-Oct-2006 22:42:02
#45 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 26-Dec-2004
Posts: 770
From: Pegasos.org

COBRA:
Unless you know what you're talking about, listen to what
other people, like Crumb, tell you. He has told you what I
tell you now a few times already;

The price for the Pegasos 2 G4, 1 GHz has been 499 USD or
415 EUR + VAT for a very long time. Way more than a year.
It's nothing about selling off any "remaining stock". All
chips onboard can be replaced with RoHS versions and
the replacements are all pin-compatible.

However, they have other hardware to focus on at the moment..

Crumb:
"..various long documents opened in an office suit.."

Hehe!
What office suit?

Last edited by ironfist on 30-Oct-2006 at 10:42 PM.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
ChrisH 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 30-Oct-2006 23:58:17
#46 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 30-Jan-2005
Posts: 6679
From: Unknown

I find it sad that the prediction made by some people, that when we *finally* get some OS4 hardware some people would bash the specs/price, turns out to basically be true: It finally looks like we might get some hardware to run OS4 on (if you're a little optimistic:), after several years of NOTHING, and already people are bashing it, as if they'd rather have no hardware for OS4 at all! Truely the mind boggles.

Now sure, I don't want to run OS4 on lame-ass slow hardware any more than the next guy, but nothing could be slower than a Classic Amiga, with an L2-less Phase5 PPC card, that's held together by sellotape, string & a prayer.

No-one is FORCING anyone to buy a slow mobo. If you really don't like the speed of Samatha, or whatever, then feel free to WAIT EVEN LONGER for a better mobo. Personally speaking, I will be waiting until Samantha has been tested with OS4 apps, before deciding whether I will buy one or not.

_________________
Author of the PortablE programming language.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
umisef 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 30-Oct-2006 23:58:31
#47 ]
Super Member
Joined: 19-Jun-2005
Posts: 1714
From: Melbourne, Australia

@COBRA

Quote:
You should only make comparison of OS'es on the same hardware.


Why?

If you can buy a SAM board with OS4 for a certain amount of money, and I can buy an Aaeon Gene 8310 with QNX for that amount of money, then why should it be wrong to compare the two?

I find it quite telling that you make the above statement straight after comparing different OSs on different hardware. *AND* you are comparing a non-RTOS to a RTOS and seem surprised that the non-RTOS doesn't behave like a RTOS...

Quote:
PPC chips are also used in projects here, usually ranging from 40MHz chips to 400MHz. How would QNX perform on such a chip compared to OS4?


Right now, QNX would probably run on them, whereas OS4 won't. Clear advantage for QNX.

In theory, OS4 would have a lower message passing overhead. Not "magnitudes" lower, of course, but up to a factor of two (or even three, if your CPU is so embedded that the write part of the copy becomes significant). That's great. On the other hand, and I quote you here:

Quote:
OS4 is not an embedded OS.


So, if you were tasked with picking an OS to run on those PowerPC chips for an embedded project, would you even consider OS4? And if so, how would you feel about trying to justify its use to your superiors ("Let's use this OS, which isn't finished, is single-sourced (in the sense that each component is available only from a single source; That single source is not necesarily the same source for all components, though), doesn't currently run on our target hardware, is caught up in legal entanglements, has no history whatsoever of embedded use, and would need to be ported for us by a bunch of people who simply do not understand the concept of 'delivery date'. Oh, did I mention that it *only* runs on PPC?")?



 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
wegster 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 0:24:24
#48 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Nov-2004
Posts: 8554
From: RTP, NC USA

@ChrisH

Quote:
find it sad that the prediction made by some people, that when we *finally* get some OS4 hardware some people would bash the specs/price, turns out to basically be true: It finally looks like we might get some hardware to run OS4 on (if you're a little optimistic:), after several years of NOTHING, and already people are bashing it, as if they'd rather have no hardware for OS4 at all! Truely the mind boggles.


Not really. People have, or had, expectations and assumptions they used to come to their own conclusions. In the end, it's their $$ they will, or won't, be spending, so certainly have an opinion on the matter.

*shrug* I don't believe in _any_ hardware for OS4 until it's available for purchase, WITH OS4. Just too many variables to believe much of anything as 'set in stone.'

But, I still believe something low cost (< $500 USD for complete system, $300 even better) is what's needed to go past maybe 2x the current OS4 users at best..

_________________
Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
COBRA 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 0:35:33
#49 ]
Super Member
Joined: 26-Apr-2004
Posts: 1809
From: Auckland, New Zealand

@Crumb

Quote:
You forget to add VAT and the 120Euros of OS4 to Sam440. Then the difference between both boards is just 120Euros


I didn't forget that, the price for Sam we were talking about includes OS4 and VAT.

Quote:
Developing our custom hardware when there's faster and cheaper hardware out there is pretty useless


Is there fast and cheap hardware out there which can run OS4 or OS4 can be easily ported to it without any legal obstacles?

Quote:
BTW, and unlike Sam440 I can put 1GB of ram on my machine and it will be cheap. And I bet that regardless of your satanized windows swap system I will be able to use professional apps and get work done faster than the fantasy Sam440.


If you're so happy with your windows system, then I don't understand why you're wasting your time on AmigaWorld.net. Just enjoy windows and share your happy windows experiences with other windows users on the forums dedicated for that. I have a feeling that you come here just looking for trouble with this "my dick is bigger" (e.g. "my WinPC is better, faster, etc.") attitude.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
COBRA 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 1:06:50
#50 ]
Super Member
Joined: 26-Apr-2004
Posts: 1809
From: Auckland, New Zealand

@umisef

Quote:
If you can buy a SAM board with OS4 for a certain amount of money, and I can buy an Aaeon Gene 8310 with QNX for that amount of money, then why should it be wrong to compare the two?


It's not wrong to compare the two, but OS4 will be a far more efficient OS than QNX regardless of what you say, because it makes much better use of the available resources.

Quote:
I find it quite telling that you make the above statement straight after comparing different OSs on different hardware. *AND* you are comparing a non-RTOS to a RTOS and seem surprised that the non-RTOS doesn't behave like a RTOS...


Oh, would you have preferred me to make a comparison of Embedded Linux to CMX RTOS on the same 10MHz 16bit CPU, when Embedded Linux can't even achieve a low-enough latency on a 20 times faster 32bit CPU?

Quote:
So, if you were tasked with picking an OS to run on those PowerPC chips for an embedded project, would you even consider OS4?


If it's for the company, my choice would depend on the size of the project, and budget, but since I don't consider OS4 as an embedded OS, I would probably choose something like VxWorks or Integrity/VelOSity, since those are specifically designed for embedded, have a very good reputation and I have experience with them. But if the OS4 route would be cheaper then I would check if it's suitable for our requirements and may go with that instead.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Samwel 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 1:14:24
#51 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 7-Apr-2004
Posts: 3404
From: Sweden

@ChrisH

I agree.. Especially when you consider that Samantha is WAY less expensive
than µA1-C. It will probably deliver comparable performance even, but with much
better graphics performance.

I paid about 700¤ incl. VAT for my µA1-C, that included OS4, GFX, and RAM.
If Samantha is 450¤ incl. VAT with OS4, GFX, RAM it can only be called quite a good
deal. Btw that's with a way better gfx chip and double the RAM of µA1-C.
Also a 450¤ end price can only be called low end, here in Sweden anyway.
You could probably sell a complete system for less than 600¤ which is cheap.
Maybe not cheap when you consider price/performance ratio but cheap
nevertheless.

I won't say anything about the actual CPU performance though. I'm all for faster
hardware and will only buy a G4, or better, board as a upgrade to my µA1-C myself.

Last edited by Samwel on 31-Oct-2006 at 01:22 AM.

_________________
/Harry

[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Samwel 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 1:20:54
#52 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 7-Apr-2004
Posts: 3404
From: Sweden

@wegster

Quote:

But, I still believe something low cost (< $500 USD for complete system, $300 even better) is what's needed to go past maybe 2x the current OS4 users at best..


Yes I agree.. Or the other way around, hardware that kicks any PC's butt, like the
classics did.
Although (< 500$ may not be cheap enough for large sales. Maybe a price of
350-400$ would be required?

If we only had a good browser with full Java VM.. Then Amigas could be sold as
internet computers for libraries and/or internet cafés (what's this called in the US?)..

_________________
/Harry

[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Crumb 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 8:21:51
#53 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Mar-2003
Posts: 2209
From: Zaragoza (Aragonian State)

@Samwel

Quote:
If Samantha is 450¤ incl. VAT with OS4, GFX, RAM it can only be called quite a good


Samantha will cost more than 450Euros. If according to the developers of the board it costs around 400Euros WITHOUT OS4 and if you add a 16% of VAT that is 464Euros WITHOUT OS4. If according to COBRA OS4 costs 120Euros 464+120= 584Euros. If you paid 700Euros for your uA1, then it's just a difference of 116Euros between uA1 and Sam440.

That is according to the Sam440 developers (400Euros+VAT=464Euros) and COBRA's "insider" information of OS4 costing 120Euros.

But the performance of Sam440 won't be better. As Bernd Meyer has told us, Sam440 uses a 32bit memory bus so DDR memory won't help much, the speed with DDR at twice speed using a bus with half wide will be slightly slower than using a system with SDRAM (at least that's what happens with gfx cards) because latency is higher.

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
CodeSmith 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 8:27:52
#54 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3045
From: USA

@Crumb

According to COBRA,
Quote:
@wegster

Quote:
PS - if 500 Euros is for the board only, I see things continue to go in the wrong direction.


Target price for a 667MHz board with 256MB RAM + OS4 is 450 EUR + VAT. Note that the price of OS4 is around 120 EUR. This is considerably cheaper than the uA1 was. I think that probably the most expensive part of the board is the Radeon chip which is far more powerful than the one on the uA1.

One of you is wrong, your statement and his don't go together. Can someone who knows what he's talking about please chip in?

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
umisef 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 8:30:26
#55 ]
Super Member
Joined: 19-Jun-2005
Posts: 1714
From: Melbourne, Australia

@COBRA

Quote:
Oh, would you have preferred me to make a comparison of Embedded Linux to CMX RTOS on the same 10MHz 16bit CPU, when Embedded Linux can't even achieve a low-enough latency on a 20 times faster 32bit CPU?


Do you really not see that the way they pass messages is far from the only (or even the most important) difference between CMX and embedded linux?

By your logic, the CMX-like QNX (both are RTOS) should be much more efficient than the linux-like OS4 (both are non-RTOS).

Makes about as much sense as your argument.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Crumb 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 8:43:42
#56 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Mar-2003
Posts: 2209
From: Zaragoza (Aragonian State)

@COBRA

Quote:
I didn't forget that, the price for Sam we were talking about includes OS4 and VAT.


Sorry, but according to the board developers the price will be around 400Euros without VAT and without OS4. If you add a 16% of VAT the board would cost around 464Euros. If you add 120Euros (as you claim that OS4 costs 120Euros)... the board+OS4 would cost 464+120=584Euros. Clearer now?

Quote:
Is there fast and cheap hardware out there which can run OS4 or OS4 can be easily ported to it without any legal obstacles?


PSX3, PowerMacs, Pegasos2, Efika...

Quote:
If you're so happy with your windows system, then I don't understand why you're wasting your time on AmigaWorld.net. Just enjoy windows and share your happy windows experiences with other windows users on the forums dedicated for that.


And when you run out of arguments you come with excuses.

I live in real world and I know very well the limitations of AmigaOS. If I tried to sell you an old volvo for 500000Euros I guess you wouldn't complain? I would say... -look! I've put some ailerons in this car! and I've included a hi-fi system! and it's painted with metallic paint- I guess it wouldn't change the fact that it's an old car manofactured years ago (and a better car would cost you 9000Euros without problem), regardless of this car being able to move you from point A to point B.

Am I supposed to applaud everything that "Amiga" companies do in our market without stopping to think what they do? Sorry, but just like I don't buy a fork for 10000Euros (regarless of it including a boing ball) I don't think overpriced hardware helps the amiga market.

If you knew the limitations of amigaos you wouldn't try to compare it with QNX in the embedded market and you wouldn't try to sell me OS4 as a windows substitute. We are not in 1990 anymore and I'm well aware that AmigaOS alike systems are just "hobby OSes".

Do you really think someone who used Amigas ten years ago will waste 500Euros just to listen to mp3, play a few SDL games and open and close drawers? I'm sure many people would buy a copy if it was sold stand alone for PSX3 or even better, x86 machines. But do you really think that AmigaOS4 has a killer app that is going to make me buy an overpriced machine that runs much much slower than the cheapest Celeron you can buy now where you can't use most of the apps you usually need?

Do you think that OS4 is so good that people would pay 500Euros for it? Yes, I say for OS4 because no one in his right mind would pay 400Euros for such an overpriced motherboard if it didn't run OS4.

The Sam440 is the "dongle". Would you really buy it if you had the chance of getting a nice x86 machine for half the price?

The only short term solution is releasing OS4 for PSX3, sell some thousand of copies (it won't be a mega-hit in sales but at least buyers will be able to use modern hardware) and start to port it to x86 machines. Then sell it for x86 machines and if IBM decides to release a Power7 derivative that works on PC motherboards we'll launch some fireworks. Until then releasing hardware as slow and expensive won't help the amiga market.

People wanted G4s 4 years ago, don't you know? But people is getting tired of waiting.

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Crumb 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 8:50:03
#57 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Mar-2003
Posts: 2209
From: Zaragoza (Aragonian State)

@COBRA

Quote:
It's not wrong to compare the two, but OS4 will be a far more efficient OS than QNX regardless of what you say, because it makes much better use of the available resources.


Will it matter how efficient it is when it hangs? QNX has memory protection while OS4 won't have full memory protection until it uses a new API.

OS4 can't guarantee it's real time. In contrast QNX is sold as real time OS.

Quote:
But if the OS4 route would be cheaper


Since OS4 only runs on PPC I would find that hard to believe. I'm sure OS4 doesn't run on 10MHz 16bit CPUs.


QNX kernel sources are available for the users to modify them. This is another advantage OS4 doesn't have.

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
hatschi 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 8:54:12
#58 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 1-Dec-2005
Posts: 2328
From: Good old Europe.

@Samwel

Quote:

Samwel wrote:
@wegster

Quote:

But, I still believe something low cost (< $500 USD for complete system, $300 even better) is what's needed to go past maybe 2x the current OS4 users at best..


Yes I agree.. Or the other way around, hardware that kicks any PC's butt, like the
classics did. Although (< 500$ may not be cheap enough for large sales. Maybe a price of
350-400$ would be required?


If we are talking about Amiga-outsiders that we're trying to convince to buy an "AmigaNG system", I don't think that even performance "that kicks any PC's butt" would make them buy such a system. They would first ask themselves what they can do with it, not how fast it is. In that respect, AmigaOS offers much less than Windows/Linux/OSX because even the most basic applications are missing (browser with CSS-support, office suite).
The only group we could target -at the current point- are geek/retro-users and OS-enthusiasts who could get excited by the oddity and obscurity of the OS. An easy EUAE package/frontend could further help to attract some non-enthusiasts who used to have an Amiga (mainly for gaming), forgot about it and who have some money to spend.
All these potential (albeit small) user groups would be most interested in AmigaOS, but much less in the underlying hardware. They would look for a way to get access to AmigaOS **as easy as possible**. The higher you raise the entry-level bar regarding price or by the strange necessity of an odd PPC-system to run the OS, the less will still be interested in it. Keeping that in mind, PPC-hardware "that kicks any PC's butt" at a competitive price is extremely unrealistic. Hardware in the ballpark of Samantha priced at 200-300 EUR including OS *could* at least attract *some* of these potential buyers that I mentioned earlier - but OS-sales numbers will still be marginal compared to a situation where you could just sell an OS those people they could install on their existing x86-box (e.g. Zeta sales > 100.000).

Quote:
If we only had a good browser with full Java VM.. Then Amigas could be sold as
internet computers for libraries and/or internet cafés (what's this called in the US?)..


And what advantage would such a system have over Linux-boxes that are frequently used for such purposes? It runs on odd PPC-hardware, is more expensive, offers no security, no multi-user support, etc.?

Last edited by hatschi on 31-Oct-2006 at 08:56 AM.

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Crumb 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 8:55:22
#59 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Mar-2003
Posts: 2209
From: Zaragoza (Aragonian State)

@CodeSmith

Quote:
One of you is wrong, your statement and his don't go together. Can someone who knows what he's talking about please chip in?


Sam440 designers have said that the board would cost around 400Euros without VAT and without OS4.

It's advertised to include 512MB and not 256MB.

400Euros+16%VAT= 464Euros WITHOUT OS4 (that is according to the board seller).

If cobra says that OS4 costs 120Euros, add the 120Euros to the 464 and you get 584Euros. That's not low entry.

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
m3x 
Re: Sam's ETA ?
Posted on 31-Oct-2006 8:58:08
#60 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 15-May-2003
Posts: 311
From: Bologna, Italy

@CodeSmith

Cobra is right

Target price for the 667 Mhz, 256Mb ram including OS4 is Euro 450 + local taxes.

_________________
Massimiliano Tretene, ACube Systems, Soft3

 Status: Offline
Profile     Report this post  
Goto page ( Previous Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 Next Page )

[ home ][ about us ][ privacy ] [ forums ][ classifieds ] [ links ][ news archive ] [ link to us ][ user account ]
Copyright (C) 2000 - 2019 Amigaworld.net.
Amigaworld.net was originally founded by David Doyle