AmigaOS News from AmiWest
Date 3-Nov-2010 8:12:57
Topic: Software News
| This report is a summary of what was conveyed to the public at the AmiWest 2010 show. This information is direct from Hyperion Entertainment and its partners.
AmigaOS 4.1 for classic Amiga systems with PPC accelerators has been announced. This includes AmigaOS 4.1 Update 2 plus support for Radeon graphics cards via an x86 emulator to initialize them. There is also direct support for ZorRAM and you will be able to use multiple ZorRAM boards up to the theoretical limit.
This is not some stripped down version of AmigaOS. You can expect all the advanced features like virtual memory, memory swapping and hardware accelerated graphics to be there. The target for product availability is before the end of 2010. AmigaOS 4.1 for classic systems will be distributed exclusively by AmigaKit. Pricing details are not yet available.
AmigaOS 4.1 is already running on the brand new Sam460ex platform from ACube Systems. The Sam460ex was demonstrated at AmiWest at the Amiga Users of Calgary table. Some software driver issues do remain but the product is near completion. Benchmarks are not yet available but attendees were invited to try it for themselves. For the latest information about the Sam460ex platform please contact ACube directly.
The flagship AmigaOS platform is the AmigaOne X1000 and it was present in the latest generation case from A-EON Technology. The case was not branded but it does represent the latest version of the case. Thomas and Hans-Joerg Frieden had installed a myriad of software for show goers to try including Exult, UAE, Freespace, Jagged Alliance 2, BOH, Quake 2, Amiga Writer, Timberwolf, OWB, DvPlayer, MPlayer, AMC, various Hollywood demos and of course REBOL 3.
The AmigaOS itself was discussed in some detail at the show and many anticipated features were discussed and/or announced including:
* USB 2 support
* Support for more than 2 GB of RAM
* Multiple core support (SMP)
* New Exec scheduler
- Selectable policy for scheduling (may include per task)
- Scheduling of task groups with internal scheduling of tasks within that group
- Scheduling of tasks across multiple CPU cores (may include core affinity)
- Support for real-time scheduling
* Graphics and Gallium3D
- Enables access to full OpenGL implementations like Mesa
- Compositing may be done via Gallium3D
- Opens the door to replacing the entire graphics subsystem
- multi-header support
Please note all specifications are subject to change without notice.
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