@ackcontrls

Quote:

Nothing is going to make DrBombcrater or ShadowWolf happy, unless they want OS4 on x86. So it's really not worth discussing anything with them.

Being able to read people's minds is such an interesting talent...

Meh. I hate it when people run away from discussions. It takes all the fun out of them.

_________________
Who do you serve, and who do you trust? - Galen

@DrBombcrater

Well a discussion should at least stay on a common ground. x86 is not an option. That said, it is pointless to dicuss this. (IMO).

_________________
AmigaOne XE G3/933/VIA/FM801/R200 (fixed),
G3SE/600/Voodoo3/Sil680/RTL8139/SBLive! (noiseless!)
µA1-MK2/G3/933/R200/CMI8738
XE/G4 (broken 7450/800)

SMP etc: PA Semi has a single core BTW.

Adam, this CPU captures the imagination! How PPC-ish is it? Will it be theoretically difficult to port OS4 to it?

If OS4 continues to develop, the high end system could support multicore & 64 bit!

What will we run with all this P O W E R !?

No, wait... I'm serious. What WILL we run with all this power?

_________________
If you're going through hell, keep going. -Winston Churchill

@DrBombcrater

Quote:

It's more than just performance, although that's an issue. The most recent information I can find has PA Semi claiming the 1682 scores about 1000 in SpecInt2000 @ 2GHz. AMD's and Intel's best desktop parts score roughly two and three times that, respectively. (in x86 terms, 1000 SpecInt2000 means a Sempron 3200 or similar - about £25 worth)

You're falling into the familiar trap of comparing artificial benchmarks across cpu architectures. PPC and x86 instruction sets are so different that the only benchmarks that really count are wall-clock ones. I'd like to see comparisons of say the time it takes to do a ray trace, or to encode a certain piece of music into MP3. Then we can do meaningful comparisons.

Quote:

Configuration flexibility is a problem, too. With the 1682 you have to accept the functions built into the chip. If it doesn't provide what you need (not enough PCIe lanes, for example) then you're stuck. It's not like say, and Athlon 64, where you can just pick a suitable hypertransport system controller chip from the wide range available.

Wide range available? There are just a handful of NB chips than can talk Hypertransport, and in any case you're constrained by the 2000MT/s bandwidth so you can't just keep adding peripherals. The description of PCI express support is a bit confusing, but it sounds like you get what most x86 NBs give you: 1x16 and a few more lanes split between x8, x4, x2 and x1. Sure, you don't get 2x16 Crossfire support, but I think only one NB from NVidia supports that.

Quote:

It can't run Windows and even with Linux it takes a hit because of the many x86 binary only drivers out there (ie, NVidia's Linux drivers, among many). So it's never, ever going to get used for a desktop board unless PPC compatibility it essential.

OK, but this is not exactly affecting the particular use of the chip that we're discussing here. The claim was made that this chip is not suitable for desktop use, not that it's unsuitable to run Windows or Linux.

Quote:

But inside the reality distortion bubble that is the PowerPC world, the 1682 actually looks pretty good. It certainly shows how utterly rubbish IBM's and Freescale's designs are.

I think Steve Jobs took the reality distortion bubble with him when he left I agree with you about the other manufacturers dropping the ball. If you look at how things were in 2001 (500MHz 7410), you'll see that according to Moore's law the 1682 is roughly where the PPC world should be now (we should be at 4GHz, we're at 2x2GHz).

Last edited by CodeSmith on 06-May-2007 at 02:03 AM.
Last edited by CodeSmith on 06-May-2007 at 01:42 AM.

@debrun

The chip implements the PowerPC instruction set, same as the Gx chips from Freescale and 74xx chips from IBM. It also implements Altivec, although PASemi gives it a different name probably for trademark reasons. It is more advanced than a G4, but I don't know enough about the PPC architecture to know if it could be called a G5. I'm fairly certain that OS4 can be tweaked to run on this CPU, in fact I suspect (since OS4 has a HAL) that the biggest changes needed will be for the board that the CPU is mounted on, rather than the CPU itself.

@ackcontrls

Agree TOTALLY. How much stupidity around here (sadly, as usual)



@all

How a processor can be considered a "desktop" system???

Just making a f*cking desktop system!!!!!

End of the story.


@ackcontrls

The only thing that makes me worry about is the real date for the real availability of the product. You talk about it as it is a bit far from having everthing well finished or even secured. And I think you know better than anyone what happens with estimations and hopes...

Last edited by vision on 06-May-2007 at 02:23 AM.

@vision

Actually, if a CPU only supports industrial interfaces, it won't make a good desktop CPU. For example, many PPC northbridges so far support only PCI-X, which is common in industrial applications but almost unheard of for home or business use.

@CodeSmith

Quote:

Really? a superscalar CPU, with two cores that can each issue 3 instructions per cycle (out of order), running at 2GHz and with a 1066MHz DDR2 memory controller with 2MB of onboard L2 cache doesn't sound too shabby compared to my Core 2 Duo

Core 2 core issues 4 instructions per cycle. AMD64 issue 3 instructions per cycle.

_________________
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Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Jorge
Quote:

x86 is not an option. That said, it is pointless to dicuss this. (IMO).

It's only not an option because it was decided that it is not an option, not because it is not an option, technically speaking. If Hyperion is out of the picture (are they?), opinions and options might change. OS4 compiled for a virtual 68k CPU, minus some PPC and address space magic, would truly be "Amiga Anywhere". Isn't that Amiga Inc's vision? Right now they seem to jump from "very unavailable" to "maybe available", within the PPC camp. But maybe that's just because the people at Amiga Inc. don't have a technical background and not set-in-stone strategy?

@Hammer

Well, I had an amd64 before my core 2 duo, so there

@dietmar

We are talking about the immediate (and possible?) future, with a pending announcement on Monday (that is in two days). In that context x86 is not an option, no.

Last edited by Jorge on 06-May-2007 at 03:23 AM.

_________________
AmigaOne XE G3/933/VIA/FM801/R200 (fixed),
G3SE/600/Voodoo3/Sil680/RTL8139/SBLive! (noiseless!)
µA1-MK2/G3/933/R200/CMI8738
XE/G4 (broken 7450/800)

@Hammer

Core 2 core issues 4 instructions per cycle. AMD64 issue 3 instructions per cycle.

PPC 970 FX (aka G5) can serve up to 8 instructions per cycle, so what's the real bragging rights here, really?!

@DrBombcrater

You have yet to make a valid (nor powerful) argument here other than show a true bias towards whatever x86 silliness you keep preaching.

If PowerPC sucks so darn bad, why are all the game consoles (Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii) using it?
And why are you wasting your precious time and worthy AW bytes on the x86 versus PPC debate in the first place; this argument will never be won by anybody, plain and simple!

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@Jorge

Within the scope of the Amiga OS, this is the best CPU option bar none. I'll be extremely pleased if this is indeed what the high end board is based upon.

I don't recall the last time I heard a user ask "what's the SpecInt2000"? when making a computer purchase. The most common questions are how many Gigahertz is it? How much RAM? What hard drive size? DVD-RW 16X Dual Layer? I hardly think this CPU would perform so poorly that everyone longs for their old 060 again.

@herewegoagain

This CPU has twice the L2 cache and five times the memory bandwidth of a 7448 (200MHz vs 1066MHz memory bus), and runs at 2GHz. It's going to make an AmigaOne XE look like an A1200 (speed: 2GHz vs 800MHz; L2 cache: 2MB vs 256KB; memory bus: 1066MHz vs 133MHz)

Last edited by CodeSmith on 06-May-2007 at 04:58 AM.

@CodeSmith

Yeah, I know. I've been reading about it for some time now. Just trying to make a point.

@herewegoagain

Sorry if I'm starting to sound like Helgis, but this has me pretty excited. I fervently hope that the Amiga Inc/Hyperion squabble doesn't f*k this up.

@ackcontrls

Sounds cool!

If this system should make it to market any time soon and can run OS 4 (or something extremely similar) then I will certainly buy one.

I'll even make you a deal!

If you can produce these boards to sell by, let's say the end of this summer/beginning fall, then I'll buy two. That's a promise! (I'm assuming a price tag that doesn't run off towards the ridiculous).

There you go two guaranteed sales already! Now all you have to do is ramp up the production!

_________________
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Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
ESI Juli@ 24bit 192kHz Envy24HT
Sil 680 Ultra Ata 133 E-ide
SeaGate Barracuda 120gb 8mb cache

Man, I hope there is some truth to this...

I'm sure gonna buy one :)

Heck I'll buy the low-end system too... :)

_________________
Stian Strøm,
System developer, AmigaWeb.net

@AmigaMac

Quote:

PPC 970 FX (aka G5) can serve up to 8 instructions per cycle, so what's the real bragging rights here, really?!

Not quite... PowerPC 970's front end can dispatch/issue 4 instructions + 1 branch instruction. It can fetch 8 instructions from it's instruction cache. Can you see the bottle neck? Another issue with PowerPC 970 is its 23 stage pipeline i.e. similar weakness as Pentium IV Northwood design.

Like Core 2, Pentium IV Pescott's front end can also issue 4 instructions, but with 31 stage pipeline depth. In most benchmarks, Core 2 kills Prescott. Both Core2 and AMD64 has medium depth pipelines.

AMD64 can issue (from the front end) up to 6 instructions** (integer operations only) i.e. two instructions per instruction issue slot. **Some X86 instructions are instruction packed.

Last edited by Hammer on 06-May-2007 at 07:09 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 06-May-2007 at 07:07 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 06-May-2007 at 06:56 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@AmigaMac

Quote:

If PowerPC sucks so darn bad, why are all the game consoles (Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii) using it?

The price for the customisation. For X360, it's D3D dot product instruction. Such customised design didn't benefit the rest of the PPC vendors. You wouldn't see barebone PS3 motherboard cheaper than Sony's PS3. PPC market is disjointed like 68K PC market.

I don't think MS would like yet another Intel Celeron (Netburst) in it's next console....
AMD(ATI) is already capacity constrained and involved in X360's and Wii's GPUs.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)