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      /  Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
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BigD 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 1:26:22
#161 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Caveman

Yep, it was a PA-RISC and would have destroyed back compatibility and ended Amiga compatibles in all but name. Phase 5 pushed the PPC route years later with Blizzard PPC and Cyberstorm PPC cards and WarpUp software. For better or worse we're stuck with PPC as our CPU now, with no resources to migrate it's a case of making machines profitable under current software/hardware restrictions. The Amigas lack of transition to Mobile and Tablet computing markets will be viewed as scandalous with historical hindsight and a wasted last opportunity to make use of the Amigas small footprint on hardware resources.

IBM only cares about the POWER architecture and will quite happily watch as PowerPC becomes less and less relevant. As long as they can keep selling their bespoke POWER server machines for lots of cash they really won't care. Big Blue is an emotionless behemoth as its always been.

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vidarh 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 3:27:37
#162 ]
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Joined: 4-Jan-2010
Posts: 580
From: London, UK (ex-pat; originally from Norway)

@BigD

IThere's something in the region of half a billion PPC chips shipped every year, which ranks it roughly at par with MIPS and x86 in terms of volume (and all of them combined still massively outsold by ARM CPUs). It's a bit early to talk about it becoming less relevant. Less relevant on the desktop? Possibly. But then that's "ancient history" by now.

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KimmoK 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 5:01:27
#163 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2003
Posts: 5211
From: Ylikiiminki, Finland

@minator

All interesting. But there is no desktop caliber offerings from ARM yet.
Very nice if they add full PCIe (and more than four cores), then I say architecture switch to ARM could/should be done.

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KimmoK 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 5:10:30
#164 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2003
Posts: 5211
From: Ylikiiminki, Finland

@damocles

"I can see Freescale continue on with whatever improvements (more G2 cores or whatever) "

They are doing more than that. e6500 core has a lot of new stuff and improved SIMD etc. It also seems to DOUBLE the MIPS per core per Mhz rating of PPC. (and the SoC has PCIe 3.0 controllers, three memory controllers, three memory bus (2100Mhz DDR3*3))

For desktop use some quadcore 1.2Ghz ARM is not much. But surely ARM offerings will become better soon.

Anyway. What ever the next CPU for AOS is, AOS need to start to use multiple cores!
(and pretty soon also GPGPUs for math)

Last edited by KimmoK on 11-Sep-2012 at 05:41 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 11-Sep-2012 at 05:39 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 11-Sep-2012 at 05:11 AM.

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

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olegil 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 6:27:05
#165 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@KimmoK

Yep, switching architectures doesn't make a lick of difference, parallell processing is a must now...

_________________
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.

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AmigaBlitter 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 7:31:39
#166 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 26-Sep-2005
Posts: 3512
From: Unknown

@olegil

Quote:
switching architectures doesn't make a lick of difference


would probably be the opposite. I mean: we are tied to PPC processors only, first. Second, port the ppc code (OS, compilers and so on) to another platform could take long long time.
PPC is and must be the platform of choise. And, btw, PPC is really a good processor.

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olegil 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 8:47:16
#167 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@AmigaBlitter

Actually, what I mean is that since we're only using half of the available power NOW, porting to other multi-processing systems won't help at all unless we find ways of using the extra power. I would expect a solution that enables multiprocessing on one architecture could be reused on other arches, so it's time to stop bickering about impossibilities and start facing the facts here.

_________________
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.

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Hammer 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 8:54:56
#168 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@minator

Quote:

minator wrote:
@KimmoK

Quote:
A15 seems to be the first one to deliver more than previous PPC generation (not as much as the high end of PPC next generation).


You'll be able to buy them fairly soon. Should give ARM G5 type power.

ARM Cortex A15 core is about the same level as Qualcomm Snapdragon S4's CPU core.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5559/qualcomm-snapdragon-s4-krait-
performance-preview-msm8960-adreno-225-benchmarks/2

Note that my old Intel Atom Pineview beats Snapdragon S4 in Sunspider benchmark.

Last edited by Hammer on 11-Sep-2012 at 09:04 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 11-Sep-2012 at 09:02 AM.

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OlafS25 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 9:01:13
#169 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-May-2010
Posts: 6321
From: Unknown

@AmigaBlitter

I see it this way. I personally do not believe that there are developers working fulltime on any amigian platform including AmigaOS so resources are very limited. A platform change would mean development of AmigaOS stops for a long time (no paid updates) and nobody could exactly foresee how many licenses would be sold after the change (high financial risk). So it is much easier, less risk and more profitable to support the (slowly) shrinking userbase and because of that I assume there will be no change in direction anytime soon.

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Hammer 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 9:25:04
#170 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote:
@AmigaBlitter

Is there now more than rumors?

The breaker would be Radeon HD 7750 @900Mhz level GPU to be bundled with quad-core AMD Steamroller CPUs i.e. AMD Kaveri APU.


AMD Liverpool APU has Radeon HD 7850 level GPU (16 compute units) instead of AMD Kaveri's 8 compute units enabled Radeon HD 7750.

IBM wouldn't enable to beat AMD's "we'll throw in the CPUs with the Radeon HD GPU" type deal.

Last edited by Hammer on 11-Sep-2012 at 09:36 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 11-Sep-2012 at 09:33 AM.

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olegil 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 10:41:32
#171 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@Hammer

I agree, AMD has a bit of an advantage there. And if there are embedded ARM processors here and there to help with DRM then that solves the problem of "how to avoid being emulated" as well.

But the good news is that it really doesn't look like being chosen as CPU for all three of the previous generation of game consoles has helped PPC in any way that benefits THIS community, so we shouldn't really care. Those chips were out of our reach and we couldn't even run software on the completed consoles.

Another thing to remember is that there is a REALLY fine line between what's good for embedded and what's good for general computing, the only niche that really isn't filled by _any_ POWER architecture chip right now is netbook. 5121e is just not fast enough, and the others need an expensive and power hungry graphics chip on the outside.

Now if the 8610 was cheaper, it might be a candidate. But no.

Edit: Ok, I see it starts at 82USD, which isn't COMPLETELY hopeless, though. It does include Altivec and 2D graphics after all. How good is Altivec for software rendering?

It lacks USB and SATA, which come in handy for IO and storage, but that's easily solved with single lane PCIe chips. Anyone know of a good form factor?

Last edited by olegil on 11-Sep-2012 at 10:52 AM.
Last edited by olegil on 11-Sep-2012 at 10:47 AM.

_________________
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.

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AmigaBlitter 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 12:38:32
#172 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 26-Sep-2005
Posts: 3512
From: Unknown

@olegil

Quote:
How good is Altivec for software rendering?


"http://www.gamespot.com/features/mmx/html/mmx_ss.html"

This article recites: MMX: much hypes for little gain.

Don't know how much Altivec is good compared with MMX.

I remember that some games where more graphically rich.

This is for AMD 3dNow. 21 more instructions for math and 3d graphics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3DNow!

Interesting that sam440 and 460 have both 24 auxiliary DSP instructions.

Last edited by AmigaBlitter on 11-Sep-2012 at 12:45 PM.

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KimmoK 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 13:34:04
#173 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2003
Posts: 5211
From: Ylikiiminki, Finland

@olegil

"How good is Altivec for software rendering?"

For some special things they say it's more than 4x faster than integer/FPU. And in general math it should be some 25% faster. So, for software 3D it is somewhere there in between ...

btw. is there Altivec optimized Wazp3D? If there is it could be compared to non altivec version. Other than that, some 10+ year old 3D games seem to be playable on x1000 without 3D acceleration.

"Anyone know of a good form factor?"
I've educated myself that the casing for smaller than microATX can be hard to find... But pico pretty widely seen in industrial SBC.

I would prefer slim design that could fit in pico box and in ATX expansions slot.
(so, PCIe available as PCIe card edge connector or adaptable)
Some PPC have master/slave kind of settings for PCIe, that kind of chips could be used in x86 PCs to run some PPC OS parallelly with the host.
(Iwould use the PPC without the x86 dongle)

(my dream about the communitycomputer: built of modules that can exist separately or on a PCIe busboard)

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// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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damocles 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 20:18:21
#174 ]
Super Member
Joined: 22-Dec-2007
Posts: 1719
From: Unknown

@KimmoK

Quote:
They are doing more than that. e6500 core


Which is what, based on the e500 core?

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Zylesea 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 11-Sep-2012 22:13:12
#175 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 16-Mar-2004
Posts: 2263
From: Ostwestfalen, FRG

@damocles

Quote:


Which is what, based on the e500 core?



Probably not directly. It's rather the 64 bit successor of the e600 core. But I think switching from 32 bit to 64 bit requires a lot of new design, hence I wouldn't say e6500 is literally based on e500 or e600 albeit it incorporates a lot of which is also in these. The e6500 core complies to Power ISA 2.06 and has a 32 bit mode. It's at least an attempt by Freescale to push Power forward.

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KimmoK 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 12-Sep-2012 6:59:58
#176 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2003
Posts: 5211
From: Ylikiiminki, Finland

Some PPC readings:
Next gen from IBM.
Wiki about freescale e6500 core.
Then there's IBM 476. And 476FP.

(freescale seems better for general purpose computation)

Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Sep-2012 at 10:04 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Sep-2012 at 10:01 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Sep-2012 at 10:00 AM.

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

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Hammer 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 12-Sep-2012 8:01:12
#177 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@olegil

IBM PowerPC 470 with 4 instruction issue per cycle looks to be OK for the next AmigaOne 500.

https://www-01.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/3A6A3E7DE1932B5E00257506006098C1

Atm, Swiftshader 3.0 is best software Direct3D 9c renderer for X86 (SSE1/2/3, SSSE3) i.e. it uses just-in-time(JIT) recomplier technology.

Last edited by Hammer on 12-Sep-2012 at 08:04 AM.

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thellier 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 12-Sep-2012 8:29:50
#178 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 2-Nov-2009
Posts: 263
From: Paris

Hello
>btw. is there Altivec optimized Wazp3D? If there is it could be compared to non altivec version.
Answer is yes and no

Yes: I have compiled Wazp3D for ppc with altivec gcc options but that dont give any differences
No: What is really needed is to write some critical parts in pure Altivec ASM
---> but I dont know PPC/Altivec ASM

Also there is certainly a problem with memory accesses on Wazp3D/PPC Amiga


Note: When using renderer:Compositing2D then Wazp3D is no more a "software" renderer as graphics.library CompositeTags is an hardware accelerated function
(something like a NG blitter ). Badly CompositeTags cant do Zbuffering nor W3D_MODULATE effect... so will never be a true 3D driver

Alain Thellier - Wazp3D's Author

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persia 
Re: Is IBM loosing his crown in the PPC and console market?
Posted on 14-Sep-2012 16:32:28
#179 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Jul-2009
Posts: 1059
From: Unknown

@thellier

So what processor does the new U Wii use?

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